Wind turbine noise is annoying and has been linked to increased levels of psychological distress, stress, difficulty falling asleep, and sleep interruption. For these reasons, there is a need for competently designed noise standards to safeguard community health and well-being. The authors identify key considerations for the development of wind…

Bird kill rate and disruption of habitat has been reported when industrial wind turbines are introduced into migratory bird paths or other environments. While the literature could be more complete regarding the documentation of negative effects on birds and bird habitats during the planning, construction, and operation of wind power projects,…

Climate change, energy price spikes, and concerns about energy security have reignited interest in state and local efforts to promote end-use energy efficiency, customer-sited renewable energy, and energy conservation. Government agencies and utilities have historically designed and administered such demand-side measures, but innovative…

Energy poverty is a key detriment to labor productivity, economic growth, and social well-being. This article presents a qualitative review of literature on the potential role of intelligent communication technology, web-based standards, and smart grid technology to alleviate energy costs and improve access to clean distributed energy in developed…

Climate change is only one factor driving growing numbers of cities throughout the globe to reconsider conventional approaches to electricity generation and use. In the U.S., this momentum is incorporating a shift away from centralized, supply-side approaches reliant on fossil fuels and nuclear power, toward more distributed, flexible, and cleaner…

In general terms there are only three primary energy sources: fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear fission. For fueling road transportation, there has been much speculation about the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, which would usher in the "hydrogen economy." A parallel situation would use a simple battery to store electricity…

An existing industrial hydrogen generation and distribution infrastructure is described, and a number of large-scale investment projects are outlined. All of these projects have the potential to generate significant volumes of low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen. The technologies concerned range from gasification of coal with carbon capture and storage…

Even as the conventional energy system is fundamentally challenged by the "energy-environment crisis," its adherents have presented the prospect of "abundant" and purportedly "green" nuclear power as part of a strategy to address the crisis. Surveying the development of nuclear power in India, this article finds that…

Climate change, rising energy costs, and other dilemmas raise the prospect for major change in energy-ecology-society relations. Two prominent proposals for change include: a nuclear power renaissance; and mega-scale renewable energy development. Both suggest that modern society will receive a rising stream of less CO2-rich kilowatt-hours, so that…

This article presents a study of the techno-economical feasibility of manufacturing biofuel ethanol at small scale from agricultural sources in New Zealand. It investigates possible agricultural products and wastes as potential feedstock and looks at laboratory-scale fermentation trials to determine their ethanol yields. The ethanol requirement to…

Since the mid-1980s, power sector liberalization has been embraced at different levels in the East Asian countries of China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The dominant rationale underlying power liberalization has been a quest for efficiency improvements, to be achieved by substituting private market activity for public regulations and by opening…

This article establishes the benefits of applying renewable energy and analyzes the main difficulties that have stood in the way of more widely successful renewable energy for rural areas in the developing world and discusses why outcomes from these technologies fall short. Although there is substantial recognition of technological, economic,…

The strengths and weaknesses of current energy planning can be attributed to the limited economic, social, and environmental contexts taken into account as a result of the current intellectual and professional division of labor. A preventive approach is developed by which the ratio of desired to undesired effects can be substantially improved. It…

Biomass provides the only sustainable source of organic carbon for the production of chemicals used in manufacturing and as liquid transportation fuels. In this article, the authors examine some of the challenges that society faces in the transition from a global economy in which transportation fuels are derived from fossil fuels to one in which…

With the stricter environmental regulations and diminishing fossil-fuel reserves, there is now higher emphasis on exploiting various renewable sources of energy. These alternative sources of energy are usually environmentally friendly and emit no pollutants. However, the capital investments for those renewable sources of energy are normally high,…