Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption presents an innovative reinterpretation of the forces that have shaped the remarkable growth of ethical consumption.
′Alan Bryman has expanded on his well-known work on Disney and Disneyization to create a fascinating, highly readable book... This is an important book about a significant social process. And, it ...manages to be fun, as well!′ - George Ritzer, author of McDonalidization and Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland.
The rationality of water consumption of regional economy is determined by the water capacity of gross regional product and is ensured by the distribution of limited water resources form the point of ...view of the economic efficiency. The study of the index of water capacity is suggested to be carried out from the point of view of the region and not the river basin as the water consumption depends on the industrial specialization of the region. The variety of factors and conditions determining the water consumption of some industries and economic spheres and also various multi level relations between them imply the necessity of the use of methods of statistical analysis. In the article it is suggested to use the factor analysis of water capacity of the gross regional product allowing to identify the latent characteristics and properties of the object under analysis. At the study of the water capacity of gross regional product of the regions of the Southern federal district the main factors are the volume of consumption of fresh and recycling water and also the value of gross regional product. The given index was studied in dynamics what allowed determining the tendencies appeared in the region in respect of the management of the water economic complex of the region. The industrial indices of water resources use in the regions of the Southern federal district were analyzed. It was found out that the most efficient management of regional water resources is carried out in the Rostov and Volgograd regions. In order to improve the water use in the given regions it is suggested to use the model of an optimal distribution of land resources for agricultural crops in dependence on the volumes of the necessary watering. For the republics of Kalmyia and Adygea which vary in low indices of the efficiency of use of water resources it is suggested to develop less water consuming industries. The conclusion is drawn that for the provision of a rational use of water resources of the region it is necessary to use the methods of factor analysis as the basis for making managerial decisions.
Liquid Consumption BARDHI, FLEURA; ECKHARDT, GIANA M.
The Journal of consumer research,
10/2017, Volume:
44, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article introduces a new dimension of consumption as liquid or solid. Liquid consumption is defined as ephemeral, access based, and dematerialized, while solid consumption is defined as ...enduring, ownership based, and material. Liquid and solid consumption are conceptualized as existing on a spectrum, with four conditions leading to consumption being liquid, solid, or a combination of the two: relevance to the self, the nature of social relationships, accessibility to mobility networks, and type of precarity experienced. Liquid consumption is needed to explain behavior within digital contexts, in access-based consumption, and in conditions of global mobility. It highlights a consumption orientation around values of flexibility, adaptability, fluidity, lightness, detachment, and speed. Implications of liquid consumption are discussed for the domains of attachment and appropriation; the importance of use value; materialism; brand relationships and communities; identity; prosumption and the prosumer; and big data, quantification of the self, and surveillance. Lastly, managing the challenges of liquid consumption and its effect on consumer welfare are explored.
Predictions of renewable energy (RE) generation and electricity load are critical to smart grid operation. However, the prediction task remains challenging due to the intermittent and chaotic ...character of RE sources, and the diverse user behavior and power consumers. This article presents a novel method for the prediction of RE generation and electricity load using improved stacked gated recurrent unit-recurrent neural network (GRU-RNN) for both univariate and multivariate scenarios. First, multiple sensitive monitoring parameters or historical electricity consumption data are selected according to the correlation analysis to form the input data. Second, a stacked GRU-RNN using a simplified GRU is constructed with improved training algorithm based on AdaGrad and adjustable momentum. The modified GRU-RNN structure and improved training method enhance training efficiency and robustness. Third, the stacked GRU-RNN is used to establish an accurate mapping between the selected variables and RE generation or electricity load due to its self-feedback connections and improved training mechanism. The proposed method is verified by using two experiments: prediction of wind power generation using multiple weather parameters and prediction of electricity load with historical energy consumption data. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods of machine learning or deep learning in achieving an accurate energy prediction for effective smart grid operation.
The fuel economy and battery charge sustaining capability are two key criteria for the energy management of a full-power fuel cell hybrid vehicle equipped with small-capacity battery pack. In order ...to achieve stable battery charge sustenance and near-optimal fuel consumption, this study proposes an optimization-oriented adaptive equivalent consumption minimization strategy (A-ECMS) based on demand power prediction achieved via an iterative predictor. The proposed strategy updates the optimal equivalent factor periodically via local optimization process according to the predicted power to converge the state of charge (SOC) and guarantee fuel economy. The simulation results show that the iterative predictor has considerable accuracy, and the correlation between the predicted data and the real data reaches up to 0.987. The proposed strategy can quickly recover the battery SOC within 40 s in a 500-s driving cycle, which is shorter than existing feedback-oriented A-ECMS. At charge sustaining stage, the proposed strategy maintains the battery SOC around the reference value with an extremely low fluctuation degree of 0.36. The equivalent fossil-fuel consumption of the proposed strategy is 8.003 L/100 km, which is lower than that of existing A-ECMS. Besides, further investigation reveals that the proposed strategy has robust performance against the disturbance of power prediction errors.
