Search Results (76)

The global energy transition demands solutions that balance intermittent renewable energy generation while decarbonizing heat and power sectors. Hydrogen has appeared as a versatile energy carrier, enabling sector coupling across electricity, heat, and industry. This work explores the integration of hydrogen into combined heat and power (CHP) systems, with a regional focus on Saarland, Germany. It depicts H₂-ready technologies including combustion engines, gas turbines, and fuel cells, and introduces a custom Python-based (Version 3.13) techno-economic optimization model to simulate multi-energy system operations. The analysis reveals that high hydrogen costs, electricity price volatility, and market design significantly constrain economic viability. However, Saarland’s industrial structure and cross-border infrastructure projects offer strategic opportunities for scalable hydrogen deployment. The article concludes with targeted recommendations for technology development, policy reform, and regional replication, positioning hydrogen CHP as a flexible and decarbonizing solution in energy-intensive regions. Full article

This integrative literature review synthesises five strands of recent scholarships on port city regions (PCRs): (1) their multidimensional transitions, (2) skills foresight and future competences, (3) challenges and reforms in vocational education and training (VET) systems, (4) social inclusion and equity in skills development, and (5) innovative VET methodologies in port-adjacent sectors. Drawing on the interdisciplinary academic and policy-oriented literature, this article adopts a qualitative, integrative review approach to examine how the twin green and digital transition is reshaping port city regions and their associated skills ecosystems. The review demonstrates that PCR transitions are not only technical but socio-institutional: while Onshore Power Supplies (OPSs), alternative fuels, and digital platforms are transforming operational landscapes, the success of these innovations depends critically on the adaptive capacity of workers, training systems, and governance arrangements. The article further examines emerging pedagogical approaches in port-adjacent VET, including work-based learning, micro-credentials, and immersive training methods. Taken together, the evidence converges on a central claim: the resilience and sustainability of port city regions depend on integrated skills systems that combine foresight, inclusivity, and pedagogical innovation. Without such systems, decarbonisation and digitalisation risk exacerbating social and spatial inequalities rather than fostering sustainable growth. The article concludes by outlining implications for research, policy, and practice, calling for integrative performance metrics, longitudinal evaluation, and quadruple helix collaboration to support inclusive, competitive, and sustainable port transitions. Full article

Thailand’s goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 and producing no emissions by 2065 requires their reliable renewable energy means to be expanded upon quickly. Biomass is an important resource for this. Even though there are many biomass power plants in Thailand, the further expansion of biomass energy is being held back by several problems, such as unclear rules and feedstock instability, which is worsening because of climate change. This study formulates an investor-focused Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework to rank the policy instruments that bolstered investor confidence in 2024–2025. Expert opinions were gathered through a Delphi-validated process and examined via eigenvector-based weighting and consistency checks. The findings indicate that law and regulatory policy is the most successful intervention (0.31), followed by economic incentives (0.24) and R&D support (0.18). Sub-criteria analysis reveals that regulatory clarity and the stability of feedstock supply—aggravated by climate-induced yield risks—are the predominant factors influencing investment decisions. Sensitivity analysis substantiates this ranking, indicating that fundamental regulatory reform is necessary to realize the full efficacy of financial or technological incentives. These results provide policymakers with a clear method to make decisions about how to align biomass roadmaps with the needs of the private sector. This will help emerging economies make a smooth and long-lasting transition to clean energy. Full article

Integrating renewable energy into power grids is critical for advancing low-carbon transitions. However, the inherent variability of renewables requires flexible generation resources—predominantly thermal power units—to maintain real-time grid balancing. Although these flexible generators earn revenue from electricity production, they often incur significant deficits in recovering their upfront investment and retrofitting costs. While existing research has largely focused on short-term balancing expenses, this persistent investment gap remains underexplored. This article analyzes the causes of the investment deficit in the flexible generation assets needed to support renewable integration. To more comprehensively assess system integration costs, we propose a modeling framework that quantifies the investment and construction costs incurred due to renewable volatility. Through simulation, we estimate the required flexible capacity, associated costs, and operational revenues, thereby calculating the investment gap directly attributable to renewable integration. The model feasibility is further verified via sensitivity analysis. Additionally, the study outlines a conceptual cost allocation mechanism and demonstrates how the proposed method can be extended to assess other types of grid-supporting resources. These insights contribute to improved electricity market design, support evidence-based energy policymaking, and facilitate the market-oriented reform of the power sector. Full article

