Renewable Consumption Research Articles

Transition to a green economy, oil prices and the current account

In this paper we propose and develop the hypothesis that a transition to a green economy influences the consumption-smoothing component of the current account. This is important because green economy has the potential to improve current accounts. Using a sample of 23 countries, we discover that when renewable energy consumption as a share of total final energy consumption is below the threshold value of 23.561 %, there is a negative impact of oil prices on the current account. However, the negative impact diminishes when renewable consumption exceeds this threshold. Interestingly, splitting the sample into current account surplus and deficit countries reveals that a transition to a greener economy mitigates the negative impacts of an oil price rise more so for deficit countries than surplus countries.

Sustainable Economic Development in China: Balancing Growth and Environmental Concerns

Purpose: Over the last three decades, China’s economy has grown remarkably, ranking second in the world among all countries. China’s market-oriented policies, which give priority to economic development, are credited with the country’s economic boom. China’s remarkable economic growth in recent years has had a significant effect on the environmental balance of the nation. Presently, Chinese authorities must address environmental issues without impeding the nation’s progress. Even though China’s economy has expanded quickly since reforms and the opening up, the country’s environmental degradation issue has gotten more serious.Examine China’s current strategies for economic development and their effects on environmental sustainability and economic growth.The dynamic connects between the highlighted factors (renewable consumption of energy, economic expansion, oil rent, and resources of all kinds) and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions—a proxy for environmental sustainability—is examined in this article using China as an example.The findings of an empirical study using every year data from 2018 to 2022 and the auto-regressive distribution lag limits technique point to the existence of a long-run equilibrium link between each of the variables highlighted and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, since they have a negative impact on greenhouse gas emissions, the usage of renewable energy sources and petroleum rents contribute to ecological sustainability.In conclusion, China’s commitment to sustainability may benefit from some of the remedies this paper’s results suggest. This study demonstrates the useful use of New Structure Economy in a crucial industrial area in China, adding to the body of knowledge on sustainability in the environment and economic development.

Deep Low-Carbon Economic Optimization Using CCUS and Two-Stage P2G with Multiple Hydrogen Utilizations for an Integrated Energy System with a High Penetration Level of Renewables

Integrating carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology into an integrated energy system (IES) can reduce its carbon emissions and enhance its low-carbon performance. However, the full CCS of flue gas displays a strong coupling between lean and rich liquor as carbon dioxide liquid absorbents. Its integration into IESs with a high penetration level of renewables results in insufficient flexibility and renewable curtailment. In addition, integrating split-flow CCS of flue gas facilitates a short capture time, giving priority to renewable energy. To address these limitations, this paper develops a carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) method, into which storage tanks for lean and rich liquor and a two-stage power-to-gas (P2G) system with multiple utilizations of hydrogen including a fuel cell and a hydrogen-blended CHP unit are introduced. The CCUS is integrated into an IES to build an electricity–heat–hydrogen–gas IES. Accordingly, a deep low-carbon economic optimization strategy for this IES, which considers stepwise carbon trading, coal consumption, renewable curtailment penalties, and gas purchasing costs, is proposed. The effects of CCUS, the two-stage P2G system, and stepwise carbon trading on the performance of this IES are analyzed through a case-comparative analysis. The results show that the proposed method allows for a significant reduction in both carbon emissions and total operational costs. It outperforms the IES without CCUS with an 8.8% cost reduction and a 70.11% reduction in carbon emissions. Compared to the IES integrating full CCS, the proposed method yields reductions of 6.5% in costs and 24.7% in emissions. Furthermore, the addition of a two-stage P2G system with multiple utilizations of hydrogen further amplifies these benefits, cutting costs by 13.97% and emissions by 12.32%. In addition, integrating CCUS into IESs enables the full consumption of renewables and expands hydrogen utilization, and the renewable consumption proportion in IESs can reach 69.23%.

