Recently, European countries agreed on a new 2030-pact establishing challenging levels for a set of climate and energy indexes in order to achieve a more competitive, safe and sustainable energy system. In order to evaluate current sustainability performances of European countries from the environmental and energetic perspectives, this research proposes a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) that, starting from both Eurostat data and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), allows a direct comparison of nations. To this aim, multiple indexes are taken into account (e.g. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Government expenditures for environmental protection, Recycled and reused waste from electric and electronic equipments (WEEEs), Recycled and reused waste from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), Recycled materials from Municipal Solid Wastes (MSWs), Share of renewable energy (RE) in electricity, Share of RE in transport, Share of RE in heating and cooling and Primary energy consumption). This assessment model provides a sustainability value for each European country and the related ranking with the European average. Results show as, even nowadays, twelve out of twentyeight European countries have a value greater than the European average in 2013. Top four nations (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Austria) have high indexes of sustainability and Sweden is the best country from both the environmental and energetic perspectives.

No abstract

No abstract

There are various types of renewable energy such as wind, tidal, solar, hydro, geothermal heat, as well as biomass or biogas. One renewable energy resource that has good potential in Malaysia is biomass, which is harvested from agricultural residue. Apart from hydroelectric generators which use water to run, solar energy from sunlight, or wind turbines, which are more popular worldwide. The biomass energy is the most practical way to produce energy because Malaysia has an abundance of natural resources. Malaysia's governmental energy policy encourages the palm oil industry to be achieving zero waste in palm oil industry and sustainable palm oil residue as biomass energy. Thus, this research project will focus on the potential of biomass energy that can be gained from the biggest producer of biomass in Malaysia -the palm oil industry. Palm oil grows all around Malaysia since the climate is very suitable. As the number of palm oil mills is increasing, so does the biomass resource for green energy. From the analysis data we can define palm oil mill (POM) production as well as potential types of fuel, and the improvements for POM milling process. This research will define the potentials of palm biomass in becoming a green energy producer.

No abstract