Total Final Energy Consumption Research Articles

Oil price shocks and renewable energy transition: Empirical evidence from net oil-importing South Asian economies.

This paper makes a novel attempt to model the nonlinear association between renewable energy consumption and crude oil prices concerning four net oil-importing South Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Using annual data from 1990 to 2018, the long-run elasticity estimates confirm the nonlinear nexus and suggest that although rising crude oil prices do not facilitate renewable energy consumption initially, upon reaching a threshold level of crude oil price, further hikes in the oil prices are likely to elevate the renewable energy consumption figures. The estimated real oil price threshold, in this regard, is predicted to be around 135 US dollars per barrel, which is way above the prevailing oil price level. Identical nonlinearity is also confirmed in the context of the oil prices and renewable energy share in total final energy consumption volumes. Moreover, the nexus between renewable electricity share in aggregate electricity outputs and crude oil prices is also seen to exhibit nonlinearity. However, rising crude oil prices were not found to enhance the renewable electricity shares. Besides, the causality results implicated that movements in crude oil prices influenced the renewable energy transition process across the concerned South Asian economies. Thus, these results, in a nutshell, impose critically important policy implications for attainment of energy security and environmental sustainability in South Asia, particularly via curbing the traditional imported crude oil-dependencies of these nations.

Energy efficiency in steam using industries in Greece

ABSTRACTThe industry sector in Greece is responsible for one-quarter of the overall total final energy consumption accounting for 3.8 Mtoe in 2015. Since 2007, a 29% decrease is noted due to the financial crisis. The goal of this paper is to provide information on the current industrial energy profile of Greece, with particular reference to the steam industry. It presents the outcomes of 10 energy audits in industries that use steam followed by a list of possible measures: insulation, installation of a deaerator unit, heat recovery, automatic blowdown system and regulation of excessive air. The proposed measures result in energy savings of 5.8 GWh/year and show that the potential of energy savings in the Greek steam industry is quite considerable.

Bottom-up and top-down heat demand mapping methods for small municipalities, case Gllogoc

The identification and spatial distribution of heat demand for space heating is of high importance for the planning and design of district heating systems because around 70–80% of total final energy consumption by the household sector is consumed for space heating purposes. The aim of this research is the quantification and validation of heat demand distribution within a small municipality using a newly developed Bottom-up and Top-down heat mapping method. The Bottom-up mapping method is based on building features such as surface floor area, building height, building use and the share of the heated area while the top-down mapping method relies on energy balances and population distribution densities. These mapping methods are based on a GIS analysis of heat demand with high spatial resolution grids 100 m × 100 m. Two bottom-up scenarios have been created, one of which overestimate and the other which satisfy the actual heat demands of the buildings and the results of both are compared with the top-down analysis to quantify the impact of the assumptions and input data on the final result.

MACROECONOMIC INDICATORS FOR ELECTRICAL CONSUMPTION DEMAND MODEL IN MALAYSIA

Malaysia has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 45% in year 2030 and to attain a completely carbon neutral status by year 2050. For those purposes, substantial measures and policies have been implemented geared towards green growth and sustainability, as stipulated in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Malaysia Plans commencing from 2006 until 2020. Nevertheless, it is indeed a challenge in striking to achieve these targets due to reported increment in the total final energy consumption by 30% from 2010 until 2014. Demand for electricity in Malaysia has been expected to surge between 5% and 6% within these couple of years in line with nation urbanisation and economic progression. As such, a number of macroeconomic indicators that might have influenced Malaysia’s electrical consumption had been analysed for the 1970-2016 period by estimating electricity consumption per capita demand function linked with economic growth, foreign direct investment inflows, trade liberalisation, population growth, urbanisation population growth, financial development, industrialisation, inflation, and household consumption expenditure. The analysis was conducted by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model. The estimation outcomes revealed the roles of economic progression and urbanization that led to increment in electrical consumption, whereas financial deepening and higher inflation linked to reduction. Such results enlighten significant insights for policymakers. For instance, since electricity consumption rises with urbanisation, it is essential that energy-efficient appliances are made relatively affordable and readily available for urbanites. The central bank also should play its part by lowering the lending rates so as to allow the financial institutions across the nation to offer attractive loans with lower financing cost to firms associated to renewable energy. With more companies being involved in cleaner alternative energy production, the nation is deemed to minimise its carbon emissions by decreasing its dependence upon coal to generate electricity

