Understanding the influence of energy technology innovation in reducing a country's greenhouse gas emissions requires a systematic review to characterize the existing system. A comprehensive data ...review of available financing mechanisms and investments by government and industry is undertaken for the case of Canada, coupled with an organized examination of existing international, federal, and regional climate policies that advance innovation. Results indicate that investments from early research and development through to capital expenditures are heavily weighted towards fossil fuels. Though federal efforts to meet international commitments have been unsuccessful, regions implementing high carbon fuel phase-out, renewable portfolio standards, and feed-in-tariffs were found to be successful in reducing emissions. Financing for clean energy projects is readily available; however, there is no complete database available for investors to discover these opportunities. To enhance clean energy innovation in Canada and enable success in emissions reductions, we suggest that investments (from research and development to capital expenditures) and regional policies should be aligned with federal commitments, along with clear communication of available financing to attract clean energy investors. Our approach to a systematic review is broadly applicable to other regions where there is interest in understanding and improving the role of innovation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in countries with federalist political systems and large fossil fuel reserves.
Various green rating systems are established globally to evaluate the sustainability of construction projects. Their categories and criteria have been under constant updates to follow the sustainable ...trend of building development. This paper aims to develop a systematic review of the development of green rating systems. The specific objectives are: 1) discover how interest and research in green rating systems have developed; 2) identify the similarity, difference, strength and weakness of green rating systems; 3) examine whether they fully assess the projects in all aspects of sustainability. Specifically, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Assessment Method), CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency) and Green Star NZ were analysed in this paper. The results indicate that BREEAM, LEED, and CASBEE have been utilized since late the 2000s while Green Star NZ is still in its earlier stages. 70% of the research papers focusing on BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE are developed geographically in the USA, Canada, the UK, China, and Australia. Although these four rating systems were initiated in different contexts with different standards, Indoor Environment Quality, Energy, and Material are core common categories for all. Environmental concerns are the main focus in New Construction manuals while Society is emphasized in Neighbourhood Development manuals. Currently, BREEAM has been the only tool which could assess all four sustainable factors. Further in-depth research is anticipated to focus more on economic and institutional factors to improve the capability of green rating systems for sustainability assessment purposes.
•Indoor Environment Quality, Energy, and Material are the main focus in green rating systems.•The total categories, points, and mandatory credits of analysed rating schemes tend to increase and more comprehensive.•BREEAM is considered as the strongest rating system at present.•Currently, no rating scheme could assess a project in all aspects of sustainability.
Ocean tidal currents, water waves and thermal gradients are a great source of renewable energy. Ocean tidal, osmotic, wave and thermal sources have annual potentials of 800, 2,000, 8000–80,000 and ...10,000–87,600TWh, which are more than global 16,000TWh/y electricity demand. Ocean wave generators produce relatively lower output, however, four to eleven meters tidal range stations have large power generation capacities. Abundant ocean heat energy potentially harvested using ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) devices and ocean thermo-electric generators (OTEG). Tidal stations may be tidal range or current types, but a wave energy converter (WEC) may be an oscillating water column (OWC), overtopping, heaving, pitching and surging devices. Ocean thermal energy can be harnessed by open, close Rankine cycles, thermo-electric generators and osmotic power plants. Large bays like Turnagain (USA), Annapolis/Minas Passage (Canada), Seven Barrages/Pentland Firth (UK), La Rance (France), Garorim (South Korea) and Mezen/Penzhin (Russia) have huge tidal current power generation capacities. Power Potential from tidal current stations is more than WEC devices which in turn is more than osmotic, OTEC and OTEG technologies. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art of tidal, wave, OTEC and OTEG ocean energy technologies.
We investigated how professional role identity change can be accomplished in highly institutionalized contexts characterized by resiliency. We show that the collective professional role identity of ...family physicians was changed through a process of reinterpreting multiple logics and their relationships. Through our inductive analyses, we identified four mechanisms that occurred through social interactions and collectively served to rearrange the constellation of logics guiding physician role identity: (1) revealing the influence of a hidden logic; (2) reinforcing the conflict between logics; (3) reframing the meaning of a dominant logic; and (4) re-embedding the new arrangement of logics. We found that the change in physician professional role identity required significant identity work by a group of actors, but particularly by the managers who had been charged with leading the reform initiative. We contribute to the professional role identity and institutional literatures by showing how others can engage in social interactions with professionals to facilitate the reinterpretation and rearranging of institutional logics that guide collective professional role identity.
Although green building technologies (GBTs) have been advocated in the construction industry to address sustainability issues, their adoption is still plagued with barriers. The barriers that hinder ...GBTs adoption need detailed investigation. However, few studies have been conducted on the barriers to GBTs adoption in developing countries such as Ghana. This study aims to investigate the critical barriers to GBTs adoption with reference to the Ghanaian construction market. To achieve the objective, 26 barriers were identified from a comprehensive literature review, and a questionnaire survey was performed with 43 professionals with green building experience. The ranking analysis results indicated that 20 barriers were critical. The top three most critical barriers were higher costs of GBTs, lack of government incentives, and lack of financing schemes (e.g., bank loans). A comparative analysis showed that while the most critical barriers to GBTs adoption in the developing country of Ghana mostly vary from those in the developed countries of the US, Canada, and Australia, higher costs of GBTs remains a top barrier in all the countries. Furthermore, factor analysis revealed that the underlying grouped barriers for the 20 critical barriers were government-related, human-related, knowledge and information-related, market-related, and cost and risk-related barriers. This study also showed that the most dominant of the five underlying groups was government-related barriers, which highlights the government's role in promoting GBTs adoption in Ghana. This study adds to the green building literature by analyzing GBTs adoption barriers within the context of a developing country, which could help policy makers and practitioners take suitable measures to mitigate the barriers and thereby promote the GBTs adoption. Future research will investigate the interrelationships between the critical barriers and their impacts on the GBTs adoption activity.
