Barriers to the investment in the Concentrated Solar Power sector in Morocco: A foresight approach using the Cross Impact Analysis for a large number of events

The Scenario Analysis methods have often been used by policy makers as an instrument to manage uncertainty and to support the shaping of long-term economy policies. In this research, we apply Scenario Analysis in order to identify the barriers affecting the decision to invest in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) sector in Morocco. Our results aim at facilitating the process of defining different paths in strategic political and policy actions. Using data from a survey on a panel of experts, the Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) and the Cross Impact Matrix System (SMIC) techniques are applied. The advantage of these techniques is that they allow including in the analysis the interlinkages between the events that will define the future scenarios. However, their limitation is that the number of events analyzed cannot be too high since the information collected from the experts increases exponentially according to the number of events introduced. We thus expand our analysis with a new methodological approach, combining the use of prospective and statistics techniques. This approach allows addressing the mentioned limitation and applying these techniques, initially restricted to 6 events in its common application, to a large number of events. The results show that uncertainty and informality would be key factors in promoting the arrival of companies in this sector. Additionally, regarding companies that already have a presence in Morocco’s renewable energy sector, an increase in activity would be achieved through improvements in the easing of financial and legal barriers.     

A HPC based cloud model for real-time energy optimisation

Recent research has emphasised that an increasing number of enterprises need computation environments for executing HPC (High Performance Computing) applications. Rather than paying the cost of ownership and possess physical, fixed capacity clusters, enterprises can reserve or rent resources for undertaking the required tasks. With the emergence of new computation paradigms such as cloud computing it has become possible to solve a wider range of problems due to their capability to handle and process massive amounts of data. On the other hand, given the pressing regulatory requirement to reduce the carbon footprint of our built environment, significant researching efforts have been recently directed towards simulation-based building energy optimisation with the overall objective of reducing energy consumption. Energy optimisation in buildings represents a class of problems that requires significant computation resources and generally is a time consuming process especially when undertaken with building simulation software, such as EnergyPlus. In this paper we present how a HPC based cloud model can be efficiently used for running and deploying EnergyPlus simulation-based optimisation in order to fulfil a number of objectives related to energy consumption. We describe and evaluate the establishment of such an application-based environment, and consider a cost perspective to determine the efficiency over several cases we explore. This study identifies the following contributions: (i) a comprehensive examination of issues relevant to the HPC community, including performance, cost, user perspectives and range of user activities, (ii) a comparison of two different execution environments such as HTCondor and CometCloud and determine their effectiveness in supporting simulation-based optimisation and (iii) a detailed performance analysis to locate the limiting factors of these execution environments.     

环境规制、产业结构对能源效率的影响

［目的］文章对我国各地环境规制、产业结构与能源效率之间的关系进行研究，旨在更加真实地反映环境规制、产业结构与能源效率三者之间的关系，为各地政府早日实现环境保护、产业结构优化与能源效率多赢的局面提供参考依据。［方法］基于DEA方法测算了我国各地能源效率，将我国划分为高、中及低能源效率3个地区，构建了环境规制、产业结构与能源效率之间关系的模型，通过对2007—2016年我国30个省（市、区）的相关数据进行分析研究。［结果］在高效率地区内环境规制与能源效率两者显著为正，在中效率地区内两者也显著为正，而在低效率地区内两者则显著为负； 在高效率区域与中等效率区域内产业结构与能源效率两者关系显著为正，而在低等效率区域内两者关系不显著； 在高效率地区内环境规制与产业结构两者之间的协同作用显著，而在中等与低效率地区内两者之间的协同作用不显著。［结论］能源效率高与能源效率中等地区内环境规制与产业结构均正向影响能源效率，而能源效率低地区内环境规制与产业结构均负向影响能源效率； 能源效率高地区内环境规制与产业结构对能源效率的影响具有共同强化作用，而能源效率中等与能源效率低地区内环境规制与产业结构间协同效应不明显。     

The effects of regional trade integration and renewable energy transition on environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian neighbors

