This study investigates the adoption patterns of Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs) in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland, focusing on the influence of various factors such as EEM ...characteristics, company characteristics, and the role of energy auditors. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a logistic regression analysis of proposed and adopted EEMs' data with the findings of a questionnaire answered by auditors active in the field. The logistic regression analysis revealed that investment cost remains a significant barrier to EEM adoption, particularly for medium consumers (MCs), and that other company-specific characteristics, such as the sector, can influence adoption patterns. These findings highlight critical factors for promoting EE in SMEs. The role of auditors is also discussed, with the suggestion that they might lack the training and the required soft skills to present EEMs as strategic investments and to influence SMEs’ decision-making.
The energy efficiency gap has been presented as a prevalent paradox in the literature as individuals and firms fail to invest money or effort in seemingly highly profitable efficiency improvements. ...This article contributes to answering which management tools promote the realization of economic energy savings. This article first provides a comparison of the barriers to energy efficiency in firms from the literature with the prescriptions of ISO standards for energy management. Second, we provide empirical evidence that such ISO-certified large Austrian firms increased implementation of energy efficiency measures by 165% compared to those firms with business-as-usual decision-making methods. These higher conservation efforts observed support the hypothesis that ISO standards are an effective instrument to overcome efficiency barriers in an economic way. The main contributing factors for this achievement are the internalization of the identification process of savings potentials and setting up a stringent decision-making and governance process, thereby increasing implementation rates of measures.
•A basic and comprehensive picture of research on occupant behavior and building energy performance is presented by systematic review of the literature.•Four critical research topics are ...identified.•Energy-saving potential of occupant behavior is discussed and estimated to be in the range of 10%−25% for residential buildings and 5%−30% for commercial buildings.•Four existing research gaps are identified and discussed.
Technology alone will not achieve building energy conservation goals, and humans and their energy-related behavior in buildings must be included in energy performance efforts. Despite many studies revolving around human behavior and building energy performance, the understanding of occupant behavior and its role in building energy performance remains vague, confusing and inconsistent. We attempt to rethink occupant behavior and its role in building energy performance by means of review. Relevant articles have been collected from Web of Science and the basic picture of research has been presented. In-depth review focuses on four critical research topics: a) the current understanding of occupant behavior, with particular focus on window opening behavior, lighting control behavior, and space heating/cooling behavior; b) methods and techniques for collecting data on behavior and building energy performance; c) quantitative modeling of occupant behavior and building energy performance; and d) evaluation of energy saving potentials of occupant behavior based on existing literature. We estimate the energy-saving potential of occupant behavior to be in the range of 10%–25% for residential buildings and 5%–30% for commercial buildings, based on findings of existing research. From our analyses, we identify four existing research gaps, namely the needs for understanding occupant behavior in a systematic framework; for stronger empirical evidence beyond individual buildings and at a larger city scale; for linking occupant behavior to socio-economic and policy variables; and for evaluating the role of occupant behavior in the effectiveness of building energy efficiency policy.
Abstract
Full pump depletion corresponds to the upper limit of the generated signal photons relative to the pump pulse; this allows the highest peak power to be produced in a unit area of ...ultraintense laser amplifiers. In practical systems based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, however, the typical pump depletion is only ~35%. Here, we report quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification (QPCPA) with a specially designed 8-cm-thick Sm:YCOB crystal that highly dissipates the idler and hence improves pump depletion. We demonstrate 56% QPCPA energy efficiency for an 810-nm signal converted from a 532-nm pump, or equivalently 85% pump depletion. As another advantage, such a record high depletion greatly suppresses the parametric superfluorescence noise in QPCPA to only ~1.5 × 10
−6
relative to the amplified signal energy. These results pave the way to beyond the ten-petawatt peak power of the currently most intense lasers.
Market-based instruments such as white certificates offer the potential to increase efficiency gains, reduce primary energy consumption and make energy systems more resilient. The purpose of this ...paper is to provide insights into the white certificate scheme through a case study analysis. In light of increasing decarbonization and energy efficiency targets, it is important to rethink the role that policy instruments play in the energy transition, including the energy efficiency obligation schemes within which white certificate schemes fall. We focus on Italy’s white certificate scheme because it is among the longest-lived and has achieved notable results. The scheme is characterized by annually increasing energy savings targets, flexibility, the opportunity to include many interventions, and the role of energy services companies. We provide evidence based on an empirical survey and fill the research gap left by the latest updates to the scheme along with an appraisal of those updates, which covers prominent scheme innovations such as its stability mechanism. Our research can serve as a baseline for policymakers in designing white certificate schemes in countries with little related previous experience and provide useful information from countries where similar schemes have been implemented to fine-tune similar market-based mechanisms to improve energy efficiency
This study investigates the energy efficiency (EE) gap, referring to private agents who are not making seemingly profitable investments to reduce energy use. We deploy a questionnaire among firms in ...The Netherlands in which we ask them about investment behavior and barriers to investing in EE. A set of 16 barriers is constructed based on the literature. We find that most firms (70%) have made EE investments in the past five years, and that the median firm has saved 10% of its energy use. The remaining profitable EE investment opportunities still leave room for another 15% of energy savings at the median firm. We find that uncertainty about future policies ranks as the leading barrier to EE investments, followed by lock-ins in current equipment, and energy price uncertainty. Especially energy-intensive firms indicate the importance of policy uncertainty. Additionally, we find that a firm’s network can be an important channel for obtaining EE investment knowledge.
