Editorial

Citation

Bhattacharyya, S.C. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijesm.2010.32804baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Volume 4, Issue 2

In this issue, we present six papers and a viewpoint.

Tugrul U. Daim and Ibrahim Iskin in their viewpoint ask whether we are ready for smart thermostats. As energy demand grows and consumers face supply risks and price volatility, the demand-side management becomes important. This short note presents a survey-based study to find out how consumers are prepared to accept new ideas such as smart thermostats as a demand-side management tool.

Mark J. Kaiser and Brian Snyder analyse the offshore service vessel utilisation in the US-side of Gulf of Mexico. Although service vessels used by offshore oil and gas industries contribute to economic and ecological impacts, this aspect has not received adequate attention in academic literature. Authors undertake a review of activities and relevant data to synthesise statistical information and perform a descriptive statistical analysis that is useful for more detailed analysis of economic, environmental and infrastructure-related impacts.

Julia Oberschmidt, Jutta Geldermann, Jens Ludwig and Meike Schmehl present a multi-criteria lifecycle analysis tool for energy technology assessment. The tool can be used for making decisions involving alternative and conflicting goals, as well as alternative stages of development of technologies. They apply it to a demonstration case and show that the tool works. Their result shows that renewable energies can be competitive for supplying heat and power.

Haris Doukas, Alexandros Flamos, Charikleia Karakosta, Maria Flouri and John Psarras present a web-based tool for analysing socio-economic risks of oil and gas corridors of Greece. They identify the main oil and gas corridors of Greece and apply factor analysis to determine the socio-economic impacts. The web-tool so developed can be used to analyse such issues in other contexts.

Sachi Findlater and Pierre Noël analyse the gas supply security of three Baltic states using a qualitative approach. Their paper defines the gas supply security and discusses how Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are exposed to gas supply security. They identify the level of security enjoyed by each country and discuss the possible means of improving it.

Anna Tanskanen, Tommi Raussi, Jarmo Partanen and Juha Lohjala present a cost-benefit analysis of distribution system management of distribution networks. They analyse different distribution management function and costs involved in providing them. The benefits of avoiding outages are also considered. The framework is applied to a Finnish utility to show that the framework can be applied to other utilities interested in improving their distribution system management.

Stephen Dow and Geoffrey Wood analyse the recent reform to the renewable obligations (RO) system in the UK and asks whether the revisions are going to achieve the objective of promoting higher levels of renewable electricity development in the UK. Their analysis suggests that even the reformed RO will not be sufficient to meet the targets for 2015 or 2020.

We hope you will enjoy reading these papers. We are always happy to hear from our readers about the papers.

Subhes C. Bhattacharyya, Prasanta K. Dey