A large and growing empirical literature documents that privatization, deregulation, financialization, and under-regulation of harmful industries are associated with adverse health outcomes in the United States. However, this evidence remains fragmented across sectors and rarely articulates a unifying causal framework. This paper advances the literature by integrating findings across health care, harmful-product industries, and economic and social policy to demonstrate that corporate profit maximization functions as a cross-cutting driver of health disparities and premature mortality in the United States. We synthesize evidence showing that profit-driven incentives shape insurance markets, hospital and physician practice ownership, pharmaceutical marketing, and the aggressive promotion of tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, opioids, firearms, and fossil fuels—together contributing to more than one million deaths annually. We further document how corporate influence over public policy has increased poverty, economic inequality, and discrimination, all of which are powerful social determinants of health. In contrast to sector-specific analyses, this paper presents a unified, systems-level account of how profit-first governance undermines population health. We conclude by describing how a social movement to achieve a single payer system that provides Medicare for All would not only vastly improve public health, it would be a catalyst for numerous other reforms that enhance the general wellbeing. Full article

Global energy markets have experienced persistent dispersion in real energy prices, creating structural competitiveness pressures that standard indicators often fail to capture in real time. These pressures have intensified as energy-intensive sectors face asymmetric exposure across advanced and emerging economies. This study addresses two critical gaps in international energy cost competitiveness. The first is a frequency gap: conventional indicators such as the Real Unit Energy Cost (RUEC) are typically published with delays of 2–5 years, limiting their usefulness for timely policy evaluation. Here, both RUEC and the Real Price Level Index for energy (Real PLI)—the ratio of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) for energy to that for GDP—are measured with only a 2–3-month lag for nine countries—four in Asia, four in Europe, and the U.S. The second is a competitiveness gap that calls for policy responses. Real PLIs indicate that the energy price disadvantages of Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK have widened from 1.76–2.91 times the U.S. level before the pandemic to 2.14–3.28 times by Q3 2025, with the gaps relative to China and India also widening. Once country-specific thresholds are exceeded, output in energy-intensive and trade-exposed (EITE) industries tends to contract disproportionately. These findings highlight that sustainable transitions require not only internationally differentiated burden-sharing but also structural reforms to avoid persistent widening of energy price gaps. The Real PLI framework provides a timely indicator of competitiveness and an early-warning tool, signaling when growing asymmetries may undermine policy feasibility. Policy implications include the need to monitor real energy price dispersion as a core source of competitiveness risk, to strengthen structural measures that stabilize marginal energy costs, and to design transition pathways that account for heterogeneous adjustment pressures across countries. Full article

Wind power has become a strategic cornerstone of China’s renewable-energy transition and industrial upgrading, making it essential to understand how policy interventions shape the behaviour of its industry chain. This study examines how major wind power policies issued between 2015 and 2024 transmit shocks across nine upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors. Using four contagion tests based on higher-order co-moments, combined with a policy sensitivity index, the analysis identifies distinct transmission patterns across policy types. The results show that market-mechanism reforms induce the strongest and most systemic contagion effects, reflecting their ability to align financial incentives with renewable-integration objectives. Upstream sectors—particularly equipment and key material industries—exhibit the highest responsiveness, while midstream construction and downstream operation and maintenance display more moderate and delayed adjustments. Development and construction policies generate broader but less intensive contagion, whereas industry-support measures trigger selective, sector-specific responses. These findings offer practical guidance for improving policy coordination, investment planning, and industrial upgrading within China’s wind power value chain. Future research could extend the analysis by incorporating firm-level data, longer policy cycles, and interactions with other structural shocks such as electricity-market reforms and climate-related risks. Full article

