What drives the change in UK household energy expenditure and associated CO2 emissions? Implication and forecast to 2020

Given the amount of direct and indirect CO2 emissions attributable to UK households, policy makers need a good understanding of the structure of household energy expenditure and the impact of both economic and non-economic factors when considering policies to reduce future emissions. To help achieve this, the Structural Time Series Model is used here to estimate UK ‘transport’ and ‘housing’ energy expenditure equations for 1964-2009. This allows for the estimation of a stochastic trend to measure the underlying energy expenditure trend and hence capture the non-trivial impact of ‘non-economic factors’ on household ‘transport’ and ‘housing’ energy expenditure; as well as the impact of the traditional ‘economic factors’ of income and price. The estimated equations are used to show that given current expectations, CO2 attributable to ‘transport’ and ‘housing’ expenditures will not fall by 29% (or 40%) in 2020 compared to 1990, and is therefore not consistent with the latest UK total CO2 reduction target. Hence, the message for policy makers is that in addition to economic incentives such as taxes, which might be needed to help restrain future energy expenditure, other policies that attempt to influence lifestyles and behaviours also need to be considered.Household energy expenditure; CO2 emissions; Structural Time Series Model

Gasoline Demand, Pricing Policy and Social Welfare in Iran

This study estimates a gasoline demand function for Iran using the structural time series model over the period 1968-2002 and uses it to estimate the change in social welfare for 2003 and 2004 of a higher gasoline price policy. It is found that short and long run demand price elasticities are inelastic, although the response is greater in the long run. Hence, social welfare is estimated to fall because of the higher gasoline price (ceteris paribus). However, allowing all variables in the model to change, social welfare is estimated to increase since the changes in the other variables more than compensate for the negative effects of the policy.

Asymmetric Price Responses and the Underlying Energy Demand Trend: Are they Substitutes or Complements? Evidence from Modelling OECD Aggregate Energy Demand

A number of energy demand studies have considered the importance of modelling Asymmetric Price Responses (APR), for example, the often-cited work of Gately and Huntington (2002). Griffin and Schulman (2005) questioned the asymmetric approach arguing that this is only capturing energy saving technical progress. Huntington (2006), however, showed that for whole economy aggregate energy and oil demand there is a role statistically for both APR and exogenous energy saving technical change. In a separate strand of the literature the idea of the Underlying Energy Demand Trend (UEDT) has been developed, see for example Hunt et al. (2003a and 2003b) and Dimitropoulos et al. (2005). They argue that it is important, in time series energy demand models, to allow for stochastic trends (or UEDTs) based upon the structural time series/dynamic regression methodology recommended by Harvey (1989, 1997). This paper attempts to bring these strands of the literature together by conducting tests for the UEDT and APR in energy demand models within both a panel context (consistent with the Huntington, 2006 approach) and the structural time series modelling framework. A set of tests across a range of specifications using time-series and panel data are therefore undertaken in order to ascertain whether energy saving technical change (or the more general UEDT) and APR are substitutes for each other when modelling energy demand or whether they are actually picking up different influences and are therefore complements. Using annual whole economy data for 17 OECD countries over the period 1960 – 2004 the results suggest that in general the UEDT and ARP are complementary estimation methodologies when modelling aggregate energy demand. It is argued therefore that energy demand modellers should not assume at the outset that one method is superior to the other. Moreover, wherever possible, a general model (be it in a time series or panel context) that includes a ‘non linear UEDT’ and APR should be initially estimated, and only if accepted by the data should symmetry and/or a more restrictive UEDT be imposed.Energy Demand, OECD, Asymmetric Price Responses, Underlying Energy Demand Trend.

Forecasting scenarios for UK household expenditure and associated GHG emissions : Outlook to 2030

Peer reviewedPreprin

Energy efficient clustering and routing optimization model for maximizing lifetime of wireless sensor network

Recently, the wide adoption of WSNs (Wireless-Sensor-Networks) is been seen for provision non-real time and real-time application services such as intelligent transportation and health care monitoring, intelligent transportation etc. Provisioning these services requires energy-efficient WSN. The clustering technique is an efficient mechanism that plays a main role in reducing the energy consumption of WSN. However, the existing model is designed considering reducing energy- consumption of the sensor-device for the homogenous network. However, it incurs energy-overhead (EO) between cluster-head (CH). Further, maximizing coverage time is not considered by the existing clustering approach considering heterogeneous networks affecting lifetime performance. In order to overcome these research challenges, this work presents an energy efficient clustering and routing optimization (EECRO) model adopting cross-layer design for heterogeneous networks. The EECRO uses channel gain information from the physical layer and TDMA based communication is adopted for communication among both intra-cluster and inter-cluster communication. Further, clustering and routing optimization are presented to bring a good trade-off among minimizing the energy of CH, enhancing coverage time and maximizing the lifetime of sensor-network (SN). The experiments are conducted to estimate the performance of EECRO over the existing model. The significant-performance is attained by EECRO over the existing model in terms of minimizing routing and communication overhead and maximizing the lifetime of WSNs

Probe for evaluating the absorbing and transport scattering properties of turbid fluids using low-cost time-of-flight technology

A probe is described that when immersed into a highly scattering fluid provides a measurement of its scattering and absorbing properties at a single optical wavelength. It uses recently available low-cost proximity sensor modules to estimate the mean flight times of photons diffusely transmitted between near-infrared sources and detectors at two different separations. The probe has been designed with a specific application for enabling the rapid and efficient production of fluids, which mimic the optical properties of biological tissues. The potential of the device is demonstrated using precalibrated solutions of intralipid, an intravenous nutrient, and absorbing dye. It is shown that a combination of time-of-flight measurements at two source–detector separations can uniquely specify the absorption coefficient and the transport scattering coefficient

Broad band X-ray spectrum of Cygnus X-1

We present the hard X-ray (20-100 keV) observations of Cygnus X-1 obtained using a large area balloon-borne Xenon filled Multi-anode Proportional Counter (XMPC) telescope. The observations were carried out during the gamma_2 state of the source and we obtain a power law photon index of 1.62 +- 0.07. To constrain the spectral shape of the source, we have analyzed the archival EXOSAT ME argon and GSPC data in the low energies (2-20 keV band) as well as the archival OSSE data in the high energies (50-500 keV). The data in different energy bands are not obtained in simultaneous observations, but they pertain to the gamma_2 state of the source. We have attempted a combined fit to the wide band data using appropriate mutual detector calibrations. A combined fit to the EXOSAT and XMPC data (2-100 keV) shows that the observed spectrum requires a low energy absorption corresponding to the Galactic interstellar absorption, a low energy excess modeled as blackbody, a narrow emission line due to iron K_alpha and a continuum. The continuum can be either modeled as a power law with a reflection bump or a Comptonisation model with an additional bump which can be modeled as the partial covering with a heavy absorber. To resolve between these two models, we have attempted combined fit to the 2-500 keV data obtained from EXOSAT, XMPC and OSSE. We find that two component Comptonisation model adequately represents the data. We explore the possible emission region that is responsible for the observed spectrum.Comment: 25 pages including 8 figures. To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysic