In the European Union, electricity production from wind energy is projected to increase by approximately 16% until 2020. The Austrian energy plan aims at increasing the currently installed wind power capacity from approximately 1GW to 3GW until 2020 including an additional capacity of 700MW...

We have developed an integrated modeling framework (IMF) to quantify indicators for ecosystem services (ES) and economic development (ED) in agricultural landscapes. Austria serves as a case study in which impacts, trade-offs, and synergies of ES and ED are assessed for different agricultural...

Photovoltaic (PV) has developed to one of the most promising technologies for renewable electricity generation. The Austrian government currently provides subsidies for roof-top PV systems through a constant, administratively determined feed-in tariff or an investment co-funding. In both subsidy...

Bioenergy is regarded as cost-effective option to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Among newly developed biomass conversion technologies are biomass integrated gas combined cycle plants (BIGCC) as well as ethanol and methanol production based on woody biomass feedstock....

Climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of Austrian energy policy. Bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets. To increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply, supporting...

Nowadays a sustainable development for more efficient use of energy and protection of the environment is of increasing importance. Gas engine heat pumps represent one of the most practicable solutions which offer high energy efficiency and environmentally friendly for heating and cooling...

The present work aimed at evaluating the experimental performance of a gas engine heat pump for hot water supply. In order to achieve this objective, a test facility was developed and experiments were performed over a wide range of ambient air temperature (10.9–25.3 °C), condenser water...