•The most critical GBTs adoption barrier in Ghana is higher costs of GBTs.•Higher costs of GBTs is a top barrier not only in Ghana, but also in the US, Canada, and Australia.•The underlying grouped barriers are government-related, human-related, knowledge and information-related, market-related, and cost and risk-related barriers.
Since the 2010s, all levels of governments in Canada have gradually initiated social procurement as a policy tool to further their social values and political agendas. Social enterprises of various ...shapes and sizes across the country have served as partners in the execution of those agendas. Selling Social examines the experiences of these enterprises in social procurement and social purchasing. Selling Social presents the findings of a three-year Canadian research project detailing experiences of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) selling their goods and services to organizational purchasers, including governments, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Drawing on survey findings and interviews, the book explores a diverse group of social enterprises from across Canada, showcasing their successes and their challenges based on real-life examples to aid social enterprises that are considering this path. The book emphasizes the importance of including social and environmental considerations in procurement and purchasing decisions, particularly at larger scales and through public policy. In doing so, Selling Social extends the understanding of social enterprises beyond their social and economic outcomes and into the broader movement towards responsible procurement and purchasing.
Superconducting technology applications in electric machines have long been pursued due to their significant advantages of higher efficiency and power density over conventional technology. However, ...in spite of many successful technology demonstrations, commercial adoption has been slow, presumably because the threshold for value versus cost and technology risk has not yet been crossed. One likely path for disruptive superconducting technology in commercial products could be in applications where its advantages become key enablers for systems which are not practical with conventional technology. To help systems engineers assess the viability of such future solutions, we present a technology roadmap for superconducting machines. The timeline considered was ten years to attain a Technology Readiness Level of 6+, with systems demonstrated in a relevant environment. Future projections, by definition, are based on the judgment of specialists, and can be subjective. Attempts have been made to obtain input from a broad set of organizations for an inclusive opinion. This document was generated through a series of teleconferences and in-person meetings, including meetings at the 2015 IEEE PES General meeting in Denver, CO, the 2015 ECCE in Montreal, Canada, and a final workshop in April 2016 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign that brought together a broad group of technical experts spanning the industry, government and academia.
The objective of this study is to investigate the potentials of power generation and hydrogen production via solar and wind energy resources at different locations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, ...namely; Dhahran, Riyadh, Jeddah, Abha and Yanbu. These locations represent the climatic conditions variety in the Kingdom with different solar radiation and wind speed potentials. At each location, different renewable off-grid power generation systems are considered to cover a load demand of a typical house incorporating; photovoltaic (PV) array, wind turbines, converter, batteries, electrolyzer, fuel cell (FC) and hydrogen tank. Six systems are considered in hourly base simulations; PV/battery bank, wind/battery bank, PV/wind/battery bank, PV/FC, wind/FC and PV/wind/FC. The simulations have been extended to cover two global locations, namely; Toronto (Canada) and Sydney (Australia). The simulations and the optimizations studies are carried out to identify the cost effective configurations. The results show that integration of 2kW PV array, 3 wind turbines, 2kW converter and 7 batteries storage bank is the best configuration that leads to the minimum levelized cost of energy (COE) of 0.609$/kWh at Yanbu area. Replacing the battery bank by a combination of electrolyzer, fuel cell and hydrogen tank, storage system is possible; however, the cost increases due to the investment cost of the system components. Integrating PV/wind/FC in Abha area gives the minimum levelized cost of energy (COE) of 1.208$/kWh and the cost of the hydrogen production (COH) is 43.1$/kg.
To assess the North American high-latitude vegetation response to the rising temperature, we derived NDVI trend for 91.2% of the non-water, non-snow land area of Canada and Alaska using the ...peak-summer Landsat surface reflectance data of 1984–2012. Our analysis indicated that 29.4% and 2.9% of the land area of Canada and Alaska showed statistically significant positive (greening) and negative (browning) trends respectively, at significance level p<0.01, after burned forest areas were masked out. The area with greening trend dominated over that with browning trend for all land cover types. The greening occurred primarily in the tundra of western Alaska, along the north coast of Canada and in northeastern Canada; the most intensive and extensive greening occurred in Quebec and Labrador. The browning occurred mostly in the boreal forests of eastern Alaska. The Landsat-based greenness trend is broadly similar to the 8-km GIMMS AVHRR-based trend for all vegetation zones. However, for tundra, the Landsat data indicated much less extensive greening in Alaska North Slope and much more extensive greening in Quebec and Labrador, and substantially less extensive browning trend in the boreal forests that were free of fire disturbances. These differences call for further validation of the Landsat reflectance and the AVHRR NDVI datasets. Correlation study with local environmental factors, such as topography, glacial history and soil condition, will be needed to understand the heterogeneous greenness change at the Landsat scale.
•Discrepancy between Landsat 5 & 7 NDVI was corrected.•Wall-to-wall mapping of Landsat NDVI trend (1984–2012) across northern North America•Landsat data well capture the fire disturbances in boreal forests.•Landsat reveals more extensive greening in northeastern Canada compared to AVHRR.•But much less extensive greening in northern Alaska compared to AVHRR
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