With growing global demand for sustainable decarbonization, hydrogen energy systems have emerged as a key pillar in achieving carbon neutrality. This study assesses the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction efficiency of Republic of Korea’s hydrogen ecosystem from a life-cycle perspective, focusing on production and utilization stages. Using empirical data—including the national hydrogen supply structure, fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) deployment, and hydrogen power generation records, the analysis compares hydrogen-based systems with conventional fossil fuel systems. Results show that current hydrogen production methods, mainly by-product and reforming-based hydrogen, emit an average of 6.31 kg CO₂-eq per kg H₂, providing modest GHG benefits over low-carbon fossil fuels but enabling up to a 77% reduction when replacing high-emission sources like anthracite. In the utilization phase, grey hydrogen-fueled stationary fuel cells emit more GHGs than the national grid. By contrast, FCEVs demonstrate a 58.2% GHG reduction compared to internal combustion vehicles, with regional variability. Importantly, this study omits the distribution phase (storage and transport) due to data heterogeneity and a lack of reliable datasets, which limits the comprehensiveness of the LCA. Future research should incorporate sensitivity or scenario-based analyses such as comparisons between pipeline transport and liquefied hydrogen transport to better capture distribution-phase impacts. The study concludes that the environmental benefit of hydrogen systems is highly dependent on production pathways, end-use sectors, and regional conditions. Strategic deployment of green hydrogen, regional optimization, and the explicit integration of distribution and storage in future assessments are essential to enhancing hydrogen’s contribution to national carbon neutrality goals. Full article

The motivations behind terrorism have emerged from debates on armed conflict. This article seeks to explore the membership status of the Taliban that maintained a positive social identity as an in-group to fight vigorously against the international community and seize Afghanistan in August 2021. With a range of semi-structured interviews with key security and justice stakeholders and civil society groups in Kabul from 2010 to 2016, opinions are based on efforts that engaged with Security Sector Reform (SSR) and fighting the resilience of the Taliban. It was found that the Taliban continued its fight and growth in membership and partial civic support due to its strong social identity (as an in-group) fighting an undesired, illegitimate, and corrupt state, judiciary, and police force supported by the international community. As part of social identity theory, poverty, unemployment, corruption and immorality are seen to serve a strategic and tactical purpose in aiding the socioeconomic, political and religious motives for recruitment towards the Taliban. However, after reseizing power, sanctions, a reduction in international aid, poverty and civic discontent with strict governance have resulted in other rival terrorist and resistance groups posing a threat to the Taliban, losing its positive social identity. Full article

Joint ventures (JVs) are an example of a government facilitated arrangement geared towards water allocation reform (WAR) designed to improve the lives of emerging farmers through participation in the agricultural economy in South Africa and other emerging countries around the world with segregated agricultural sectors. This paper will qualitatively analyse semi-structured, in-depth interviews with emerging farmers and key institutional actors to investigate the extent that JVs produced perceptible socio-economic benefits for emerging farmers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Socio-economic benefits are operationalised across five types of capital assets (human, natural, financial physical, social). The paper posits that an analysis of the socio-economic benefits derived from emerging farmers in JVs can be useful for informing the governance and institutional arrangements geared towards accelerating equity imperatives. The findings of the analysis, which is conducted using a sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF), reveal that factors such as level of education, formal training in agriculture, and power differentials within the partnership arrangements determine whether JVs produce tangible benefits for emerging farmers. This paper recommends the SLF be used in conjunction with concepts, tools, and modes of analysis used in other fields to address differential conditions, assets, and strategies of differentiated groups. Full article

Examples from urban infrastructure in the United States show that high-level policy reports focused on investment neglect performance improvement, as well as changes in society and technology. A study methodology using systems approaches, institutional analysis, and examples from US situations was used to probe causes and remedies of this policy shortcoming. A conceptual systems model of services and the Maslow hierarchy of needs identified essential services spanning water, energy, transit, and streets management. Drinking water services have greater clarity and were selected to assess actor roles, responsibilities, and actions. The institutional analysis and development framework was used to organize the actors, settings, norms, incentives, rules, and action arenas. Data from the drinking water sector indicated that infrastructure policy reports mix issues and obscure significant impacts on specific sectors. They assume a static view and do not consider transformations in social contracts, alternative technologies, and service delivery methods. Without policy reform, public trust in government services will diminish, but political and administrative realities constrain rational and comprehensive approaches. The drinking water social contract is unlikely to change, but partnerships can incentivize reforms like performance assessment and agency accreditation. Development of a road map for urban infrastructure policy reform will require research by task forces of leading-edge practitioners within categorical arenas like drinking water, electric power, transit, and public works. Full article