Towards integrated energy and environmental management of commercial buildings: The Onassis Cultural Centre (OCC) case

Buildings have a considerable environmental impact that corresponds to almost 30% of the global carbon footprint, with a prediction for future growth. To a large extent, although not limited to it, this is due to their energy consumption; in the EU this accounts for some 40% of the total final energy consumption. The EU therefore set a goal to reduce energy use by 20% by 2020, as part of the five headline targets of the European 20-20-20 Strategy. The goal was risen to 27% by 2030, as part of the new and more ambitious goals that were presented in 2018. Moreover, the European Commission has established since 2002 a common policy for sustainable buildings and low environmental impact materials, promoting energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), expressed by means of a series of directives and regulations. The legislative framework for GHG emissions is supported by a series of international standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative and the ISO 14064-65 series of standards which are fully compatible with the GHG Protocol and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Directive 2012/27/EU on Energy Efficiency is also important to mention, as it introduces obligatory Energy Audits in companies and organizations, as a major tool towards improving efficiency and promoting sustainability. Goal of the paper is to present and analyse the results of the integrated evaluation based on the energy and environmental audit of a very interesting public building, namely the Onassis Cultural Centre, in Athens, Greece. The building presented a real challenge with its daring architecture, the variety of uses it hosts and the state of the art equipment it features. Based on the audit’s outcome, the analysis the carbon footprint indicator was performed. The methodology followed will be presented in the paper, along with the opportunities we detected for improvements in the energy and environmental management, which was admittedly already at a very high level. From a scientific point it was very interesting to understand the patterns of energy use and to define the processes which contribute to more energy efficient and sustainable buildings, ensuring the low ecological footprint that is definitely part of integrated design of buildings. Finally, effective energy conservation and low carbon measures for public buildings are introduced and related to operating and production costs for buildings, making them hence more competitive.

The Green Economy and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Avoidable Thresholds and Thresholds for Complementary Policies

The study examines nexuses between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, renewable energy consumption and inequality in 39 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2004-2014. The empirical evidence is based on Quantile regressions. First, in the 25th quantile of the inequality distributions, as long as CO2 emissions metric tons per capita are kept below 4.700 (4.100), the Gini coefficient (Atkinson index) will not increase. These are avoidable CO2 emissions thresholds. Second, renewable energy consumption should be complemented with other policies to: (i) reduce the Gini coefficient when renewable energy consumption is at 50.00% of total final energy consumption and (ii) mitigate the Atkinson index when renewable energy consumption is at 62.500 % of total final energy consumption in the bottom quantiles of the Atkinson index distribution and at 50.00% of total final energy consumption in the 75th quantile of the Atkinson index distribution. These are renewable energy consumption thresholds for complementary policies. The novelty of this study in the light of extant literature is fundamentally premised on providing policy makers with avoidable thresholds of CO2 emissions as well as corresponding thresholds of renewable energy consumption for complementary policies, in the nexus between the green economy and inequality.

High performance building façades for Zero Energy Buildings in Greece: State of the art and perspectives

Pursuing high energy performance with the least environmental impact of a building, along with ensuring the well-being of the occupants, is the ultimate goal of an institutional framework that addresses energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. The building sector is responsible for 38% of the total final energy consumption in Europe and is therefore in the epicentre of the effort to achieve improvements. This is being expressed by the targets of EU policies for 2030 and 2050, which set truly ambitious goals.Part of this effort is the improvement of the building’s envelope thermal performance, along with the respective one of the HVAC systems, but also integrating those two in the best possible way. The façade is the crucial factor, as it is the interface between the building and its environment, but also between the environment and the HVAC system; it is truly the building’s skin, which is therefore much more than a simple state boundary, if we want to have truly advanced buildings. Main scope of the paper is to present the results of an in depth investigation regarding the best available technologies and the upcoming trends of intelligent building façades, to be used in Zero and Positive Energy Buildings. This cannot be done without discussing the legislative and regulatory framework that applies for the building envelope, as solutions have to comply with regulations and standards, both national and international. In this line of approach an investigation of the practices and technical approaches best suited for Greece is being made, specifying their performance, possible drawbacks and approaches that are to be applied and the implementation of which is expected to contribute to the improvement of the buildings’ performance.Furthermore, the constructional approaches and the effectiveness of both naturally and mechanically ventilated façades are discussed, along with their adaptation to the Greek building practices. The integration of ventilated façades with the building’s HVAC systems may offer advantages, especially in spring and fall when preheating the air may lead to reduced energy requirements. In the opposite direction, heat rejection may be a problem in summer, where alternative cooling techniques can provide a solution. Finally, integration of innovative design elements such as the use of different final coating materials on the façades, the use of phase-changing materials (PCMs) and the integration of photovoltaic systems are evaluated.

