Toward an Efficient and Sustainable Use of Energy in Industries and Cities

Abstract

Several countries have recently realized that the present development paradigm is not sustainable from an environmental and energy point of view. The growing awareness of the population regarding environmental issues is pushing governments worldwide more and more to promote policies aiming at limiting harmful effects of human development. In particular, the rapid increase of the global temperature, especially in the polar regions, and the management of human wastes, mainly plastic in seas, are some of the main points to be addressed by these novel policies. Several actions must be implemented in order to limit such issues. Unfortunately, the recent COP 24 Conference was not successful, but hopefully an agreement will be established in 2020 at the COP 26 Conference. The effort performed by policymakers must be mandatorily supported by the scientific community. In this framework, this paper aims at showing that countries worldwide are trying to negotiate an agreement to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, in this paper all the researchers reported can provide quantitative measures of the actions to be implemented in order to address a sustainable and efficient use of energy. Here, innovations in terms of novel efficient and environmentally friendly technologies mainly based on renewable energy sources have been also investigated. The study also highlights different sectors that have been involved for this aim, such as energy conversion systems, urban areas, mobility, sustainability, water management, social aspects, etc. In this framework, specific conferences are periodically organized in order to provide a forum for discussion regarding these topics. In this area the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) conference is the most ordinary conference. The 13th Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Conference was held in Palermo, Italy in 2018. The current Special Issue of Energies, precisely dedicated to the 13th SDEWES Conference, is based on three main topics: energy policy and energy efficiency in urban areas, energy efficiency in industry and biomass and other miscellaneous energy systems.

Evaluation of the Quality of the Housing Environment Using Multi-Criteria Analysis That Includes Energy Efficiency: A Review

“…Housing environments in which solutions that aim to reduce energy consumption are not included in the design and construction stage will be detrimental to the living conditions of residents [11]. Retrofitting buildings in order to improve energy efficiency, and the use of alternative renewable energy resources, will: (i) allow the cost of heating to be reduced; (ii) allow the cost of cooling to be reduced; (iii) allow thermal comfort in buildings to be improved [12]; and (iv) benefit the national energy saving demand strategy [12][13][14]. The authors of a research study on the motivations and barriers that investors face before improving the energy efficiency of retrofitted buildings identify factors that influence this, such as low direct benefits and long payback periods [15], postponing the decision to undertake construction work [16], and high initial investment costs [17].…”

Supporting Local Authorities to Plan Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings: From Local Needs to Regional Planning

“…Public buildings represent 10% of the overall building stock, and usually consume large amounts of energy due to their specificities. The renovation of public buildings is key to achieve a carbon-free economy as foreseen by the EU Green Deal [1], but it is hindered by scarce or even lack of competencies of public authorities in energy planning, along with a lack of financial resources in most cases. There is a need to improve the competencies of public authorities, as well as to enhance the energy production systems and sustainability in rural and urban environments [2].…”

Energies and Its Worldwide Research

“…The first and second nodes [35,36] are editorial articles from a Special Issue and the third node [37] is a summary of a conference, hence no or few quotations, but many relationships all.…”

“…In [38] the most significant contributions to energy policy and energy efficiency in intelligent energy systems, poly-generation and district heating, advanced combustion techniques and fuels, biomass, and building efficiency from the 12th SDEWES Conference were summarized. In [37] a summary is given of the topics discussed at the 13th SDEWES Conference and of interest to readers of MDPI's Energies journal, such as the promotion of sustainable energy in different sectors: industries, metropolitan and urban areas, waste heat recovery, waste materials, the water-energy nexus, etc.…”

“…Energies 2020, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 13 of 41 and building efficiency from the 12th SDEWES Conference were summarized. In [37] a summary is given of the topics discussed at the 13th SDEWES Conference and of interest to readers of MDPI's Energies journal, such as the promotion of sustainable energy in different sectors: industries, metropolitan and urban areas, waste heat recovery, waste materials, the water-energy nexus, etc. With the increase in distributed generation where conventional and renewable sources are involved, optimization tools are needed to solve the problems associated with large distribution networks, including load flow, fault location, contingency analysis, system restoration after blackout, distributed generation island detection, etc.…”