Kazakhstan, a fossil-fuel-dependent economy, faces growing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining industrial competitiveness. Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCS/CCUS) technologies offer a viable pathway for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors, particularly in power generation, metallurgy, and oil and gas processing. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the state of CCS/CCUS technologies globally and examines their applicability within Kazakhstan. The study also explores long-term CO₂ storage mechanisms and monitoring frameworks, with attention to carbon leakage risks and the importance of addressing methane emissions. A critical part of the analysis is dedicated to Kazakhstan’s Emissions Trading System, identifying its current limitations such as low carbon prices, and limited sectoral coverage, and outlining practical reforms to enhance its role in supporting CCS/CCUS and broader decarbonization efforts. The integration of CCS/CCUS with a strengthened ETS, combined with access to international climate finance instruments and voluntary carbon markets, is proposed as a key strategy for Kazakhstan’s transition to a low-carbon economy. By linking engineering innovation with targeted policy interventions, this study offers a dual-perspective contribution. It not only provides technical insights into CCS/CCUS technologies but also presents policy recommendations that are specifically tailored to Kazakhstan’s context. The findings reinforce the role of CCS/CCUS as a crucial component of national climate strategy and industrial transformation. Full article

The European Union (EU) is advancing a digital twin of its electricity grid as a flagship initiative to accelerate the dual transitions of decarbonization and digitalization. By creating a real-time virtual replica of the EU-27 power network, policymakers and industry stakeholders aim to enhance grid efficiency, resilience, and renewable energy integration. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the three critical dimensions shaping the digital twin’s development: (1) regulatory barriers, including fragmented policies, inconsistent data governance frameworks, and the need for harmonized standards and incentives across member states; (2) technological challenges, such as achieving interoperability, integrating real-time data, developing robust cybersecurity measures, and ensuring scalable infrastructure; and (3) economic opportunities, centered on potential cost savings, optimized asset management, new flexibility services, and pathways for innovation and investment. Drawing on European Commission policy documents, regulatory reports, academic studies, and industry projects like the Horizon Europe TwinEU initiative, this review highlights that significant groundwork has been laid to prototype and federate local grid twins into a cohesive continental system. However, achieving the full potential of a pan-European digital twin will require additional regulatory harmonization, more mature data-sharing protocols, and sustained financial commitment. This review concludes with an outlook on the strategic convergence of policy reforms, collaborative R&D, and targeted funding, emphasizing how institutional momentum, federated architectures, and cross-sector integration are advancing a secure, resilient, and economically viable digital twin that is envisioned as a foundational layer in the operational and planning infrastructure of Europe’s future electricity system. Full article

In this study, the systemic challenges of water governance in Guanajuato, Mexico, are examined through a political ecology framework, identifying how governance failures, power asymmetries, and socio-environmental inequalities contribute to water scarcity and mismanagement. Guanajuato, a key agricultural and industrial hub in Mexico’s semi-arid Bajío region, faces severe aquifer depletion, pollution, and institutional fragmentation, disproportionately affecting rural and marginalized communities. Using a qualitative research design, 25 semi-structured expert interviews and a case study analysis were conducted, applying thematic coding and content analysis to examine governance structures, regulatory gaps, and socio-environmental conflicts. The findings revealed that institutional fragmentation, preferential water allocation to industry, and weak enforcement mechanisms perpetuate governance failures, with community resistance and alternative governance strategies emerging as key responses. The results of this study emphasize the need for adaptive governance reforms, including measures such as integrating local knowledge, strengthening participatory decision-making, and fostering cross-sector collaboration to ensure equitable resource distribution and environmental sustainability. Guanajuato’s case offers critical insights for improving water governance in arid regions globally, demonstrating the relevance of political ecology in analyzing and addressing governance asymmetries in water management. Full article

Organizational change remains a significant challenge in developing countries, often hindered by entrenched bureaucratic cultures and resistance to reform. This study investigates the key determinants of change acceptance among public sector employees in Pakistan, focusing on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) region. Using a survey of 320 public sector workers, this research examines employee attitudes toward organizational change through a multi-conceptual framework that incorporates technical, organizational, and environmental factors. Ten influencing factors were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in AMOS. The findings reveal a strong positive relationship between nine factors—change management, IT infrastructure, reward systems, technical competency, top management support, legal frameworks, organizational culture, and HRM practices—and employees’ willingness to accept change. This study presents a robust explanatory model with high predictive power for change acceptance. It provides valuable insights into reform dynamics in developing nations and offers practical strategies to guide successful public sector change management initiatives. Full article