Seawater heat pumps in China, a spatial analysis

Fossil fuel based building space heating and cooling contribute to more than 10% total final energy consumption in China. Consequent carbon dioxide and air pollutants emissions bring about atmospheric pressure and associated respiratory diseases. Seawater heat pumps as a candidate sustainable building space heating and cooling solution can alleviate such environmental pressure since China has a long coastline and many coastal cities have the possibility for seawater heat pump implementation. However, stakeholders are still suffering from insufficient understanding of seawater heat pumps feasibility in different coastal cities of China from techno-economic, environmental and geographical perspectives. This paper proposes a systematic method to evaluate seawater heat pump potential in different locations of China considering various local spatial parameters in the source and sink side of the energy system. A key performance indicator system is introduced to quantitatively analyze the relative advantages and disadvantages of applying seawater heat pumps compared with status-quo systems. Quantitative evaluation results show that seawater heat pumps have a higher potential in north Chinese coastal cities from techno-economic point of view when compared with existing heating and cooling systems. Environmentally, seawater heat pumps have to reach a critical seasonal coefficient of performance value to guarantee its potential in carbon emissions saving. In south Chinese coastal cities, seawater heat pumps have to reach a more satisfactory system efficiency and a more competitive system cost in order to exploit its full advantages over status-quo systems from techno-economic perspectives. Environmentally, seawater heat pumps are more attractive than competing technologies in south cities. Also, north Chinese cities are geographically more feasible for seawater heat pumps applications compared with south cities.

Evaluation of Energy Efficiency Potential for the Building Sector in the Arab Region

The paper overviews the current energy demand trends in the building sector for the Arab region using reported historical energy consumption. Moreover, the paper describes the current energy efficiency policies and regulations for all the Arab countries specific to both residential and commercial buildings. Finally, the paper evaluates potential benefits for large-scale energy efficiency programs specific to new and existing building stocks within the Arab region using a bottom-up analysis approach. The analysis of the available energy consumption for all the Arab countries has shown that the Arab region presents a significant variation in energy consumption levels between its sub-regions and countries. Indeed, the Arab region includes oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia with the largest energy use per capita in the World with over 9000 kWh/person of electricity used annually in buildings. However, the same region has the least developed countries such as Sudan and Yemen with the lowest energy use per capita in the World with barely 100 kWh/person/year of electrical consumption. The review of the existing regulations has indicated that several Arab countries have not implemented any energy efficiency codes and standards for building envelope, lighting, heating and cooling equipment, and appliances. A cost-effectiveness analysis has indicated that the Arab region can incur significant benefits in upgrading the energy efficiency of its new and existing buildings especially its households. Specifically, the adoption and the enforcement of stringent energy efficiency codes for new residential and commercial buildings can result in a reduction of 12.7 TWh/year in final annual energy consumption for the Arab region. Moreover, retrofit programs targeting existing buildings can save up to 470 TWh or a third of the building sector final energy consumption per year after 2030. Combining comprehensive energy efficiency requirements for new buildings and extensive retrofit programs for existing buildings would reduce the total final energy consumption of the building sector in the Arab region by 600 TWh by 2030 and by 900 TWh by 2050 if all the energy programs start to be implemented by 2020.

A data analysis of the Chilean housing stock and the development of modelling archetypes

Chile is a South American country experiencing greater social and economic development than the majority of its neighbours and whose economy is transitioning from developing to developed status. It is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 35–45% by 2030, requiring national energy demand reduction. Chile's housing stock is responsible for 15% of its total final energy consumption and so its Government is regulating the construction of new dwellings, although it is difficult to know if this policy will succeed or lead to unintended consequences affecting energy demand, GHG emissions, and occupant health. Measuring the effects in situ is often time and cost prohibitive and so the simulation of archetypal buildings is a common method of investigation. A range of data sources, such as censuses and building permits, are used to develop archetypal Chilean houses with statistically significant representative values for design parameters related to energy demand and indoor air quality. It finds that 496 archetypes can represent 100% of the Chilean housing stock and only 90 can represent 95% of the stock. The archetypes can be used to predict and evaluate the impacts of policies on indoor air quality and the energy demand of a stock of houses, or to guide future data gathering exercises. The data analysis highlights knowledge gaps in categorical descriptors and occupant behaviours, and poor granularity of physical data. These gaps should be filled by augmenting national surveys and complimented by field work.

