Renewable energy research progress in Mexico: a review

Mexico ranks 9th in the world in crude oil reserves, 4th in natural gas reserves in America and it is also highly rich in renewable energy sources (solar, wind, biomasss, hydropower and geothermal). However, the potential of this type of energy has not been fully exploited. Hydropower is the renewable energy source with the highest installed capacity within the country (11,603 MW), while geothermal power capacity (958 MW) makes Mexico to be ranked 4th in the use of this energy worldwide. Wind energy potential is concentrated in five different zones, mainly in the state of Oaxaca, and solar energy has a high potential due to Mexico's ideal location in the so called Solar Belt. Biomass energy has the highest potential (2635 to 3771 PJ/year) and has been the subject of the highest number of research publications in the country during the last 30 years (1982-2012). Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico has led research publications in hydropower, wind, solar and biomass energy and Instituto de Investigaciones Electricas in geothermal energy during this period. According to the General Law for Climate Change the country has set the goal of generating 35% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2024. This paper presents an overview of the renewable energy options available in Mexico, current status, main positive results to date and future potential. It also analyses barriers hindering improvements and proposes pertinent solutions. © 2014 The Authors

The Local Emergence and Global Diffusion of Research Technologies: An Exploration of Patterns of Network Formation

Grasping the fruits of "emerging technologies" is an objective of many government priority programs in a knowledge-based and globalizing economy. We use the publication records (in the Science Citation Index) of two emerging technologies to study the mechanisms of diffusion in the case of two innovation trajectories: small interference RNA (siRNA) and nano-crystalline solar cells (NCSC). Methods for analyzing and visualizing geographical and cognitive diffusion are specified as indicators of different dynamics. Geographical diffusion is illustrated with overlays to Google Maps; cognitive diffusion is mapped using an overlay to a map based on the ISI Subject Categories. The evolving geographical networks show both preferential attachment and small-world characteristics. The strength of preferential attachment decreases over time, while the network evolves into an oligopolistic control structure with small-world characteristics. The transition from disciplinary-oriented ("mode-1") to transfer-oriented ("mode-2") research is suggested as the crucial difference in explaining the different rates of diffusion between siRNA and NCSC

Assessment on the research trend of low-carbon energy technology investment: A bibliometric analysis

Based on databases of Science Citation Index Expanded (1981-present) and Social Sciences Citation Index (2002-present), this paper applies the bibliometric method to analyze the scientific publications of low-carbon energy technology investment. By characterizing the basic information of the publications, we found: the historical development process is clearly divided into two stages; the field of low-carbon energy technology investment has entered a stage of rapid development; the strength of developed countries is far greater than that of developing countries; the comprehensive strength of the United States ranks the first in the field, followed by UK and Denmark and only China and Turkey are developing countries among the top 15 countries; the auctorial collaboration degree in this field shows a clear upward trend, but institutional and national collaboration degrees are steady and relatively low. In addition, distributions of geography, journals and subjects, productive authors and institutions, frequently cited articles, etc. are obtained: articles in this area are mainly distributed in the USA, several countries in Europe and China; the most productive journal, author and institution are Energy Policy, Lund H from Denmark and National Technical University of Athens in Greece; Energy Fuel is the most popular subject among all the outcomes; the most frequently cited article is written by Demirbas published in Energy Policy in 2007. According to the frequency analysis of keywords, it reveals that: “renewable energy” is a kind of keyword used most frequently; “carbon capture and storage technology” is an emerging keyword which is increasingly concerned about; scholars pay widespread attention to electricity issues, especially the feed-in tariff; the policy mainly includes energy policy and climate policy; the real option theory is the most widely used theory; the existing uncertainty is summarized as the cost uncertainty and policy uncertainty. In the end, several suggestions for the future research are given

Solar Photovoltaic panels utilization to extract clean and green energy for utility application using PVsyst software: A Bibliometric Review