Analysis of renewable energy and economic growth of Germany

The study aims to investigate the effect of energy use, renewable energy consumption, nuclear energy consumption and air transport freight on CO2 emissions in Germany. Auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was used to establish the short and long-term correlations between the dependent (CO2) and independent variables (Energy use, nuclear consumption, renewable consumption, air transport freight) on a time series data from 1970 to 2021. The results demonstrated the dependence of energy use on non-renewable energy sources by revealing a significant and positive relationship between short and long-term energy use and CO2 emissions. Similar to energy use, nuclear energy use and air transport freight was also found to be positively correlated with CO2 emissions. On the other hand, despite the fact that there is a strong negative connection between carbon dioxide emissions and renewable energy, the results reveal that the correlation between the two is not statistically significant. The study aims to investigate the effect of important economic factors on Germany’s CO2 emissions in order to move further in a sustainable manner. The data reveals an astonishing increase in the usage of nuclear energy for power generation between 1965 and 1985, which was followed by a fall in 2012 as a result of the Fukushima tragedy and growing social unease in Germany, which ultimately led to the phase-out of nuclear power. Nonetheless, BAU projections revealed that even with 200 nuclear power plants, CO2 emissions would still be reduced to 278 by 2070, in part because of the additional power produced by other energy sources.

Environmentally Friendly Strategies for Recycling Agricultural Waste to Produce Renewable Energy: A Case Study of Durian Fruit

The increasing need for harvests, resources, and facilities is associated with significant biowaste production from agricultural processes. Although the waste is nutrient-rich, it may become refinement lands for ailment-triggering bacteria when not managed correctly. The waste can be transformed into raw materials for valuable crops or sources of environmentally friendly energy. Therefore, this study examined agricultural waste management strategies as Indonesia's sustainable renewable energy source. SWOT and TOPSIS methods were used to identify the optimal approach for advancing renewable energy in Riau Province, while multiple respondents participated in identifying critical criteria and evaluating each option. The results showed that based on SWOT analysis, the Strength–Opportunity (SO) factor favored using agricultural waste for renewable energy in Indonesia. Furthermore, TOPSIS analysis indicated that Alternative A2 (Bioethanol) had the most significant distance among the alternatives, with a weight of 0.825. Future studies are needed to provide more accurate results and improve the current understanding regarding the evolution of renewable energy in Indonesia. Additionally, in-depth investigations should prioritize increased consumer awareness of renewable consumption, higher producer productivity, and strengthened policies.

An enhanced stochastic optimization for more flexibility on integrated energy system with flexible loads and a high penetration level of renewables

Full utilization of the potential regulation ability of flexible loads in an integrated energy system (IES) and expanding its structure for more flexibility via integrating auxiliary devices is the key to realizing its high-efficiency operation and high-proportion renewable consumption. The present paper builds the flexible regulation models of thermal and electrical loads and introduces them to the structure expansion planning of IES. A two-stage stochastic probability optimization method integrating the uncertain operation of introducing flexible loads is then proposed to balance the additional costs of device integration and the benefits of performance promotion. Herein, an enhanced sample average approximation based on a stochastic hierarchy scenario generation method is developed to solve the optimization. The regulation mechanisms of flexible loads and their influence on expansion planning are then analyzed by comparing the optimized results. The results show that the path to decreasing the cost via introducing flexible thermal and electrical loads into optimization is increasing renewable consumption and coordinating an increment in renewable consumption and average electrical efficiency, respectively. The regulation between them has synergism on cost reduction and saturation on increasing renewable consumption. The synergism can reduce the cost by 0.62 %. Besides, there is a synergism between electric boiler integration and flexible loads, which further reduces the total cost of the expanded IES by 24.86 %.