Improving environmental quality across South Asia has become one of the utmost important policy agendas of the concerned governments. The susceptibility of the majority of the South Asian countries to multifaceted climate change adversities has motivated the need to identify the factors that can function to ensure environmental sustainability across South Asia. Although several studies have highlighted the importance of globalization and cleaner energy use in tackling the environmental degradaton issues of the South Asian countries, very little is known regarding the impacts of regional trade and renewable energy transition in this regard. Hence, this paper aims to scrutinize the effects of enhancing intra-regional trade integration and undergoing renewable energy transition on per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the context of six South Asian nations between 1990 and 2016. The results from the recently developed cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag regression approach, accounting for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, reveal that facilitating trade among the South Asian neighbors reduces carbon emissions in both the short and long run. Moreover, enhancing the share of renewable energy in the aggregate energy consumption figures is also found to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in both the short and long run. Furthermore, both regional trade integration and renewable energy transition are found to jointly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in South Asia. The results also authenticate the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, while financial development and urbanization are found to boost carbon dioxide emissions only in the long run.     

燃煤锅炉改造问题及节能环保改造措施

在现代社会的发展中,燃煤锅炉是工业发展中常用的供暖设备、供热设备,尤其在北方地区得到了十分广泛的应用。但是,在使用燃煤锅炉过程中,一定区域内会产生很多燃煤灰尘、SO2气体,现已成为很多地区的大气污染源之一。为了有效控制燃煤锅炉污染物排放量,相关部门需要实行烟气除尘、脱硫方式,做好燃煤锅炉节能改造工作,减少大气污染物的排放量。论文重点分析了燃煤锅炉改造问题及节能环保改造措施。     

A study of the efficiency of the Chinese clean energy stock market and its correlation with the crude oil market based on an asymmetric multifractal scaling behavior analysis

We examine the multifractal scaling behavior and market efficiency of China’s clean energy stock indexes using an asymmetric multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (A-MFDFA) and then investigate the tail correlation between this index and the crude oil market via an asymmetric multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (A-MFDCCA). First, we reveal that the overall, upward and downward trends of the clean energy stock indexes all have significant multifractal characteristics. The clean energy stock market is far from efficient regardless of whether the fluctuations are small or large. In addition, both upward and downward fluctuations exhibit considerable asymmetry. The significant gap between the downward and overall trends indicates that the downward trend following small-scale fluctuations implies weaker efficiency for investors. Furthermore,based on the sliding market deficiency measure (MDM),we find that the change in efficiency in the three trends significantly depends on the length of the window. In the short term, there is no significant efficiency difference among these three trends; however, in the long term, the asymmetry in the upward and downward trends has gradually increased,especially after December 2018. The results demonstrate that bear markets can offer considerably more opportunities for obtaining excess profits. Finally, we reveal that the cross-correlation between the trends of crude oil prices and low-carbon indexes exhibits significant multifractal characteristics. When the crude oil market is in a bull market or the low-carbon energy market is in a bear market, especially in a larger-scale fluctuation, investors should pay attention to the long-term influence of the counterparty market and carry out a hedging operation to avoid risks.     

热泵技术应用与电力市场开拓

文章从热泵技术原理、分类以及山西地区热泵应用自然条件和现状出发,选取应用案例对热泵和城市集中供暖的经济性进行比较,说明其在节能减排、经济性方面的优势,指出供电公司在热泵推广应用中可做的工作。     

Total Factor Productivity and Energy Intensity: An Empirical Study of China’s Cement Industry

China is the largest cement producer and consumer in the world. The cement industry’s rapid growth has led to a large demand of energy. This study reviews China’s cement industry in terms of energy intensity and examines the effects of technological progress on energy intensity. It also discusses the feasibility of achieving China’s energy reduction targets. We employ the Granger causality test and find that the total factor productivity or technological progress causes the energy intensity of the cement industry. Impulse responses analysis also proves that in the long run the technological change contributes to the decline in energy intensity of cement production.     

The emergence of convergent price clusters in China

This paper reports new evidence on the existence of both large and small price divergent clusters for China's energy markets, 2000–2009. The largest convergent price clusters suggest that the coal and gasoline markets are well integrated, however, small convergent price clusters suggest that electricity and diesel markets are proving harder to integrate. The paper argues that the traditional approach to price convergence analysis should be applied with caution, especially in a transitional economy such as China where questions to be asked should relate to the ‘degree of market‐orientation’ and not simply whether it is a market‐based economy or not.