This paper presents a survey on educational documents in the field of solar photovoltaic (PV) utilization to extract clean and green energy. The main purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to understand the size of the available documents for the research of PV solar panel utilization using PVsyst. This detailed review was conducted in the PV research, literature considering all subjects from the Scopus database. The pattern for the specific arrangement of keywords was separated with the recovered results from the Scopus database, publication type, year of publication, distribution conveyance by nations, subject classes, association, authors, and financing organizations. It was discovered from the close examination that mainly conferences, articles, and review papers from the United States of America, India, and Spain have significant contributions in publication. The time series dataset started in 1999 till date. Major contributions are from the branches of Engineering and Energy, Material Science, Physics, and Astronomy

Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability: A Bibliometric Analysis and Future Research Directions

Background: The proliferation of research on artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainability has increased the lack of perspective on how future research can contribute to the big picture of sustainable development. This paper aims to synthesize and analyze academic research on AI and sustainability to reveal the main trends and propose a robust agenda to tackle future research on the theme. It answers four main research questions: (i) what is the current state of research on AI and sustainability? (ii) which are the most productive countries and journal outlets in this research area? (iii) how has the research in the area evolved? (iv) what are the research lacunae and, thus, the opportunity for future exploration? Method: To answer the research questions, we performed a bibliometric analysis of 3887 documents extracted from the Web of Science core collection of databases. Results: The primary finding of this research is that the motor themes pushing the research in AI for sustainability are related to energy efficiency, smart grid, and renewable energy. Yet the field suffers from eight main shortcomings: overreliance on ML; lack of study on human responses to climate crisis mitigation strategies; lack of performance measurement; lack of research about how cybersecurity risks may impact sustainable development efforts; lack of research about the adverse impact of AI development on the environment; lack of research on the impact of economics on AI for sustainability efforts; lack of discussion about policymaking and policy recommendation; and excessive focus on renewable energy. Conclusion: This paper contributes to scholarly conversations on the direction research on AI for sustainability should take by highlighting its shortcomings and proposing a robust research agenda to address them

Optimization of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems for Power Generation: A Bibliometric Review

The use of Hybrid Power Generation Systems through renewable sources has been gaining prominence, since it is a way to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, contributing to the reduction of pollutant gas emissions to the environment. Due to the higher operational complexity, the multiplicity of options and constant improvement of these units, how to optimize these systems is still a subject of present studies. Considering the attention that this topic has received from the academic community, the challenges for mapping and identifying the relevant literature, this article provides a macroscopic view of the scientific literature on the Optimization of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRES) for energy generation, through analysis bibliometric. The research was developed using the Web of Science database, obtaining a total of 439 articles between 2010 and 2020, where the results were interpreted through the VOSviewer software. The results showed that the number of related publications is gradually increasing, with India as the leading country. The University of Malaya is the institution with a higher number of registers, with 14 entries. Most publications fit into the “Energy Fuels” category, with the magazines “Renewable Sustainable Energy Reviews” and “Renewable Energy” as the most influential in terms of the number of publications, as well as the United States and China are the countries with most research collaboration. Besides, the most cited articles and the recurrence and distribution of keywords indicate the future directions of research. In short, this study contributes valuable information to researchers on the topic

Reviewing Municipal Energy System Planning in a Bibliometric Analysis: Evolution of the Research Field between 1991 and 2019

In the context of the energy transition, energy system planning is becoming increasingly relevant for decentralized systems. Motivated by the strong increase of publications on municipal energy system planning (MESP), these studies are subjected to a bibliometric analysis in this paper. The 1235 articles, which are based on the Web of Science database, are examined using the R-tool bibliometrix. The study shows that China is the most important contributor with 225 articles, followed by the USA (205) and Germany (120). Most cross-country collaborations were conducted between China and Canada, focusing mainly on uncertainties in MESP. Among the institutions, the North China Electric Power University is responsible for most articles (42). The core journals on MESP are Energy, Applied Energy, Energy Policy, Energies and Renewable Energy, which published 37% of the 1235 articles. Publications on MESP focus on renewable energies, optimization and hybrid energy systems. Furthermore, district heating seems to be a core topic in MESP and is addressed in three of the top five most cited articles. The demonstration of global research trends in MESP can support researchers in identifying the relevant issues regarding this expanding and transforming research area

