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Technological progress is a determining factor in the factors leading to economic and social well-being. Simultaneously, the development of a sustainable economy is based on the conservation of resources. In the energy sector, this fact can be corroborated with the reduction of energy consumption, thus increasing economic efficiency. On the one hand, improving energy efficiency contributes to increasing the quality of life, productivity, and, implicitly, the economy, but on the other hand, it leads to excess energy use – this behavioral change is known as rebound. The research estimates the rebound effect at the macroeconomic level for European countries in the period 2000–2019, referring the analysis to each country's gross domestic product (GDP) and energy consumption, as well as comparing the preaccession and postaccession periods of Romania in the EU space. The rebound effect is determined using multidimensional analysis methods, depending on the GDP of each country as well as the behavior of each in the use of energy resources in industry, agriculture, and services. Although the study results confirm the strong link between energy consumption and GDP at the level of each state, they did not show considerable changes between countries at the level of the two periods.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the effect of attitudes in promoting sustainable operations in hotels. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the interaction between the users' behaviour and the way energy is consumed in Greek hotels in a long‐term period.

In total, two scenarios are developed, using the Long Range Energy Alternative Planning software (LEAP). Each scenario exhibits different findings proposing significant, but easy to apply alterations to hotels. The first one is the Business as Usual (BaU) scenario, and it is developed based on the current trends in energy use in hotels. The second is the Policy scenario, which is developed based on the existing legislative framework, Greek and EU. Through interviews with open‐ended questions, hoteliers' responses reveal their views and attitudes in energy initiatives, along with the level of information they have on the existing energy legislation – Greek and European – to reduce energy consumption in buildings.

This research project, aims at identifying the hoteliers' views in applying energy efficiency measures in their facilities. The BaU scenario displays the current energy consumption in hotels, without policy interventions. The Policy scenario displays the effectiveness of each proposed measure in all services offered in hotels. This analysis provides recommendations in order to improve the current energy framework.

This methodology provides the development of a model that combines the existing energy measures considering also the end‐users' behaviour. It shows the areas that need to change in order to reduce energy consumption in the whole population of Greek hotels. It is a process that could be applied easily in other countries, not only in Greece.

This paper is a generic research analysis. The data collection has been selected for the first time from the sample of hotels. This type of research has not been developed previously in Greek hotels, since attitudes, energy consumption and measures have not been combined previously, in order to promote sustainable operations in hotels.

Iran as an energy‐rich country faces many challenges in the optimal utilization of its vast resources. High rates of population and economic growth, a generous subsidies program, and poor resource management have contributed to rapidly growing energy consumption and high energy intensity over the past decades. The continuing trend of rising energy consumption will bring about new challenges as it will shrink oil export revenues, restraining economic activities. This calls for a study to explore alternative scenarios for the utilization of energy resources in Iran. The purpose of this paper is to model demand for energy in Iran and develop two business‐as‐usual and efficiency scenarios for the period 2005‐2030.

The authors use a techno‐economic or end‐use approach to model energy demand in Iran for different types of energy uses and energy carriers in all sectors of the economy and forecast it under two scenarios: business as usual (BAU) and efficiency.

Iran has a huge potential for energy savings. Specifically, under the efficiency scenario, Iran will be able to reduce its energy consumption 40 percent by 2030.The energy intensity can also be reduced by about 60 percent to a level lower than the world average today.

The paper presents a comprehensive study that models the Iranian energy demand in different sectors of the economy, using data at different aggregation levels and a techno‐economic end‐use approach to illuminate the future of energy demand under alternative scenarios.

Under the dual pressure of resources and environment, many countries have focused on the role of railways in promoting low-carbon development of integrated transportation and of even the whole society. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study on methods to improve railway energy efficiency in other national railways and achievements made by China’s railways in the past practice, and then to propose ways in which in the future China’s railways could rationally select the path of improving energy efficiency regarding the needs of the nation's ever-shifting development and carry out the re-engineering for mechanism innovation in energy conservation and emission reduction process.

