Citizen participation via different investment schemes may be a promising solution to the financing barriers inhibiting energy transition. In this regard, citizens may be approached as potential ...investors in renewables, but, to mobilize their capital, strategies need to be developed. Much like other services or products seeking to improve their market position, renewable energy investments by citizens also require dedicated efforts to acquire a strong market position. Using a large sample of Greek citizens, this study investigated whether it is possible to identify distinct and addressable citizen clusters which can enable energy developers and marketers to effectively address the preferences and needs of potential investor segments. The performance of k-means cluster analysis identified four clusters: Indifferent Investors were neither driven by economic or social factors, Enthusiastic Investors were motivated both by economic and social factors, Pro-environmental Investors were driven by the environmental benefits, and Social Investors were motivated by the social aspects of the investment. Moreover, each cluster demonstrated different levels of willingness-to-invest in renewable energy and were knowledge about renewable energy investments. It was concluded that citizens should not be approached as a homogeneous target group by marketing experts and policymakers, while novel strategies should be followed.
The present research investigates the contribution of environmental innovation to firms' competitive advantage through the case of medium and large-sized firms operating in Greece. Due to the growing ...trend of environmental innovation in Greece and a consequent increase in the research interest, this paper fills the existing gap in the relevant literature as there is not enough evidence concerning Greek firms' environmental innovation practices. To meet the research goal, a questionnaire was distributed to 892 medium and large-sized firms operating in Greece; 225 questionnaires were finally responded. The data is based on firms' self-assessment concerning environmental innovation and competitive advantage and are analyzed using both descriptive and inductive statistics, including principal components analysis and multiple linear regression. The research results show that the examined firms implement environmental innovation practices at a moderate level. The most common practices of environmental innovation are the implementation of ISO 14001 management systems and the toxic substances usage reduction. The percentage of ISO 14001 implementation is increased compared to the previous years. Furthermore, the regression analysis revealed that the components concerning environmental process innovation and environmental product innovation have a positive impact on the examined firms' competitive capability. The relationship between open innovation and environmental innovation and the contribution of open innovation dynamics are discussed as well.
Managing forests has been demonstrated to be an efficient strategy for fragmenting fuels and for reducing fire spread rates and severity. However, large-scale analyses to examine operational aspects ...of implementing different forest management scenarios to meet fire governance objectives are nonexistent for many Mediterranean countries. In this study we described an optimization framework to build forest management scenarios that leverages fire simulation, forest management, and tradeoff analyses for forest areas in Macedonia, Greece. We demonstrated the framework to evaluate five forest management priorities aimed at (1) protection of developed areas, (2) optimized commercial timber harvests, (3) protection of ecosystem services, (4) fire resilience, and (5) reducing suppression difficulty. Results revealed that by managing approximately 33,000 ha across all lands in different allocations of 100 projects, the area that accounted for 16% of the wildfire exposure to developed areas was treated while harvesting 2.5% of total wood volume. The treatments also reduced fuels on the area that are responsible for 3% of the potential fire impacts to sites with important ecosystem services, while suppression difficulty and wildfire transmission to protected areas attainment was 4.5% and 16%, respectively. We also tested the performance of multiple forest district management priorities when applying a proposed four-year fuel treatment plan that targeted achieving high levels of attainment by treating less area but strategically selected lands. Sharp management tradeoffs were observed among all management priorities, especially for harvest production compared with suppression difficulty, the protection of developed areas, and wildfire exposure to protected areas.
Predicting where the next large-scale wildfire event will occur can help fire management agencies better prepare for taking preventive actions and improving suppression efficiency. Wildfire ...simulations can be useful in estimating the spread and behavior of potential future fires by several available algorithms. The uncertainty of ignition location and weather data influencing fire propagation requires a stochastic approach integrated with fire simulations. In addition, scarcity of required spatial data in different fire-prone European regions limits the creation of fire simulation outputs. In this study we provide a framework for processing and creating spatial layers and descriptive data from open-access international and national databases for use in Monte Carlo fire simulations with the Minimum Travel Time fire spread algorithm, targeted to assess cross-boundary wildfire propagation and community exposure for a large-scale case study area (Macedonia, Greece). We simulated over 300,000 fires, each independently modelled with constant weather conditions from a randomly chosen simulation scenario derived from historical weather data. Simulations generated fire perimeters and raster estimates of annual burn probability and conditional flame length. Results were used to estimate community exposure by intersecting simulated fire perimeters with community polygons. We found potential ignitions can grow large enough to reach communities across 27% of the study area and identified the top-50 most exposed communities and the sources of their exposure. The proposed framework can guide efforts in European regions to prioritize fuel management activities in order to reduce wildfire risk.