Tertiary building stock modeling: Area determination by fusion of different datasets

The building stock accounts for 43% of the total French final energy consumption in 2017. The French building stock mainly includes residential and tertiary buildings, which have very different consumption patterns. Today, building stock models are largely used in many countries for energy demand forecast and decision making. In this context, good knowledge of the building stock is essential for modeling. However, this type of model is lacking for the tertiary sector, as it is difficult to categorize buildings that have a wide variety of area and energy uses, different systems and complex dynamic trends. Existing stock models are mostly based on an aggregated representation of the total heated floor area of the building stock. Such a representation limits explicit studies of the factors affecting the energy demand and fails at taking into account heterogeneity. This paper exposes and discusses new methods aiming at modeling the tertiary building stock at the city scale in France. While mainly relying on open source public data, methods are designed to be applicable at any scale (from small cities to large region or even national scale).

Energy consumption of high-performance buildings: Design vs. Reality

Studying the performance of highly efficient buildings is crucial for future policy, for example to inform decision making about whether to pursue further thermal improvement of buildings (insulation) or to rather foster investments in renewable resources. For this purpose, reliable values of the energy demand of new and retrofitted buildings are needed. However, there is evidence of a significant Energy Performance Gap (EPG) in buildings, defined as the difference between measured and calculated energy consumption. The objective of this paper is therefore to quantify the EPG in high efficiency buildings in Switzerland. The EPG was studied for 56 residential buildings, including various construction standards (Minergie, Minergie-P, and Minergie-A) and building types (new and retrofitted). The Minergie indexes were used as theoretical consumption, thereby representing the total final energy consumption for all needs of the buildings. These values were compared to data based on measurements. For the buildings in the sample the analysis yields a negative EPG of -14% (i.e. the median building consumes slightly less than its standard), indicating that the most efficient buildings are more robust to the EPG. However, this finding could be partly a consequence of the small sample used and its characteristics.

Assessment of Green Investments’ Impact on Sustainable Development: Linking Gross Domestic Product Per Capita, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Renewable Energy

The paper analyses the linkages between GDP per capita, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and renewable energy (RE) in the total final energy consumption and green investments (PICE) which are measured as private investments, jobs, and gross value added related to circular economy sectors. The object of the analysis is the EU countries during the 2008-2016 period (crisis and post-crisis period). In the paper, data from the following databases was used: the Eurostat, the World Data Bank, and the European Environmental Agency. For addressing the linkages between the aforementioned indicators, the following methods were applied: panel unit root test, Pedroni panel cointegration tests, and the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) panel cointegration techniques. The findings show that FMOLS and DOLS demonstrate the same results as GHG, PICE, RE influence on GDP of the EU countries. The findings prove there is linking between gross domestic product per capita, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy in the total final energy consumption and green investments. The findings also show that green investment (PICE) could provoke the growth of GDP per capita by 6.4%, the decline of GHG by 3.08%, and the increase of renewable energy in the total final energy consumption by 5.6%.

Energetic and Exergetic Analysis of Low Global Warming Potential Refrigerants as Substitutes for R410A in Ground Source Heat Pumps

In the European Union (EU), buildings are responsible for about 40% of the total final energy consumption, and 36% of the European global CO2 emissions. The European Commission released directives to push for the enhancement of the buildings energy performance and identified, beside the retrofit of the current building stock, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems as the other main way to increase renewable energy sharing and overall building energy efficiency. For this purpose, Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) represent one of the most interesting technologies to provide energy for heating, cooling, and domestic water production in residential applications, ensuring a significant reduction (e.g., up to 44% compared with air-source heat pumps) of energy consumption and the corresponding emissions. At present, GSHPs mainly employ the refrigerant R410A as the working fluid, which has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 2087. However, following the EU Regulation No. 517/2014 on fluorinated greenhouse gases, this high GWP refrigerant will have to be substituted for residential applications in the next years. Thus, to increase the sustainability of GSHPs, it is necessary to identify short time alternative fluids with lower GWP, before finding medium-long term solutions characterized by very low GWP. This is one of the tasks of the UE project "Most Easy, Efficient, and Low-Cost Geothermal Systems for Retrofitting Civil and Historical Buildings" (acronym GEO4CIVHIC). Here, a thorough thermodynamic analysis, based on both energy and exergy analysis, will be presented to perform a comparison between different fluids as substitutes for R410A, considered as the benchmark for GSHP applications. These fluids have been selected considering their lower flammability with respect to hydrocarbons (mainly R290), that is one of the main concerns for the companies. A parametric analysis has been performed, for a reversible GSHP cycle, at various heat source and sink conditions, with the aim to identify the fluid giving the best energetic performance and to evaluate the distribution of the irreversibilities along the cycle. Considering all these factors, R454B turned out to be the most suitable fluid to use in a ground source heat pump, working at given conditions. Special attention has been paid to the compression phase and the heat transfer in evaporator and condenser.