The interlinkage between land resources, food, water, income, and sustainable environment: Evidence from China's economy with COP27 perspective

AbstractChina, the most populous country across the globe, has emerged as one of the biggest economies; however, regarding food production, water, uplifting the income level, and attaining environmental sustainability, the policymakers are still concerned. China's government has worked immensely on eradicating poverty through increasing food production, ensuring access to clean water, and using land resources. Similar steps are taken about environmental protection. In this regard, China needs more empirical evidence to tackle such an environmentally destructive issue and sustainable natural resource use. The present study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) while considering the importance of natural resources, food production and export, and water productivity in environmental quality. This research also explores the impact of tourism, energy use, and renewable energy output on carbon emissions in China during 1990–2021. This research authenticates the variables' stationarity and the long‐term equilibrium relationship between the study factors using the pre‐estimation diagnostic approaches. This study employed several parametric approaches and revealed that the EKC paradox is invalid in the case of China and vice versa in the presence of natural resources and food and water variables. Natural resources are the key hazard in attaining a sustainable regional environment and development. By contrast, increased economic growth and energy consumption also enhance the country's pollution level. In distinction, renewable electricity output, tourism industry, food production, and food export are the substantial drivers of attaining COP27 targets. Based on the study findings, this research recommends enhancement in sustainable food production and water management, improved production and consumption of renewables, reduced consumption of outdated energy, sustainable use of non‐renewable resources, and facilitated tourism across the country.

Risk-averse bi-level planning model for maximizing renewable energy hosting capacity via empowering seasonal hydrogen storage

Renewables (i.e., solar and wind power) in the Nordic area have highly seasonal characteristics, which severely restrict the wide development of renewables since they can be excessive in summer but insufficient in winter with intermittent outputs. The conventional battery energy storage system (BESS) with short-term adjustment functionality cannot eliminate the seasonal imbalance of renewables. In this regard, a risk-based bi-level planning model is presented to maximize the hosting capacity (HC) of renewables through configuring seasonal hydrogen storage (SHS) and BESS. Specifically, the upper level applies a multi-objective scheme to maximize HC and minimize the investment cost simultaneously. In turn, the lower level is driven by maximizing the profits of the distribution system operator (DSO) with the implementation of price-based demand response (PBDR). Due to forecasting errors of renewables and load resulting from intermittent output and random behaviors, a stochastic programming (SP) method is developed to address and adapt multiple uncertain fluctuations. Moreover, the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) is introduced to measure the effect of the risks raised by multiple uncertainties on system operation. Finally, numerical studies are employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. Compared to the cases without considering PBDR and SHS, the total renewable energy HC in the proposed model is increased by 2.30 MW and 0.37 MW, respectively, while the yearly cost benefit of DSO is enhanced by 28063.2 US$ and 17823.7 US$, respectively. The promising results demonstrate the empowerment of SHS can promote the cross-seasonal consumption of renewables, effectively maximizing the HC and improving the economic operation of distribution systems.

Enhancing Renewable Energy Use in Residential Communities: Analyzing Storage, Trading, and Combinations

Renewable energy resources, especially rooftop solar PV, have gained momentum during the past few years. However, the local consumption of PV power is limited due to the negative correlation between peak PV power and residential loads. Therefore, this study analyzes various cases to maximize the consumption of renewables in communities encompassing dwellings both with and without PV installations. The three cases considered in this study are local energy storage, community energy storage, and internal trading. A total of six cases are analyzed by evaluating these cases individually and in combinations. To achieve this, first, a generalized optimization model with specific constraints for each case is developed. Subsequently, different indices are devised to quantitatively measure trading with the grid and the consumption of renewables under varying cases. The performance of these different cases is analyzed for a community comprising five dwellings over a summer week. Furthermore, the performance of each case is evaluated for various seasons throughout the year. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis of different storage capacities (both local and community) is conducted. Simulation results indicate that community storage results in the highest renewable consumption if only one case is considered. However, the overall combination of internal trading and community storage results in the highest cost reduction, lowest dependence on the grid, and the highest consumption of renewables. Finally, a techno-economic analysis is performed on four widely used battery technologies, taking into account diverse cost and technical considerations.