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•An optimization-oriented predictive adaptive equivalent consumption minimization strategy is developed.•A short-term demand power predictor is designed based on iterative learning framework.•A local optimization method is proposed to update near-future optimal equivalent factor periodically.•Better battery charge sustaining capability is achieved while guaranteeing fuel economy.
Energy affects the economic growth and development of a country. Renewable energy has become an important part of the world’s energy consumption. The use of fossil fuel energy contributes to global ...warming and carbon dioxide emissions, and has a detrimental effect on the environment. The long-run and short-run causality relationships between electric power consumption, renewable electricity output, renewable energy consumption, fossil fuel energy consumption, energy use, carbon dioxide emissions, and gross domestic product per capita for Pakistan over the period of 1990–2017 were investigated in this paper using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration. The augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test and the Phillips–Perron unit root test were used to check the stationarity of the variables, while the Johansen cointegration test was applied to check the robustness of the long-run relationships. The Granger causality test under the vector error correction model extracted during the short-run estimation showed a unidirectional relationship among all variables except for the relationship between gross domestic product per capita and carbon dioxide emission, which was bidirectional (feedback hypothesis). The evidence showed that in the long run, carbon dioxide emissions, electric power consumption, and renewable electricity output had a positive and significant relationship with the gross domestic product per capita, while the relationship of renewable energy consumption, energy use, and fossil fuel energy consumption with the gross domestic product per capita had a negative effect. Overall, the long-run effects of the variables were found to have a stronger effect on the gross domestic product per capita than the short-run dynamics, which indicated that the findings were heterogeneous. The evidence suggests that the government of Pakistan should take steps to enhance the use of renewable energy resources to resolve the energy crisis in the country and introduce new policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Driven by the impact of economic growth, urbanization, and national strategies for low-carbon development, the TNGC of urban households in China is growing rapidly. In this paper, the feasible ...generalized least square method is used to investigate the consumption of natural gas and the per capita natural gas consumption of urban residents in 30 provinces in China (not including central heating and the natural gas consumption of natural gas vehicles). We study the factors influencing natural gas consumption by urban residents in China and conduct scenario forecasting. The empirical results show that the impact coefficients of PNGs and household income on average natural gas consumption are − 0.895 and 0.222, respectively, while the impact coefficients of the NGP are − 0.603 and 0.346, respectively. The scenario forecast results show that the consumption of natural gas in Chinese households reached 75.469 billion cubic meters in 2025. China's natural gas season peak pressure will continue to increase. In response to this, the following three suggestions are proposed. (1) According to the price elasticity of natural gas, the Chinese government should adjust and improve the mechanism for the formation of PNGs for residents and promote the marketization of natural gas. (2) Accelerate the construction of natural gas reserves and allocate the natural gas supply according to regional differences in natural gas consumption to enhance China's natural gas peak shaving capacity. (3) Improve and optimize natural gas development plans to achieve coordinated development of natural gas supply and demand.
•We analyze the factors influencing changes in the average consumption of natural gas in households.•We analyze the factors influencing changes in the residential population who use natural gas.•The price and income will affect both the number of natural gas and the average household consumption.•We have found that China's natural gas season peaking pressure will continue to increase.
The cement sub-sector consumes approximately 12–15% of total industrial energy use. Therefore, a state of art review on the energy use and savings is necessary to identify energy wastage so that ...necessary measures could be implemented to reduce energy consumption in this sub-sector. In this paper energy use at different sections of cement industries, specific energy consumption, types of energy use, details of cement manufacturing processes, various energy savings measures were reviewed and presented. Various energy savings measures were critically analyzed considering amount of energy that can be saved along with the implementation cost. Amount of CO
2 reduction has been presented along with the payback period for different energy savings measures as well.
This study complied a comprehensive literature on the cement industries in terms of Thesis (MS and PhD), peer reviewed journals papers, conference proceedings, books, reports, websites. It has been observed that China producing major share of global cement production. Coal contribute major share of fuel used in cement industries. However, along with conventional fuels, industries are moving towards the use of alternative fuels to reduce environmental pollution. It was reported that cement industries are moving from wet process to dry process as it consume less energy compared to wet process.
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