In terms of aggregate health effects, household solid fuel use is currently the most important source of indoor air pollution in developing countries. Although relatively equitable economic and rural development has contributed to reducing the use of solid fuels in some settings (e.g., in some newly industrialized Asian countries), indoor air pollution is likely to remain an important health risk in poorer developing countries in the absence of successful intervention programs. More broadly, indoor air quality issues in developing countries are dynamic phenomena that require dynamic research and policy responses. (more…)
Indoor air quality (IAQ) research deals with the presence, levels, health effects, and control of physical, chemical, and biologica ...
Important research over the past few decades has illustrated that indoor air pollution and indoor smoke from solid fuel poses i ...
Smoke from biomass and coal combustion contains a large number of pollutants with known health hazards, including particulate matte ...
Exposure to indoor air pollution from the combustion of solid fuels has been implicated, with varying degrees of evidence, as a ...
Lack of access to cleaner energy and the negative outwardnesses associated with energy consumption tend to cycle of poverty for ...
Hydropower, also known as hydroelectric power, is the use of water to produce power. Harnessing water to perform work has been going on for thousands of years. The Greeks used waterwheels for grinding wheat into flour more than 2000 years ago. Besides grinding flour, the power of the water was used to saw wood and to power textile mills and manufacturing plants. This article looks briefly at how hydropower plant began, why it is considered renewable energy technology, the parts of a hydropower plant, types of turbines and when they are used, and what research and development is occurring. (more…)
Up to around 1980, hydropower research and development (R&D) efforts focused mainly on improving turbine efficiency, reducing c ...
The water levels of most of the world’s rivers fluctuate with seasonal rains, melting snows, or droughts, and in the arid zones ...
The World Commission on Dams (WCD) was formed in 1998 by a joint initiative of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Worl ...
The winners in hydropower and other large dam projects are those who gain electricity, domestic water supplies, sanitation, dro ...
The demand for electric energy by a community varies with the time of day and with the time of year. An electric power utility ...
Transportation is another sector that has increased its relative share of primary energy use. This sector has serious concerns as it is a significant source of CO2 emissions and other airborne pollutants, and it is almost totally based on oil as its energy source. An important aspect of future changes in transportation depends on what happens to the available oil resources, production and prices. At present, 95% of all energy for transportation comes from oil. (more…)
Under both former President Bush and new President Obama, the U.S. government has vowed to reduce reliance on imported oil. The ...
Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next ...
From prehistory until the Industrial Revolution, most energy sources used by humans were localized (i.e., available within 5–10 mil ...
Do we have the resources? Rudolf Diesel developed the diesel engine which ran on biodiesel vegetable oil in the late 1800s. At the ...
One study that does address the peak-oil scenario directly is a 2005 report conducted for the National Energy Technology Labora ...
Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next 50 years. However, we expect to see significant differences between the last 50 years and the next. The past increase was stimulated by relatively “cheap” fossil fuels and increased rates of industrialization in North America, Europe, and Japan; yet while energy consumption in these countries continues to increase, additional factors are making the picture for the next 50 years more complex. These additional complicating factors include the very rapid increase fuel economy in energy use in China and India (countries representing about a third of the world’s population); the expected depletion of oil resources in the not-too-distant future; and the effect of human activities on global climate change. (more…)
The relationship of gross national product per capita to energy consumption per capita for most countries of the world correlat ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Transportation is another sector that has increased its relative share of primary energy use. This sector has serious concerns ...
The development of the ‘‘new’’ wind and solar technologies is of great importance for the future contribution of RESs to energy sup ...
To determine the effects of past climate trends on global energy consumption, the econometric equations providing the degree day el ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term projection puts forward three scenarios for the next 30 years with GDP growth rates of roughly 2.5, 1.5 and 0.5% p.a. The highest value corresponds to slightly less than the 1948 - 72 average, the central value is close to the long-run average over the last 80 years, and the lowest figure is similar to the performance during the current recession since 1973. (more…)
Following the recent completion of three nuclear power plants, there is now some 9.6 GW of nuclear capacity in the United Kingd ...
Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next ...
Most major oil and gas firms engage in both upstream (i.e., hydrocarbon exploration and production) and downstream (i.e., hydro ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterpris ...
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been ...
Following the recent completion of three nuclear power plants, there is now some 9.6 GW of nuclear capacity in the United Kingdom. The nuclear share of electrical output, which has stood at around 13% for many years, should rise to around 20% when this capacity is in full operation. A further two reactors are currently under construction which will increase the British nuclear capacity to more than 12 GW by the late 1980s, which could bring the nuclear share of electrical output to around 25%. (more…)
Geographers researching the development of nuclear power have shifted emphasis from commercialization, cost, risk, public acceptanc ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Nuclear fission and fusion Research and Development continues to account for nearly half of the total spending by IEA countries, al ...