Optimal planning of electricity-gas coupled coordination hub considering large-scale energy storage

Large-scale long-duration energy storage (LDES), like compressed air energy storage (CAES) and liquid air energy storage (LAES), is promising for high-penetration renewable energy consumption in the city-scale integrated energy system (IES). Due to high installation costs and challenges in decentralized control of distributed energy storage, this paper proposes an optimal planning model for an urban electricity-gas coordination hub (UEGCH) with centralized energy storage using large-scale LDES. Firstly, the UEGCH with energy cascade utilization is designed, where process-based linearized models of advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage (AACAES) and LAES are established to make a trade-off between solving accuracy and speed. Then, a city-scale integrated electricity and gas system (IEGS) is constructed with multiple regions considering line-packing. Finally, a multi-scenario planning method is proposed based on X-means for scenario reduction, and the global optimum is obtained through linearization. Results show that compared with traditional gas storage tank (GST) in the UEGCH, the utilization of AACAES and LAES requires as little as 7 % and 0.7 % of the construction volume with lower carbon emissions and can be cost-competitive in terms of future advancement. As for different EESs, in contrast to the energy-based energy storage (EBES) (i.e., battery (BT)), the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the capacity-based energy storage (CBES), which includes AACAES and LAES, can be reduced by nearly 0.1 $/kWh, bringing an annual economic benefit of $ 3 million. Besides, the discharge duration of CBES can be increased to 13 h, demonstrating the application prospect in 100 % renewable consumption and islanding operation. Compared with AACAES, LAES can reach 11.67 times the energy density, with a drop of 6.11 % in operating cost. The abilities of EBES and CBES to locally consume renewables are respectively weaker and stronger than that of power-to-gas (P2G) combined with line-packing. Meanwhile, this paper further analyzes the impacts of temperature, discharge duration, renewable penetration, energy tariff, and demand on the operation and sizing of centralized energy storage.

Determinants of renewable energy consumption in the Fifth Technology Revolutions: Evidence from ASEAN countries

This study aims to investigate the factors of renewable energy consumption in the fifth Technology Revolution with specific evidence from ASEAN countries. The study applies an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The paper also uses the unrestricted fixed and random panel data methods. The manuscript identifies significant factors such as technological innovation, governmental policies, public awareness, electricity consumption, country population, foreign direct investment inflows, imports, exports, and economic growth that have influenced the renewable energy sector in these nations. This study also investigates the determinants that influence renewable energy in the context of international integration and the fifth technology revolution in ASEAN countries. The research analyzes data spanning two decades, from 2000 to 2022, through a combination of econometric modeling and machine learning techniques. Preliminary findings indicate that technological innovation, government policies, and public awareness significantly affect renewable energy consumption in these countries. The empirical results offer insights for policymakers and stakeholders in leveraging technological advancements for sustainable energy development. The findings from this study on the determinants of renewable consumption in the context of the Fifth Technology Revolution in ASEAN countries also have several important policy implications for the sustainable development goal.

The Impact of Remittances on Renewable and Non-renewable Energy Consumption in Jamaica

Using annual data from 1980 to 2019, we explore the impact of remittance inflows (remittances) on renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in Jamaica. We apply statistically adequate vector error correction and vector autoregression models. There are two primary findings. First, we find that an increase in remittances is associated with a decrease in renewable energy consumption within an error correction model, which suggests a long-run negative relationship between remittances and renewable energy consumption. Second, an increase in remittances is associated with an increase in non-renewable energy consumption in the short run; no cointegrating relationship is detected. One implication of our finding is that Jamaica could strengthen policies that encourage the consumption of renewables while discouraging the consumption of non-renewables. These policies should apply to not only remittance-receiving households but also energy consumers in general to enhance the uptake of renewable energy.

The determinants of carbon emissions in Belt and Road Initiative countries: analyzing the interactive role of information and communication technologies.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries have benefited greatly from the intelligent growth of the green economy made possible by the widespread adoption of internet and mobile phone technologies. In addition, renewable energy consumption endorses sustainable development. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine if the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and renewable energy consumption has an effect on sustainable development in BRI countries, while using the augmented mean group (AMG) model, AMG robustness test, and panel Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test to get robust results. According to the results of the study, the information and communication technology, renewable consumption, human capital, and urbanization reduces the emission of carbon dioxide emission in BRI countries while economic growth enhances the CO2 emission. Therefore, it is recommended that BRI countries increase their inter-regional cooperation in order to boost investment in renewable energy, effectively use the spillover effect of technology and knowledge, and end the resource curse in environmental policy. Based on the results, the authors of this paper propose a number of important steps toward environmental sustainability.

