The availability of sustainability indicators is a precondition for the conversion of the model of sustainable development into policy. Sustainability indicators define characteristics that are important for sustainable development. A single sustainability indicator defines a key issue, which...

The transformation of the energy sector in Germany is associated with a considerable increase in prices, especially for electricity, which places different burdens on households depending on income. This conflicts with the idea of a fair distribution of burdens arising from the transformation of...

The Atkinson index is an inequality measure based on a social welfare function. We will use the Atkinson index as an analytical tool to examine the interactions between economic activity and energy services. The Atkinson index has a specific feature for the calculation of distribution. The index...

The paper describes the genesis of the idea, the term and the concept of sustainable development. The driving forces of sustainable development were fundamental crises, which were essentially crises of the energy system. The idea originated during the energy crisis of the medieval agrarian solar...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and prototype implementation of a miniature climbing robot with magnetic adhesion, developed for the inspection of gas turbines and other environments that require vertical mobility along curved steel surfaces, but only offer very...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and prototype implementation of the “Cable Crawler”, a mobile teleoperated robot for the inspection of high‐voltage power lines which rides on the topmost ground cable. By not being limited to just moving from mast to mast, it...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and prototype implementation of a compact climbing robot with magnetic adhesion, which is only 8 mm high and allows for moving in any direction on the stators or rotors of power generators. Design/methodology/approach – After a...

For around 20 years, the sustainability concept and its implementation have been discussed by society at large (Kobiowu et al., 2005; Goldblatt, 2005; Marechal et al., 2005; Backstrand, 2006; Spangenberg, 2005) and, among others, by the green economics community (Lunn, 2006; Kennet and Heinemann, 2006b; Dobson and Bell,...

Es mag zwar im Forschungsbetrieb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ungewöhnlich sein, daß sich Angehörige einer naturwissenschaftlich-technisch ausgerichteten Großforschungseinrichtung und eines außenpolitischen Forschungsinstituts zu gemeinsamer Arbeit zusammenfinden, jedoch der Charakter der...