This paper first studies other national railways that have tried to promote the improvement of railway energy efficiency by the ways of technology, management and structural reconstruction to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Among them, the effect of structural energy conservation and emission reduction has become more prominent. It has become the main energy conservation and emission reduction measure adopted by foreign railway sectors. The practice of energy conservation and emission reduction of railways in various countries has tended to shift from a technical level to a structural one.

Key aspects in improving energy efficiency include re-optimization of energy structure, re-innovation of energy-saving technologies and optimization of transportation organization. Path selection includes continuing to promote electrified railway construction, increasing the use of new and renewable energy sources, and promoting the reform of railway transportation organizations.

This paper provides further challenges and research directions in the proposed area and has referential value for the methodologies, approaches for practice in a Chinese context. To achieve the expected goals, relevant supporting policies and measures need to be formulated, including actively guiding integrated transportation toward railway-oriented development, promoting innovation in energy-saving and emission reduction mechanisms and strengthening policy incentives, focusing on improving the energy efficiency of railways through market behavior. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to new phenomena in the railway industry for track and analysis.

The current challenges experienced by all nations promote the trade-off between the increase in economic performance and the protected environment. The investigation based on the energy economy has become an irreplaceable topic to determine the correct path for minimizing the trade-off cost. Within this scope, this study has been performed to investigate the causality nexus between the exports indicators (aggregated exports and the ICT exports) and the energy consumption (renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption of the selected five emerging countries. The Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality analysis is performed on the annual data between 2000 and 2014. As a consequence of the evidence, it is documented that there are various causality relationships between the exports and the energy consumption indicators in the light of the performed analysis at different lags. However, the role of nonrenewable energy consumption is more active in the economies of the considered countries. According to the evidence, it is recommended for the emerging countries to invest and allocate more funds to renewable energy resources to diminish the role of nonrenewable energy resources in the economy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth of Bulgaria.

This study analyzes the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth of Bulgaria for the period 1990-2016, based on annual data, by using the Toda–Yamamoto analysis and Autogressive Distrubuted Lag (ARDL) bound test. This period is characterized by the democratization of the Balkans and several crisis cycles in Bulgaria. Renewable energy consumption (REC, percentage of total final energy consumption), renewable electricity output (REO, percentage of total electricity output) and economic growth (GDP constant 2010 US$) were used. The levels or differences of the variables that are stationary were investigated using the augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF), Philips–Perron (PP) and Kwiatkowski-Philips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) unit root tests.

Three different results were obtained from this study. One showed that renewable energy consumption and renewable electricity output are the causes of economic growth. Another result of this study is that economic growth and renewable electricity output are the causes of renewable energy consumption. The last result is that economic growth and renewable energy consumption are not causes of renewable electricity output. There was no long-term relationship between variables.

The ARDL and Toda–Yamamoto tests were used because of lack of data sets. Thus, it is estimated that there is no long-term relationship.

This study is an original work for Bulgaria, showing the results of the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth. In line with the results of this study, renewable energy projects related to Bulgaria can be predicted.

The amount of energy consumption of buildings has obtained international concern so the concept of zero energy building becomes a target for building designers. There are various definitions and evaluation methods for efficient buildings. However, detailed research about the critical parameters that have a major effect through the operational time to reduce the energy consumption is not emphasized as this paper represents. The main aim of this study is to identify the effect of applicable interventions on energy consumption parameters with their sensitivity to each other to reach zero energy building. Relatedly, the cost of energy reduction is also determined.

Energy consumption parameters were defined as area lightings, space heating, space cooling, ventilation fans, pumps, auxiliary equipment and related miscellaneous equipment. The effect of each applied intervention on energy consumption was classified as high, medium, low, very low, no effect and negative effect by utilizing a sensitivity analysis. The base case's energy model is created by utilizing energy performance software such as e-Quest. Accordingly, energy performance improvement scenarios are developed by applying interventions such as lamp replacements, sensors, heat pumps and photovoltaic panels’ integration. Furthermore, sensitivity analyses of each intervention were developed for consumed energy and its cost.

Results indicated the electric consumption is more effective than gas consumption on primary energy and energy cost. Solar systems decline primary energy by 78.53%, lighting systems by 13.47% and heat pump by 5.48% in this building; therefore, integrating mentioned strategies could rise the improvement rate to 100%, in other words, zero amount of energy is using from the grid that means saving $ 5,750.39 in one year.