•Dutch firms can profitably save 15% of energy use by investing in energy efficiency.•Despite past improvements, there is large remaining potential for energy efficiency.•Policy uncertainty is the most important barrier to energy efficiency investments.•Innovative firms see more energy-saving potential but face higher financial barriers.•Past policies have not been effective in reducing barriers.
In a Non-Orthogonal Unicast and Multicast (NOUM) transmission system, a multicast stream intended to all the receivers is superimposed in the power domain on the unicast streams. One layer of ...Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) is required at each receiver to remove the multicast stream before decoding its intended unicast stream. In this paper, we first show that a linearly-precoded 1-layer Rate-Splitting (RS) strategy at the transmitter can efficiently exploit this existing SIC receiver architecture. By splitting the unicast messages into common and private parts and encoding the common parts along with the multicast message into a super-common stream decoded by all users, the SIC is better reused for the dual purpose of separating the unicast and multicast streams as well as better managing the multi-user interference among the unicast streams. We further propose multi-layer transmission strategies based on the generalized RS and power-domain Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA). Two different objectives are studied for the design of the precoders, namely, maximizing the Weighted Sum Rate (WSR) of the unicast messages and maximizing the system Energy Efficiency (EE), both subject to Quality of Service (QoS) rate requirements of all messages and a sum power constraint. A Weighted Minimum Mean Square Error (WMMSE)-based algorithm and a Successive Convex Approximation (SCA)-based algorithm are proposed to solve the WSR and EE problems, respectively. Numerical results show that the proposed RS-assisted NOUM transmission strategies are more spectrally and energy efficient than the conventional Multi-User Linear-Precoding (MU-LP), Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA) and power-domain NOMA in a wide range of user deployments (with a diversity of channel directions, channel strengths and qualities of channel state information at the transmitter) and network loads (underloaded and overloaded regimes). It is superior for the downlink multi-antenna NOUM transmission.
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is considered as a promising technology for improving the spectral efficiency in fifth-generation systems. In this correspondence, we study the benefit of NOMA ...in enhancing energy efficiency (EE) for a multiuser downlink transmission, wherein the EE is defined as the ratio of the achievable sum rate of the users to the total power consumption. Our goal is to maximize EE subject to a minimum required data rate for each user, which leads to a nonconvex fractional programming problem. To solve it, we first establish the feasible range of the transmitting power that is able to support each user's data rate requirement. Then, we propose an EE-optimal power allocation strategy that maximizes EE. Our numerical results show that NOMA has superior EE performance in comparison with conventional orthogonal multiple access.
A method for automatic "maximum energy efficiency tracking" operation for wireless power transfer (WPT) systems is presented in this paper. Using the switched-mode converter in the receiver module to ...emulate the optimal load value, the proposed method follows the maximum energy efficiency operating points of a WPT system by searching for the minimum input power operating point for a given output power. Because the searching process is carried out on the transmitter side, the proposal does not require any wireless communication feedback from the receiver side. The control scheme has been successfully demonstrated in a two-coil system under both weak and strong magnetic coupling conditions. Experimental results are included to confirm its feasibility.
Green development is critical for China's economic transformation. Enhancing green total factor energy efficiency (hereafter GTFEE) is vital to emission reduction and to win-win industrial ...development. This study uses the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces for the period 2005–2016 to investigate the relationship between environmental regulation and China's GTFEE. The spatial Durbin model is employed to control for the possible spatial spillover effect. A dynamic threshold panel model that can effectively address the endogeneity problem and regional heterogeneity is utilized to examine the potential non-linear relationship between environmental regulation and GTFEE under different conditions of environmental decentralization. The estimation results indicate that there is a significant U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and China's GTFEE. With the further expansion of environmental decentralization, the local government's autonomous choice of pollution control is improved. The improvement of environmental decentralization can lead to negative moderating effect of environmental regulation on GTFEE. Additionally, the regression results of dynamic threshold model show that environmental decentralization can increase the negative influences of environmental regulation on GTFEE. Interestingly, the non-linear impact of environmental regulation on GTFEE is dependent on the specific type of environmental decentralization. Higher degree of environmental decentralization can lead to an increase in the restraining effect of environmental regulation on GTFEE. However, an improvement in the decentralization of environmental supervision and environmental monitoring can increase the negative influences of environmental regulation on GTFEE.
•The impact of environmental regulation on green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) is examined.•Environmental decentralization is introduced as moderating variables.•Spatial econometric methods and dynamic threshold models are used for empirical estimations.•There exists a significant U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and China's GTFEE.•Environmental decentralization increases the restraining effect of environmental regulation on GTFEE.
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