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This study aims to examine the effects of policy incentives and cost on the choice and use of renewable energy in North-Central Nigeria.

The data for this study are collected from a sample of 290 respondents drawn from across 6 states in North-Central Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory. This study uses descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression to analyze the data.

The findings reveal that there is a huge potential demand for renewable energy sources (particularly solar photovoltaic) in the rural communities in Nigeria. It also indicates a positive and highly significant relationship between the level of awareness, availability and income and the use (consumption) of renewable energy sources among the rural communities. Furthermore, the cost of installation and maintenance of renewable energy, its reliability and availability are significant determinants of renewable energy choices among rural inhabitants in Nigeria.

The authors submit that inefficient policy strategies, high cost of installation and lack of awareness remain the major hindrances to the use of more efficient renewable energy sources. From a policy point of view, a viable strategy for effective use of renewable energy sources is the involvement of government, development partners and agencies for the funding of renewable energy technology in the rural sector of the country. The usage of modern renewable energy would increase if policy incentives are aimed at covering parts of the maintenance and installation cost of renewable energy users. The authors recommend that apart from creating awareness on the benefits of renewable energy, policymakers should provide a desirable policy environment for private energy firms to supply renewable energy at an affordable cost to the rural communities in Nigeria.

A majority of the rural households in Nigeria, as shown in this article, are poor and therefore use firewood as their main source of cooking energy because of the cost of renewable energy.

Despite the abundance of renewable energy sources and government effort at improving renewable energy use, more than 15 million people live without access to electricity and 54 million are without modern energy services for cooking and lightening in Nigeria. A total of 61% of these people live in rural areas. Therefore, this study is novel in providing energy policy insights for rural communities in North-Central Nigeria.

For India, with its low agricultural productivity and huge population, land acquisition has always been a serious policy challenge in the installation of land-intensive power projects. India has experienced a large number of projects getting stalled because of land conflict. Yet, there is a paucity of literature pertinent to India that tries to estimate future land requirements taking into consideration of land occupation metric.

In the present study, the dynamic land transformation and land occupation metrics of nine energy sources, both conventional and renewable, are estimated to further determine the magnitude of land requirement that India needs to prepare itself to fulfil its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) commitments. This is illustrated through two different scenarios of energy requirement growth rates, namely, conservative and advanced.

This analysis suggests that, while nuclear energy entails the lowest dynamic land transformation when land occupation metric is taken into account, waste to energy source possesses least land requirement, followed by coal-fired source. Hydro energy source has highest requirement both in terms of dynamic land transformation and land occupation. It is also seen that land requirement will be 96% and 120% more in INDC scenario than business as usual (i.e. if India continues with its current share of renewables in its energy portfolio in 2030) considering a conservative and an advanced growth rate, respectively.

Some policy recommendations are provided that may aid policymakers to better address the trade-off between clean energy and land and incorporate it into policy planning. This study has not been able to consider future technical efficiency improvement possibilities for all energy sources, which can be incorporated in the proposed framework for further insight.

This paper provides a framework for estimation of future land requirement to fulfil India’s INDC energy plans which is not available in existing literature. The authors confirm that this manuscript is an original work.

The aim of the paper is to examine the renewable energy resources for enhancing a green energy development in the face of energy crisis and climate change, and to explore the prospects for “new” renewable energy sources and the green energy initiatives taken in the Pacific Island countries (PICs).

The data were collated from a wide variety of sources including policy documents, road maps, reports, research articles on renewable and green energy sources. The methodology adopted was primarily a qualitative one based on a “content analysis”.

The findings reveal that increasing emphases have been given recently to “new” renewable and green energy sources in the Pacific Island countries as mitigation and adaptation strategies to fuel crisis and climate change. PICs have taken a wide range of green energy initiatives including “biomass”, solar, wind and other non‐traditional renewable energy sources and bio‐fuels development. Prospects for coconut, copra and palm‐oil based bio‐fuels do exist in many PICs. Opportunities for ethanol bio‐fuels also exist especially in Fiji.

Renewable and green energy sources are of practical implications to PICs. There is, however, a greater need for framing sound energy policies by the PICs.

The author has brought out clear linkages between climate change and green energy development and analyzed the importance of new renewable energy sources, especially in PICs. The paper has higher policy relevance and it is of great value in the context of sustainable energy development in PICs.