The study can be applied to similar buildings. It is worthwhile to investigate suggested methods in diverse buildings with different functions and climates in future works.

This study aims to investigate of energy consumption of an educational building in the Mediterranean climate to convert an existing building into a zero energy building by saving energy and renewable sources. Subsequent purposes are analyzing the effect of each strategy on energy consumption and cost.

The novelty of this study is filling gaps in sensitivity analysis of energy consumption parameters by not only identifying their effect on overall energy consumption but also identifying their effect on each other. Some interventions may have a positive effect on overall consumption while having a negative effect on each other. Identifying this critical effect in detail not only further improves the energy performance, but also may affect the decision-making of the interventions.

This research paper aims to examine the asymmetric impact of income and price on household consumption of kerosene in Cameroon.

The methodological approach consists of testing for stationarity using the augmented Dickey–Fuller and Andrews and Zivot tests, determining cointegration using nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) test approach and finally examining asymmetry using the Wald test.

Results of the stationarity tests reveal that variables are all integrated of order less than two I(2). The NARDL approach indicates that the (positive and negative) income shock and the positive price boom negatively influence consumption in the long- and short-run. The same is true for the negative price shock, but the latter remains insignificant. Furthermore, the Wald test carried out in the study confirms that the cumulative effects of the positive and negative income and price shocks are asymmetric.

The increase in the price of kerosene due to the lifting of subsidies has led to a decrease in household consumption and an unfortunate increase in the loss of tree cover in Cameroon. According to the results, this phenomenon will persist even if the price is reduced. Actions aimed at reducing its production at the expense of liquefied petroleum gas, electricity and renewable energy should be encouraged to limit the loss of vegetation cover. Thus, this study could contribute to solving the problem of deforestation and desertification in Cameroon.

Energy consumption in transportation accounted for over 29% of total final consumption (TFC) of energy and 65% of global oil usage, and it is highly connected to mobility. Mobility is essential for access to day-to-day activities such as education, leisure, healthcare, business activities, and commercial and industrial operations. This study examines the energy consumption for the transport industry, and the level of renewable energy development in some selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations. This study relied on previous publications of government, reports and articles related to the subject matter. Vehicle ownership is fast increasing, particularly in cities. Still, it begins at a relatively low level because the area is home to countries with the lowest ownership rates worldwide. In its current state, the energy sector faces significant challenges such as inadequate and poorly maintained infrastructure, dealing with increasing traffic congestion in cities, large-scale imports of used vehicles with poor emission standards that affect air quality in cities, a lack of safe and formally operated public transportation systems, and inadequate consideration for women and disabled mobility needs. Motorcycle and tricycle are dominating the rural areas, accounting for a substantial amount of this growth. Aviation is the largest non-road user of energy, and this trend is predicted to continue through 2040 as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows and urbanisation expands. This study revealed the energy consumption for the transport industry, and the level of renewable energy development in some selected SSA. Rail and navigation lag behind current global levels. The usage of biofuel and rail transport was recommended.

Using building information modelling (BIM) technology, a conventional structure in this study was converted into a green building to measure its energy usage and CO2 emissions.

Digital images of the existing building conditions were captured using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and were fed into Meshroom to generate the building’s geometry for 3D parametric model development. The model for the existing conventional building was created and converted to an energy model and exported to gbXML in Autodesk Revit for a whole building analysis which was carried out in the Green Building Studio (GBS). In the GBS, the conventional building was retrofitted into a green building to explore their energy consumption and CO2 emission.

By comparing the green building model to the conventional building model, the research found that the green building model saved 25% more energy while emitting 46.8% less CO2.

The study concluded that green building reduces energy consumption, thereby reducing the emission of CO2 into the environment. It is recommended that buildings should be simulated at the design stage to know their energy consumption and carbon emission performance before construction.

Occupant satisfaction, operation cost and environmental safety are essential for sustainable or green buildings. Green buildings increase the standard of living and enhance indoor air quality.

This investigation aided in a pool of information on how to use BIM methodology to retrofit existing conventional buildings into green buildings, showing how green buildings save the environment as compared to conventional buildings.