ESTIMATION OF ENERGY INTENSITY IN INDIAN IRON AND STEEL SECTOR: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract India is the world’s third largest consumer of primary energy, which includes fossil fuels like coal, oil, etc. The total primary energy consumption in India in 2015 was 107 Mtoe. India’s total final energy consumption was estimated at 527 Mtoe of which the industrial sectors consumed about 30% (185 Mtoe) in 2013. The Iron and Steel sector is one of the most energy-intensive industries, consuming about 25% of the total industrial energy consumption. The energy consumption in Indian Iron and Steel sector is on the declining trend. It declined from 10 GCal/tcs in 1990 to 6.9 GCal/tcs in 2010–11. On average, iron & steel plants spend about 20-40% of the total manufacturing cost to meet their energy demands. In fact, energy cost is considered as a major factor in pricing of the steel. Energy Conservation Act, 2001 (ECA), and the formulation of Bureau of Energy Efficiency are important initiatives taken up by government in order to reduce energy consumption by various sectors in the Indian economy. Another important initiative is launching of first of its kind market-based mechanism, Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) mechanism in 2010 particularly targeting the energy consumption by the industrial sector of the economy. Phase-I for PAT ran from 2012–015 including eight most energy-intensive sectors under Indian Industrial sector, with Iron and Steel sector being a prominent sector. The objective of this paper is to empirically estimate the energy intensity of Indian Iron and Steel sector, also accounting for the impact of ECA and PAT Phase-I in dummy variable form. The results indicate that the decline in energy consumption in this sector until 2011 can also be attributed to Energy Conservation Act implemented in the year 2001 along with other factors. This is empirically confirmed by our results that ECA has a significant impact on reduction of energy intensity of the steel firms. PAT does not seem to have a considerable impact on energy intensity alone but in the years where both PAT and ECA are prevalent, i.e. from 2012 to 2015, there seems to be a significant impact of around 0.050 reduction in energy intensity, as accounted by different models in this paper. There is one more observation from the empirical results that profit margin intensity was found to be negatively related to energy intensity implying more profitable firms invest more in energy efficiency.

Circular economy and energy transition: A nexus focusing on the non-energy use of fuels

Given emerging concerns about climate change, low-carbon energy transition is advocated and promoted. Non-energy use of fossil fuels accounted for 8.9% of the world’s total final energy consumption in 2015. Non-energy use intensity does not show an evident reduction, while energy intensity as fuel per dollar of gross domestic product has decreased thanks to energy transition efforts such as energy efficiency promotion and renewable energy expansion. This study conducted an extensive review of the circular economy and energy transition frameworks, and found that the energy transition framework has a critical gap, so it cannot provide a foundation for investigating non-energy use. This study suggests that the energy transition discourse needs to be extended to incorporate the transition of non-energy use and the achievement of a closed loop of non-energy use, which is part of the circular economy framework. The coordinated circular economy–energy transition approach could bring in synergistic effects, such as promoting circular economy activities among industries, reducing energy demand, and attaining additional greenhouse gas mitigation potential.

Mapping temperature variation and degree-days in metropolitan areas with publicly available sensors

Buildings are nowadays responsible for as much as 32% of the total final energy consumption, constituting one of the biggest energy consumers. Usually the estimation of the energy needs for covering the heating and cooling demands of buildings are based on a low resolution average climatic dataset, which is considered as representative of a greater geographic area. Nevertheless, this practice does not account for the differences of climatic parameters frequently detected among core urban, sub-urban and rural areas which coexist in the same region and in some cases might be significant. In the current work, publicly available data collected from 15 meteorological stations scattered as evenly as possibly in the Greater Metropolitan Area of London are utilized in order to estimate energy demand differences between urban and suburban areas. The result was consistent with previous attempts found in the literature, thus proving that the existing publicly available meteorological stations can be carefully utilized for the production of fine resolution climatic datasets in order to be used for estimation of energy demands for heating and cooling through metropolitan areas. Results are more accurate than with the use of typical average climate datasets, for estimating of location specific energy consumption demand.