This survey covers civil, electrical and electronics, energy, environment, general, materials, mechanical, and traffic and transportation engineering. Areas such as biomedical and chemical engineering will be dealt with in future issues. Readers may find that the classifications included in this survey are not mutually exclusive but do occasionally overlap with one another. For instance, the section on environmental engineering includes a review of a book on the environmental impact of nuclear power plants, which might as easily have been part of the section on energy technology. Before we go into a discussion of data bases and indexes, I would like to note in this introductory section some recent bibliographic aids published during the period surveyed. Most engineering libraries will find them very valuable in their reference and acquisition functions. Since normal review sources will cover these books, I am merely listing them below: Malinowski, Harold Robert, Richard A. Gray and Dorothy A. Gray. Science and Engineering Literature. 2d ed., Littleton, Colorado, Libraries Unlimited, 1976. 368p. LC 76–17794 ISBN 0–87287–098–7. $13.30; Mildren, K. W., ed. Use of Engineering Literature. Woburn, Mass., Butterworths, 1976. 621p. ISBN 0–408–70714–3. $37.95. Mount, Ellis. Guide to Basic Information Sources in Engineering. New York, Wiley, Halsted Press, 1976. 196p. LC 75–43261 ISBN 0–47070–15013–0. $11.95 and Guide to European Sources of Technical Information. 4th ed., edited by Ann Pernet. Guernsey, Eng., F. Hodgson, 1976. 415p. ISBN 0–85280–161–0. $52.00.

Since the demand for energy has dramatically increased in the countries which have fast-growing population and economy, they have faced with a critical problem of how to evaluate a set of potential energy sources (i.e. nuclear, natural gas, bio, geothermal, hydro, wind and solar) and choose the ultimate energy source for their needs. On the other hand, this critical problem turns into a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) in the presence of a set of energy source alternatives and evaluation criteria. In literature, there are many MCDM methods introduced to solve for different kinds of problems. The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated approach for evaluating energy sources using fuzzy AHP and GRA, with a case for Turkey.

In this paper, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA) methods are used because of their advantages for similar problems. On the other hand, due to the fact that the conventional AHP by a nine-point scale and GRA method using a scale with crisp values can be unable to handle to capture the right judgments of a decision-maker(s), to reflect the vagueness and uncertainty on the judgments of a decision-maker, the fuzzy logic is integrated with the AHP and GRA.

The contributions of the paper to the literature are given in two dimensions as follows: it presents an integrated approach for complex decision processes with subjective data or vague information; the proposed approach, the fuzzy AHP-GRA method for energy source selection, is unique for the related problem in literature. The results of the proposed model from the case of Turkey will help practitioners and experts of how to apply it to the similar problems in the field of energy management.

In short, in this paper, an integrated approach is proposed through the fuzzy AHP and the fuzzy GRA methods. As the fuzzy AHP is used to determine the weights of evaluation criteria, the fuzzy GRA is used to rank energy source alternatives.

In addition, a case study for Turkey is presented to show the applicability of the proposed approach for potential practitioners who are authority in the field of energy in public and private sectors.

On the other hand, the proposed approach, the fuzzy AHP-GRA for energy source selection can also be an intelligent tool for public and private energy companies in Turkey, as well as others in the world.

On the other hand, in this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study contributes to the literature that the first time, they use the fuzzy alpha-cut AHP and GRA in fuzzy environment for energy source evaluation problem.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how, in the recent attempts to stimulate alternative energy sources for heating and cooling of buildings, emphasis has been put on utilisation of the ambient energy from ground source heat pump systems (GSHPs) and other renewable energy sources.

Exploitation of renewable energy sources and particularly ground heat in buildings can significantly contribute towards reducing dependency on fossil fuels. This paper highlights the potential energy saving that could be achieved through use of ground energy source. It also focuses on the optimisation and improvement of the operation conditions of the heat cycles and performances of the direct expansion (DX) GSHP.

It is concluded that the direct expansion of GSHP are extendable to more comprehensive applications combined with the ground heat exchanger in foundation piles and the seasonal thermal energy storage from solar thermal collectors.

The paper highlights the energy problem and the possible saving that can be achieved through the use of the GSHP systems and discusses the principle of the ground source energy, varieties of GSHPs, and various developments.

