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The use of fossil fuels in developing countries places increasing economic, health, and environmental costs on the population. In decentralized and rural communities without existing grid systems, direct solar technologies provide the basis for electricity production, for water pumping and hot water, and for heating of houses. Examples and case studies for each of these direct solar technologies are presented which may be directly applicable or potentially modified for rural development in countries such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which have ample direct solar resources. Related design involving both daylighting and passive cooling are described as part of the incorporation of passive solar heating techniques.

In the context of natural disasters and climate change, ecosystems are critical natural capital because of their ability to regulate climate and natural hazards. This chapter examines the important role of ecosystems and their services in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. It discusses the relevance of adopting ecosystem-based approaches in managing risks brought about by a changing climate.

Currently heating and cooling in buildings is responsible for over 30% of the primary energy consumption in the United Kingdom with a similar amount in China. We analyze heat pumps and district thermal energy network for efficient buildings. Their advantages are examined (i.e., flexibility in choosing heat sources, reduction of fuel consumption and increased environmental quality, enhanced community energy management, reduced costs for end users) together with their drawbacks, when they are intended as means for efficient building heating and cooling.

A literature review observed a range of operating conditions and challenges associated with the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, comparing primarily the UK’s and China’s experiences, but also acknowledging the areas of expertise of European, the United States, and Japan. It was noted that the efficiency of cooling networks is still in its infancy but heating networks could benefit from lower distribution temperatures to reduce thermal losses. Such temperatures are suitable for space heating methods provided by, for example, underfloor heating, enhanced area hydronic radiators, or fan-assisted hydronic radiators. However, to use existing higher temperature hydronic radiator systems (typically at a temperatures of >70°C) a modified heat pump was proposed, tested, and evaluated in an administrative building. The results appears to be very successful.

District heating is a proven energy-efficient mechanism for delivering space heating. They can also be adaptable for space cooling applications with either parallel heating and cooling circuits or in regions of well-defined seasons, on flow and return circuit with a defined change-over period from heating to cooling. Renewable energy sources can provide either heating or cooling through, for example, biomass boilers, photovoltaics, solar thermal, etc. However, for lower loss district heating systems, lower distribution temperatures are required. Advanced heat pumps can efficiently bridge the gap between lower temperature distribution systems and buildings with higher temperature hydronic heating systems

This chapter presents a case for district heating (and cooling). It demonstrates the benefits of reduced temperatures in district heating networks to reduce losses but also illustrates the need for temperature upgrading where building heating systems require higher temperatures. Thus, a novel heat pump was developed and successfully tested.

This chapter tests theoretically and empirically the existence of a stable relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Based on microeconomics and physics, a model has been specified and applied to annual data for twenty countries, which representing 61 percent of the world’s population in 2018, over the period 1995–2015. The data are from the International Energy Agency (2019) and econometric techniques including panel data and causality tests have been used. The results indicate that there is a causal relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In general, consumers cannot directly change emissions caused by production processes, but they can act on emissions caused by their own domestic energy consumption. Approximately three quarters of domestic energy consumption is due to heating and domestic hot water consumption. Taking into account the lower emissions and the lower economic cost of the initial investment, four potential energy systems have been selected for use in heating and domestic hot water. Their social returns have been assessed across nine of the twenty countries in the sample over a lifecycle of 25 years from 2018: France, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Iceland, Germany, United Kingdom, Morocco and the United States. Cost-benefit analysis techniques have been used for this purpose and the results indicate that the use of thermal water, where applicable, is the most socially profitable system among the proposed systems, followed by natural gas. The least socially profitable systems are those using electricity.

This chapter aims to identify new perspectives of geothermal energy investments. For this purpose, all studies in the Web of Science regarding the geothermal energy are taken into consideration. These studies are evaluated with the help of text-mining approach. In this framework, most frequently stated words, two words, and three words are identified. It is concluded that technological development with respect to the geothermal energy is an important issue in this framework. After that, it is also determined that risk is another important factor in this regard. Finally, new implications regarding the geothermal energy are also considered by the researchers. Geothermal energy has a positive contribution to solve many different problems, such as energy dependency, current account deficit problem, and carbon emission. Hence, this study generated the significant issues to improve these investments. While considering the results, it is understood that technological developments related to the geothermal energy projects should be followed effectively. In addition, an effective risk evaluation should be conducted before implementing these projects.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report revealed an important increase in the level of consensus concerning the reality of human-caused climate warming. The scientific basis for global warming has thus been sufficiently established to enable meaningful planning of appropriate policy responses to address global warming. As a result, the world's policy makers, governments, industries, energy producers/planners, and individuals from many other walks of life have increased their attention toward finding acceptable solutions to the challenge of global warming. This laudable increase in worldwide attention to this global-scale challenge has not, however, led to a heightened optimism that the required substantial reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions deemed necessary to stabilize the global climate can be achieved anytime soon. This fact is due in large part to several fundamental aspects of the climate system that interact to ensure that climate change is a phenomenon that will emerge over extensive timescales.

Although most of the warming observed during the 20th century is attributed to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, because of the high heat capacity of the world's oceans, further warming will lag added greenhouse gas concentrations by decades to centuries. Thus, today's enhanced atmospheric CO2 concentrations have already “wired in” a certain amount of future warming in the climate system, independent of human actions. Furthermore, as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase, the world's natural CO2 “sinks” will begin to saturate, diminishing their ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Future warming will also eventually cause melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which will contribute substantially to sea level rise, but only over hundreds to thousands of years. As a result, current generations have, in effect, decided to make future generations pay most of the direct and indirect costs of this major global problem. The longer the delay in reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, the greater the burden of climate change will be for future life on earth.

Collectively, these phenomena comprise a “global warming dilemma.” On the one hand, the current level of global warming to date appears to be comparatively benign, about 0.6°C. This seemingly small warming to date has thus hardly been sufficient to spur the world to pursue aggressive CO2 emissions reduction policies. On the other hand, the decision to delay global emissions reductions in the absence of a current crisis is essentially a commitment to accept large levels of climate warming and sea level rise for many centuries. This dilemma is a difficult obstacle for policy makers to overcome, although better education of policy makers regarding the long-term consequences of climate change may assist in policy development.

The policy challenge is further exacerbated by factors that lie outside the realm of science. There are a host of values conflicts that conspire to prevent meaningful preventative actions on the global scale. These values conflicts are deeply rooted in our very globally diverse lifestyles and our national, cultural, religious, political, economic, environmental, and personal belief systems. This vast diversity of values and priorities inevitably leads to equally diverse opinions on who or what should pay for preventing or experiencing climate change, how much they should pay, when, and in what form. Ultimately, the challenge to all is to determine the extent to which we will be able to contribute to limiting the magnitude of this problem so as to preserve the quality of life for many future generations of life on earth.