The effect of standardization of industries on life cycle embodied energy of residential buildings in Iran

In the present study, the effect of the laws and regulations of the Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran (ISIRI) in four industry sectors including Steel and Iron, Tile, Ceramic, Cement, and Brick on the life cycle embodied energy of buildings was investigated. Globally, 20.1% of the total world annual final energy consumption is found in the building sector consists of residential and commercial users. Energy consumption in buildings is found in different forms, including the production of primary materials, their transportation to the building site, construction, operation, renovation, maintenance, and demolition. In this research, different solutions were considered, and hybrid input-output analysis was chosen as an effective method to find primary embodied energy in buildings. The embodied energy of four high-consuming sectors in Iran was substituted with input-output data to increase the reliability of the study. The embodied energy of the building in the present case study is 10.71 GJ/m2 in 25 years of usage. Using the laws and regulations of ISIRI in 2006, which reports the standard energy use in four main industries in Iran, the embodied energy is reduced to 9.15 GJ/m2 in 25 years of usage, which shows that a significant amount of energy (1911 GJ primary energy) and greenhouse gases (141.2 kg GHGs) could be saved in the case study’s building. Further data collection in other industry sectors like aluminum, glass, and paint will change the results and increase the reliability of the research.

The relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth of Bulgaria.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzes the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth of Bulgaria for the period 1990-2016, based on annual data, by using the Toda–Yamamoto analysis and Autogressive Distrubuted Lag (ARDL) bound test. This period is characterized by the democratization of the Balkans and several crisis cycles in Bulgaria. Renewable energy consumption (REC, percentage of total final energy consumption), renewable electricity output (REO, percentage of total electricity output) and economic growth (GDP constant 2010 US$) were used. The levels or differences of the variables that are stationary were investigated using the augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF), Philips–Perron (PP) and Kwiatkowski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) unit root tests.FindingsThree different results were obtained from this study. One showed that renewable energy consumption and renewable electricity output are the causes of economic growth. Another result of this study is that economic growth and renewable electricity output are the causes of renewable energy consumption. The last result is that economic growth and renewable energy consumption are not causes of renewable electricity output. There was no long-term relationship between variables.Research limitations/implicationsThe ARDL and Toda–Yamamoto tests were used because of lack of data sets. Thus, it is estimated that there is no long-term relationship.Originality/valueThis study is an original work for Bulgaria, showing the results of the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth. In line with the results of this study, renewable energy projects related to Bulgaria can be predicted.

True power consumption labeling and mapping of the health system of the Castilla y León region in Spain by clustering techniques

The latest revisions in April 2018 of the 2010/31/UE and 2012/27/UE Directives on Energy Efficiency and Energy Savings respectively, point out the need of the development of smart energy indexes for buildings with the aim to (i) supervise the energy consumption on the building sector -that currently represents up to one third of the total final energy consumption- and (ii) lead the appropriate actions to transform the current buildings stock to nearly Zero Energy Buildings and Positive Energy Buildings. From public managed buildings, the Health System is the first energy consumer with great difference with other government administration sectors, such as Education or General Administration. Moreover, the energy bill has great impact on the sustainability of the public health care system. However, very few real data were available to characterize the energy demand on public buildings, which are usually the most intensive energy consumers, and efficiency indexes were usually obtained from simulation results. Nevertheless, thanks to the deployment of Smart Metering systems in the last years, it is possible to access to the true energy demand profiles of hundreds of these buildings.In this paper, with three years historical monthly electrical energy consumption data from the health system of the region of Castilla y León in Spain -including hospitals, outpatient facilities, clinics and other medical institutions- and the application of data mining techniques, an end-use electrical energy analysis was conducted to cluster the building housing according to the energy consumption into several energy use intensity clusters and, then, an average value and a Reference Building Energy Index for each cluster is proposed. Thus, a true energy labeling of these buildings based on their distance to the Reference Building Energy Index is done and presented in georeferenced maps.