Manufacturing (Chapter from Green Economy and Trade Report)

This chapter identifies how the transition to a green economy presents trade opportunities for the manufacturing sector in developing countries. For developing countries, facilitating green manufacturing processes can stimulate innovation and enhance international competitiveness, translating into opportunities for increasing trade and global market share. Furthermore, manufacturing green products in specific sectors can enable developing countries to tap into growing international markets for sustainable products. This chapter first analyses cross-sectoral processes through which green trade opportunities can be realised, including: * Greening supply chains, including transport; * Embedding sustainability as a core business strategy, including by investing in renewable energy in industrial applications; * Utilising energy-efficient technologies throughout business processes; * Manufacturing environmental goods and providing environmental services; * Investing in renewable energy in industrial applications; * Promoting the complete disassembly, recovery and re-use of individual product components (remanufacturing); and * Considering emerging opportunities such as 3D manufacturing and product-service systems. Second, the chapter focuses on certain specific manufacturing sectors where opportunities exist for generating gains from trade while reducing environmental impacts. These sectors include chemicals; Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and electronics; and textiles, clothing and footwear

The state of green technologies in South Africa

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Peer-to-peer and community-based markets: A comprehensive review

The advent of more proactive consumers, the so-called "prosumers", with production and storage capabilities, is empowering the consumers and bringing new opportunities and challenges to the operation of power systems in a market environment. Recently, a novel proposal for the design and operation of electricity markets has emerged: these so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity markets conceptually allow the prosumers to directly share their electrical energy and investment. Such P2P markets rely on a consumer-centric and bottom-up perspective by giving the opportunity to consumers to freely choose the way they are to source their electric energy. A community can also be formed by prosumers who want to collaborate, or in terms of operational energy management. This paper contributes with an overview of these new P2P markets that starts with the motivation, challenges, market designs moving to the potential future developments in this field, providing recommendations while considering a test-case

INTEGRATING DIGITAL ECONOMY AND GREEN ECONOMY: OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Digital economy and green economy are the most important subjects on the environmental policy agenda in the last years. The first section of the paper examine the current state of thinking on the environmental impact of digital economy, especially of ICT, while the second section looks at what is known as the green economy and the most recent initiatives in this area. Both are paradigms that have become proeminent in the separate worlds of ITC policy and sustainable development. The integration between them leads to new paradigms and creates opportunities for sustainable development, also for economic recovery in the context of recent crises.green economy, digital economy, sustainable development, green knowledge society.

Eras of electric vehicles: electric mobility on the Verge. Focus Attention Scale

Daily or casual passenger vehicles in cities have negative burden on our finite world. Transport sector has been one of the main contributors to air pollution and energy depletion. Providing alternative means of transport is a promising strategy perceived by motor manufacturers and researchers. The paper presents the battery electric vehicles-BEVs bibliography that starts with the early eras of invention up till 2015 outlook. It gives a broad overview of BEV market and its technology in a chronological classification while sheds light on the stakeholders’ focus attentions in each stage, the so called, Focus-Attention-Scale-FAS. The attention given in each era is projected and parsed in a scale graph, which varies between micro, meso, and macro-scale. BEV-system is on the verge of experiencing massive growth; however, the system entails a variety of substantial challenges. Observations show the main issues of BEVsystem that require more attention followed by the authors’ recommendations towards an emerging market

Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: literature review

Smart grids are expected to play a central role in any transition to a low-carbon energy future, and much research is currently underway on practically every area of smart grids. However, it is evident that even basic aspects such as theoretical and operational definitions, are yet to be agreed upon and be clearly defined. Some aspects (efficient management of supply, including intermittent supply, two-way communication between the producer and user of electricity, use of IT technology to respond to and manage demand, and ensuring safe and secure electricity distribution) are more commonly accepted than others (such as smart meters) in defining what comprises a smart grid. It is clear that smart grid developments enjoy political and financial support both at UK and EU levels, and from the majority of related industries. The reasons for this vary and include the hope that smart grids will facilitate the achievement of carbon reduction targets, create new employment opportunities, and reduce costs relevant to energy generation (fewer power stations) and distribution (fewer losses and better stability). However, smart grid development depends on additional factors, beyond the energy industry. These relate to issues of public acceptability of relevant technologies and associated risks (e.g. data safety, privacy, cyber security), pricing, competition, and regulation; implying the involvement of a wide range of players such as the industry, regulators and consumers. The above constitute a complex set of variables and actors, and interactions between them. In order to best explore ways of possible deployment of smart grids, the use of scenarios is most adequate, as they can incorporate several parameters and variables into a coherent storyline. Scenarios have been previously used in the context of smart grids, but have traditionally focused on factors such as economic growth or policy evolution. Important additional socio-technical aspects of smart grids emerge from the literature review in this report and therefore need to be incorporated in our scenarios. These can be grouped into four (interlinked) main categories: supply side aspects, demand side aspects, policy and regulation, and technical aspects.

Renewable energy for Latium: looking for innovative technologies in PV and solar thermal field.

European METTTES Project, financed within the FP6-2005-INNOV-7 call, aimed to test a new methodology to encourage the launch of transnational collaborations technology based among European small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and/or research organizations, focusing its attention on regional technology demand, influenced by changes in regulations and standards and fostered by local incentives. METTTES considered European directives, national, regional and local measures (i.e. incentives, projects, etc.) potentially influencing companies’ behavior. In addition, METTTES has also taken into account the IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) Directive 96/61/EC, whose purpose is to achieve an integrated pollution prevention and control from the industrial activities. At the end of these analysis, METTTES derived the technology demand not from the needs of individual enterprises, but instead from the regional system. A certain number of Regional Demand Profiles (RDPs) on particular interesting industrial fields have been collected at European level; the documentation includes a comprehensive analysis and detailed presentation of current regional technology demands and forecasts as well as foresight regarding future demands triggered by legal requirements new administrative regulations or national environmental policy and BATs analysis. Each RDP document has been edited with the collaboration of local stakeholders and administrations and by auditing involving SMEs. Results of each RDP have been high quality Technology Requests (TRs) expressed by local companies which seek technological collaboration. For Latium Region this task has been performed by CNR in the sector of PV and solar thermal technologies

FutureFarm vision

This paper defines the first version of a vision of Future Farming project and also a knowledge management system used by European farms which will be designed and developed by the Future Farm project. An important part of the vision is a definition of external drivers and their influence on farm business in future. Paper is looking on a situation in three periods: short (2013), middle (2020) and long-term (2030). Our vision expects that the farming system will continuously converge to the situation of two types of farm: an industrial farm, which will guarantee both the food safety and the food security for European citizens, and multifunctional farms focused on environment protection. The recommendation proposes an architecture based on communication of interoperable services, so called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), for easy integration of different levels and components of farm management.Farming, external drivers, future vision, knowledge management, SOA, Farm Management,