Sir Arthur Eddington’s general address on subatomic energy at the 1930 World Power Conference in Berlin stirred the imagination of ...
For years it was out of desperation that observers have advised and viewed of American energy policy and geopolitical risks regardi ...
One of the most important aerodynamic effects on energy consumption required to keep a body moving through a fluid is the aerodynamic drag force. The drag must be overcome by the thrust of a propulsion mechanism, which in turn is consuming energy. Everything else being equal, the higher the drag, the more energy is consumed. Therefore, for energy efficiency, bodies moving through a fluid should be low drag bodies. To understand how to obtain low drag, we have to first understand the nature of drag, and what really causes it. (more…)
The next time you hear an airplane flying overhead, look up, and pause for a moment. What you see is a machine that is heavier than ...
Plate tectonics is conceptually simple. It treats Earth’s outer shell as made up of approximately 15 rigid plates, about 100 km thi ...
The most fundamental process from an energy systems standpoint is heat transfer to (or from) a working fluid. This unit operation t ...
Mixing is a process where two or more liquids or gas phase components are brought together and combined to form a uniform compositi ...
Hydraulic turbines have two main classifications: impulse and reaction. The impulse turbine generally uses the velocity of the wate ...
The next time you hear an airplane flying overhead, look up, and pause for a moment. What you see is a machine that is heavier than air, but which is somehow being sustained in the air. This is due to the airflow over the airplane. This airflow exerts a lift force which counteracts the weight of the airplane and sustains it in the air—a good thing. The airflow also exerts a aerodynamic drag force on the airplane which retards its motion—a bad thing. The drag must be counteracted by the thrust of the engine in order to keep the airplane going. The production of thrust by the engine consumes energy. Hence, the energy efficiency of the airplane is intimately related to aerodynamic drag. This is just one of many examples where the disciplines of aerodynamics and energy interact. (more…)
One of the most important aerodynamic effects on energy consumption required to keep a body moving through a fluid is the aerodynam ...
If water is put on the floor on a cleaning operation, it tends to dry rapidly after a short time. In this position, we say that ...
In contrast to electromagnetic suspension systems, electrodynamic suspension systems can provide stable suspension without a feedba ...
The comfort heating system in a building brings itself to the concept of complete heating operating unit. In order to work prop ...
Oceanic heat flow data show a clear variation with the age of the lithosphere. Values greater than 100 mW m –2 occur near the r ...
The evolution of oil prices is typically subject to a very high degree of uncertainty, given the extremely volatile nature of conditions that affect prices. Information on the future of oil prices is, however, extremely important for market operators as well as for central banks. Central banks, in particular, have a forward-looking perspective, attaching a very important role to inflation forecasts. This uncertainty tends to reinforce the importance of the relationship between oil prices and inflation, independently of estimates of the effects of a permanent change in oil prices on inflation and how to forecast oil prices. Two alternative technical assumptions on oil prices are worth mentioning: (more…)
The focus of this section is on the quantitative assessment of the impact of oil price fluctuations on inflation. For that purp ...
The volatility in oil prices since the early 1970s is a remarkable feature of energy economics. Annual fluctuations in the oil ...
In the post-World War II period, until the beginning of the 1970s, oil price fluctuations were very small. From 1949 to 1970, a ...
Most major oil and gas firms engage in both upstream (i.e., hydrocarbon exploration and production) and downstream (i.e., hydro ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterpris ...
The volatility in oil prices since the early 1970s is a remarkable feature of energy economics. Annual fluctuations in the oil price level, as measured by the absolute value of year-to-year price changes, averaged only 1% in the 1949–1970 period; from 1970 to date, these fluctuations increased dramatically, reaching an order of magnitude of 30% per year. Even in the relatively stable period from 1986 to 1997, oil prices were more volatile than other primary commodities. (more…)
In the post-World War II period, until the beginning of the 1970s, oil price fluctuations were very small. From 1949 to 1970, a ...
The focus of this section is on the quantitative assessment of the impact of oil price fluctuations on inflation. For that purp ...
The evolution of oil prices is typically subject to a very high degree of uncertainty, given the extremely volatile nature of c ...
Most major oil and gas firms engage in both upstream (i.e., hydrocarbon exploration and production) and downstream (i.e., hydro ...
There are many possible reasons for suspecting market failure in a product like gasoline. Throughout the world, the exploration ...