An analytical method for sizing energy storage in microgrid systems to maximize renewable consumption and minimize unused storage capacity

This paper presents a novel analytical method to optimally size energy storage in microgrid systems. The method has fast calculation speeds, calculates the exact optimal, and handles non-linear models. The method first constructs a temporal storage profile of stored energy, based on how storage charges and discharges in response to renewable generation and load demand. The storage is sized according to the largest cumulative charge or discharge in the profile. In essence, the storage profile represents how storage is utilized within a given system, and the method sizes optimal storage to maximize that profile, such that storage utilization is maximized, and unutilized or wasted storage is eliminated. Maximizing storage utilization also maximizes renewable consumption and minimizes load shedding, as storage utilization is the temporal transfer of energy from renewable generation to load demand. The proposed method is extended iteratively to account for storage’s energy limits, power limits, and energy leakage. Two solar–battery case studies demonstrate the method. The first study shows that optimally sized storage does not have wasted capacity due to over-sizing, nor cause energy deficits due to under-sizing. The second case study shows increasing the storage size reduces the marginal increase in energy provided by storage, indicating diminishing returns. The diminishing return thresholds are defined by the largest daily and annual storage designs. The result shows the largest daily design only requires 3% of the annual design’s storage size, but provides 80% of the energy provided by the annual design. The proposed method can be used as a decision support tool for energy analysts, to determine required storage capacity when coupled with known renewable generation and load demand.

Unveiling the relationship between environmental quality, non-renewable energy usage and natural resource rent: Fresh insights from ten asian economies

Asia is counted as one of the regions that has been dealing high emissions and energy consumption issue especially since last decade. Also, Natural resource rents are one of the influencing constraints which damages the environmental quality. Since the recent global climate summit is conducted to gather world leaders together to accelerate Paris agreement goals. Thereby, considering COP26 commitments, the study intended to explore the role of COP26 commitments along with non-renewable energy consumption in the extraction of natural resources. The necessity to study it in the context of 10 Asian economies is due to the high emissions and energy consumption and one should know that transitioning the economy towards renewable consumption is an essential target to meet COP26 net-zero emission goal. Thus, the study covered the period from 2006 to 2020 to explore the relationship between variables in Asian economies. Findings echoed that carbon emissions and methane emissions are positively associated with natural resource rents, hence establishing the fact that COP26 environmental targets are negatively related to natural resource rents. Consistent with prior literature, findings also exposed the positive association of fossil fuel energy consumption with natural resource rent, hence highlighting the need of serious policy implications in order to save the environmental and natural resources for future generation.

Nexus of innovation, renewable consumption, FDI, growth and CO2 emissions: The case of Vietnam

Governments around the world have enacted many policies to reduce environmental pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. This study aimed to determine and understand the relationship between innovation, renewable energy consumption, foreign direct investment inflows, economic growth and CO2 emission in Vietnam. Information was collected annually based on the annual data of the General Statistics Office of Vietnam and World Bank from 2000 to 2022. The authors use the unrestricted fixed effects to resolve the study problems and using panel data method. The results indicate that innovation positively affects environmental pollution in Vietnam. However, renewable energy consumption has a negative effect on environmental pollution in Vietnam. In addition, FDI inflows and economic growth have strongly positive effects on environmental pollution. This paper also provides some recommendations that can assist Vietnam in developing a green and sustainable economy in the technology revolution 5.0 to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over a long-term period.