Shunt active power filters are used to decrease or almost eliminate non‐active currents flowing through the supply source. Numerous control methods of active filters have been proposed in many papers. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a simple but very effective method of obtaining the compensated load active current.

The method allows one to control the shunt active power filter only by monitoring energy stored in the filter. Based on the introduced generic structure of the filter the changes of filter energy are examined in order to obtain the reference current for the filter compensation action.

This presented method can be implemented to nearly all structures of active filters. It is suitable not only for the single‐phase but also for the three‐phase circuit. Such energy‐controlled filters may be built on the basis of voltage‐ and current‐source inverters as well.

This paper provides an alternative approach to address the problem of the shunt active filter control method. The paper shows that monitoring the filter's energy suffices for proper control of the filter compensation action.

In Nigeria, local fabricators of agro‐processing equipment have designed and manufactured various improvised versions of imported bread‐baking machines without due ergonomic considerations. Also, most of the processes of bread baking in Nigeria largely involve manual materials handling, which continues to represent a major loss source in the work place. The manual operations besides being uncomfortable are characterized by low output and unhygienic products. A study was therefore conducted in three southwestern states of Nigeria with the purpose of evaluating the energy requirements and man‐machine relationships in bread‐baking operations.

The study, which lasted over one year, involved the use of three fuel sources namely, firewood, electricity and cooking gas during bread baking operations. Questionnaire and physical measurements were employed for data collection from 50 bakeries randomly selected within the study area. The data points include the environmental and body temperatures, anthropometrical data, bio data, injury data, metabolic and production measurements.

The results of the study revealed that bread‐baking with wood as energy source required the highest energy (6.15 kJ/min) compared with 3.37 kJ/min and 1.52 kJ/min obtained with gas and electricity as sources of energy, respectively. The cost of energy per kg of baked bread was 7.58 with cooking gas followed by 6.05 for electricity and 5.05 for wood in that order. The average baking rate (BR) using firewood, gas and electricity as energy sources were, respectively, 11.92, 17.97 and 20.58 kg/h. Analysis of metabolic data showed moderate (not to a lethal level) increase in the subjects' body temperatures, blood pressures and heart rates after bread‐baking operations.

The study suggests that bread‐baking operations could be categorized as a light grade work and that the use of electricity as energy source is the most appropriate in terms of bread‐BR and unit energy requirement.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most appropriate multidisciplinary data sources related with energy optimization decision support as well as the related methodologies, tools and techniques for data capturing and processing for each of them.

A review is conducted on the state-of-play of decision support systems for energy optimization, focussing on the municipal sector, followed by an identification of the most appropriate multidisciplinary data sources related with energy optimization decision support. An innovative methodology is outlined to integrate semantically modeled data from multiple sources, to assist city authorities in energy management.

City authorities need to lead relevant actions toward energy-efficient neighborhoods. Although there are more and more energy and other related data available at the city level, there are no established methods and tools integrating and analyzing them in a smart way, with the purpose to support the decision-making process on energy use optimization.

A novel multidimensional approach is proposed, using semantic technologies to integrate data from multiple sources, to assist city authorities to produce short-term energy plans in an integrated, transparent and comprehensive way.

The challenges and factors of household adoption and the use of alternative energy sources have been a point of discussion among researchers. The purpose of this study is to apply a variant of the unified theory of adoption and use of technology (i.e. UTAUT 2) to explore the effect of various constructs that influence technology adoption on the consumers’ intention to adopt (and use) solar power generators (SPG) at the household level and the subsequent switching behavior.

Based on survey data collected from six cities in India (n = 1,246), factor analysis and structural equation modeling are applied for data analysis and testing the study hypotheses.

The results of the structural equation model found UTAUT constructs performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and hedonic to positively affect behavioral intentions to adopt SPG. However, facilitating conditions and perceived value was not found to affect behavioral intentions to adopt SPG. Behavioral intentions to adopt SPG was found to positively influence the switching behavior.

The present study augments the domain of alternative energy usage behavior by applying the UTAUT 2 in the adoption of alternative energy sources (namely, solar) and subsequent switching behavior from traditional sources at the household level.

The findings from the present study will guide the marketers and policymakers on the consumer attitudinal and behavioral aspects of solar energy usage at the household level and subsequent switching behavior.

The present study is novel as it moves beyond household-level behavioral intention to use solar energy and includes the switching behavior to shift to solar power from traditional energy sources.