Bibliometric map on corrosion in concentrating solar power plants

Concentrating solar power (CSP), also known as solar thermal electricity (STE), is increasing its deployment worldwide. One of the potential ways to decrease costs in CSP plants is the improvement of corrosion resistance between the heat transfer fluid (HTF) and storage materials, and the materials used for pipes, tanks, containers, and receivers. This paper assesses the literature on this topic (290 publications) through a bibliometric analysis, identifying the trends of the research, the topics of most interest to researchers, and literature gaps. Most documents are from Spain, Germany, and the United States of America. Results show that the most recent approaches for corrosion migration are selective coatings and the use of nanoparticles to reduce corrosiveness. The use of nitrates is changing to other salts such as chloride mixtures and potassium compounds. In addition, the techniques used to evaluate corrosion results are dominated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and electrochemical testing, but new dynamic techniques are starting to be used, representing the biggest gap that needs to be filled for the testing of components such as solar receivers.Funding This work was partially funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades de España (RTI2018-093849-B-C31-MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) and by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (RED2018-102431-T). This work is partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. Acknowledgments The authors at the University of Lleida would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia

Developing Renewable Electricity Generation in the Global Economy: Co –evolution of Renewable Energy Technological Innovation System and Global Values Chains

To meet increasing energy demand with fossil fuels causes the problems of import dependency and energy insecurity. Deployment of emerging technologies for renewable electricity generation is supposed to be an alternative for solving these problems. Using renewable sources and increasing the role of these clean sources in energy bundles are supported to decrease the amount of fossil fuels in energy production. However, energy insecurity and import dependency problems cannot be solved only by decreasing the amount of fossil fuel used. Additionally, the development of technological capabilities in emerging low carbon technologies must be motivated. For this purpose, public policies should be designed to support the development of technological capabilities in emerging renewable energy technologies (as Concentrated Solar Thermal Technologies-CST) and hence to fasten deployment and manufacture of low carbon technologies. To enhance the supporting efforts, the policy design process should be engaged to the international policy framework and global economic circumstances. Therefore, we investigated the development of technological capabilities in emerging low carbon technologies in global sustainable energy transitions. In this scope, motivations for the development of technological capabilities in emerging low carbon technologies are examined. Investigation of governance and policy-making for enabling frameworks to transfer and to diffuse low carbon and climate-resilient technologies would be the main theme of the research. For this purpose, a comparative analysis is conducted for defining Turkish and Spanish Renewable Energy Sectors. In this context, we can examine the way of strengthening Turkey's synergistic integration into European Sustainable Energy Transitions (through EU-SOLARIS), and strengthening Turkey's low carbon technologies (especially CST) research & innovation activities, industrial capacities, and markets by identifying Spanish best practices and adapting these to the unique conditions of Turkey. By using the quantitative method of bibliometric analysis and qualitative methods of interviews and comparative analysis, it is aimed to understand the current situation of the Turkish CST Sector, and then compare it with Spanish Renewable Energy Systems and Policy Frameworks. Using these two methods together for the Turkish case is the other original contribution of this study. The outputs of this research are expected to be two journal articles, one policy document and a graduate-level course design. For this purpose, I attended conferences, sent full articles and had feedback, gave seminars, engaged to network activities and prepared project proposals for these postdoctoral research. After the introduction, in second part I reported the studies in two reporting periods of six months. In section 3, I presented the overall research results of the postdoctoral research. In fourth section, I briefly mentioned the conclusions of the research and then in last part I put the outputs mentioned and described in this report