Regional differentiation in influencing factors of clean renewable energy consumption from the perspective of air pollution prevention and control

Global economic growth is now increasingly conflicting with the sustainable development strategy. In the context of ecological environmental preservation and air pollution prevention and control, this paper probes into the regional differentiation in the influencing factors of clean renewable energy consumption. First and foremost, a brief analysis of the status quo of clean renewable consumption in China was outputted, grounded on data on the input and output of 30 provinces and cities nationwide from 2010 to 2020. Then, national and regional models are built respectively in virtue of differential GMM, systematic GMM, and bias-corrected LSDV methods. Furthermore, efforts were invested in dissecting the working mechanism of the influencing factors and verifying the previous prediction resulting in applying the Tobit regression method. For every 1% increase in the green finance index, the clean renewable energy consumption rises by 0.882 accordingly, said the regression analysis results. Last but not least, it was concluded that the development level of green finance, internet advance, and technological progress significantly positively affected clean renewable energy consumption. While the industrial structure, the degree of openness, and the level of urbanization represented by the proportion of the secondary industry play hardly-seen impact.

Heterogenous Effects of Circular Economy, Green energy and Globalization on CO2 emissions: Policy based analysis for sustainable development

The tragedy of the depletion of natural resources led by their overconsumption has posed severe deleterious effects on humanity and the environment. Post-consumption-led waste has worsened the situation, given that unregulated and unscientific waste treatment furthers the criticality of ecological dilapidation. To curb ecological overshoot and restore the full capacity of ecosystem services, we need to focus more on recycling the available resources at their maximum capacity. In other words, we must take a U-turn from the linear economic system to the circular one. The issue is that the number of real-world data-driven scientific studies is very scant in this sphere of literature. Against this milieu, this paper scrutinizes the effect of a circular economy on CO2 emissions intensity among a panel of the top seven CO2 emitters of the world. We have used data from 1990 to 2020 and applied the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) technique to reach our empirical conclusions. By controlling for globalization and renewable energy consumption, we unveil that municipal waste, a crucial component of the circular economy, is positively entangled with CO2 emissions among the designated nations. This observation further reiterates the theoretical underpinning and urges to harness municipal waste as a valuable raw material for a circular economy. Moreover, we disclose that economic growth and globalization boost CO2 emissions intensity among the designated nations. Contrarily, the consumption of renewables helps uplift environmental integrity. Our conclusions also hold after the robustness check. Further, the D-H causality test establishes a bidirectional causality between municipal waste and CO2 emissions. One-lane causality is also observed from a linear economy to a circular economy. More specifically, municipal waste is observed as a critical determinant of pollution and carbon emissions. In light of the findings, the authors provide novel policy recommendations apropos sustainable development goals.

"Environmental Protection. A Debate on Economic Aspects "

The concept of sustainable development has emerged to correlate the need to continue increasing the level of human and increasingly fragile “health” level of environment. At the industrial level, things have moved more quickly. Thus, many companies use waste as fuel, and in some localities, they are trying to implement systems for heating cottage on the combustion of waste. They are first to have acknowledged the eco-economic importance of recovery and reuse waste. Researchers draw attention to the conflict between industrial civilization and environment and mention two aspects: the tendency of depletion of natural energy resources, raw materials and food or renewable consumption on a pace above their capacity of regeneration and physical damage and pollution of the environment: water, air and land. All efforts for avoiding pollution or to protect the remaining resources quantify the money spent by the private and public sector. There should be a directly relationship between expenditure and the environment “health” state. The involvement tendency of increasingly amounts for environmental protection should create cleaner and less polluted environment.

Gauging the impact of the strength of patent systems on renewable energy consumption

In recent years, renewable energy consumption has been at the centre stage of academic debate. Little is however known about the potential impact of the strength of patent systems (IPRs) and renewable consumption. This study addresses this issue using a GMM methodological framework for a panel of 47 developed and developing economies over the period 1998–2017. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study where two alternative indices that measure differences in strength of patent systems are employed to explore the underlying relationship whilst at the same time controlling for other potential determinants of renewable energy consumption. We find that protection of intellectual property rights across nearly all estimated models and country groups tends to have a negative impact on renewable energy consumption whilst a convex relationship is established when nonlinearities are explored. Finally, the global financial crisis is found to have a negative impact on renewable energy in both developed and developing economies. Further probing indicates that in a depressed economic environment the strength of IPRs might have a significant role to play in encouraging more renewable energy consumption.