This paper aims at examining the relationship between energy consumption deriving from renewable energy sources, and countries’ economic growth expressed as GDP per capita concerning 25 European ...countries. The used dataset involves European countries’ data for the period from 2007 to 2016. The statistical analysis is based on descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), and reveals that all variables are related; this suggests a correlation between the dependent variable of GDP and the independents of renewable energy sources (RES) and Non-RES energy consumption, gross fixed capital formation, and labor force in the long-run. Furthermore, the results show that there is a higher correlation between RES’ consumption and the economic growth of countries of higher GDP than with those of lower GDP. The obtained results are consistent with other papers reviewed in this study.
The present research examines both the relationship between green innovation and green entrepreneurship and the mediating role of firm strategies in the relationship between green entrepreneurship, ...green innovation, and competitive advantage. A total of 225 managers responsible for the environmental strategy of medium and large-sized firms operating in Greece were used as a sample for the study. To measure the research variables, a structured questionnaire was used. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inductive statistics, including principal components analysis, correlation analysis, a multivariate generalized linear model, and a structural equations model. The empirical results indicate a positive influence of green entrepreneurship in green product innovation and green process innovation. Furthermore, the mediating role of firm strategies in the relationship between green entrepreneurship, green innovation, and competitive advantage is confirmed.
This aim of this paper is to measure industrial consumer satisfaction in the natural gas sector in Greece. By using the Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) method, the paper measures ...industrial customer satisfaction based on criteria concerning the provided products and services, communication and collaboration with providers’ staff, customer service, pricing policy and website. The research results that are based on the analysis of 95 questionnaires collected during the period between June 2017 and October 2017 show that the index of the global customer has a good performance as its value is about 74.99%. Furthermore, the satisfaction criterion with the highest performance is the one concerning communication and collaboration with natural gas providers’ staff. It should be noted that the criterion concerning the provided products and services criterion is the only one with high performance and importance—meaning that it should be in the spotlight of the natural gas providers. The paper concludes that there is considerable space for improvements to be made. Customer satisfaction is of great importance for every company, as it can be highly connected with its performance. Using the results of this study, natural gas providers will have the chance to frame their future actions in order to keep their industrial customers satisfied. Taking into account both the fact that industrial customers’ share in the Greek natural gas market is about 25% and that this market has been recently liberalized, it is of vital importance for natural gas providers to have sufficient information about their industrial customers’ satisfaction.
The Greening in agro—food sector has become within the last decade a high priority issue given the 17 Sustainable targets set by OECD. More specifically, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by ...2030, intend to promote using environmental resources in close correlation with measures to reduce non-environmental human pressure on the planet as well as in agro-food sector. The present work studies the greening of agro-food sector as synopsized in emissions per capita by agro-food sector for the EU and its relation to economic growth per capita with the assistance of a BVAR framework. Our findings do not validate success in greening of agro—food sector since the emissions reduction is not accompanied by economic growth a result that rejects the hypothesis of eco efficiency. Future research could involve the construction of an index that should incorporate more variables that will reflect more accurately the greening efforts in agro—food sector.
The aim of this paper is to analyze and evaluate the use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and their contribution to citizens’ life quality. For this purpose, a survey was conducted using a sample of ...400 residents in an urban area of the Attica region in Greece. The methods of Principal Components Analysis and Logit Regression were used on a dataset containing the respondents’ views on various aspects of RES. Two statistical models were constructed for the identification of the main variables that are associated with the RES’ usage and respondents’ opinion on their contribution to life quality. The conclusions that can be drawn show that the respondents are adequately informed about some of the RES’ types while most of them use at least one of the examined types of RES. The benefits that RES offer, were the most crucial variable in determining both respondents’ perceptions on their usage and on their contribution to life quality.
Fuelwood is one of the main fuels for heating in many countries. As the price of fuelwood is relative low, comparing to oil or gas, demand for fuelwood rises over the years. A supply chain is ...considered by different nodes that are essential for some operations concerning transportation and production. Due to the sensitive nature of the forest, which is the “production plant” in the examined supply chain, certain restrictions concerning the production and distribution of fuelwood should be taken into account. A more environment oriented production model should be developed taking into consideration the sustainable management of the forests. For this purpose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is considered in modeling uncertainty for fuelwood demand. Moreover, the minimization of the overall operations cost is examined under different fuelwood demand representations using Lagrangean relaxation algorithm.
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