With the right mix of leadership and policy, a completely renewable electricity sector for New Zealand and the United States is feasible, achievable, and desirable.

Solar home systems (SHS) can provide energy services to rural households more cost effectively than extending national grids, and without relying on polluting fuels such as kerosene, diesel and coal. This study explores four recent SHS programmes supported by the World Bank’s Asia...

Amory Lovins' distinction between 'soft' and 'hard' paths of energy technologies is applied, <italic>mutatis mutandis</italic>, to humanity's efforts to adapt to climate change. It is argued that hard adaptive measures involve capital-intensive, large, complex, inflexible technology and infrastructure, whereas...

Though it is far from obvious, concepts from justice, philosophy, and ethics can significantly inform energy consumers and producers. This study details how energy justice can serve as a novel conceptual tool for philosophers and ethicists that better integrates usually distinct distributive and...

This study investigates the benefits and challenges facing an innovative biogas system being commercialized in Kenya by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Biogas International. From 2011 to 2014, IFAD and Biogas International have distributed 500 flexi-biogas system...

This paper critically screens 153 lifecycle studies covering a broad range of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation technologies to identify 41 of the most relevant, recent, rigorous, original, and complete assessments so that the dynamics of their greenhouse gas (GHG)...

Denmark is arguably the most energy secure and sustainable country in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The country has reduced its dependence on foreign sources of energy to zero and become self-sufficient in its own energy production and use, offering important...

This edited volume looks at energy poverty, an issue whose pivotal role in the fight for human development is only now being recognised by policymakers. Nearly one quarter of humanity still lacks access to electricity. Close to one third rely on traditional fuels like firewood and cow dung for...

From 2002 to 2007, more than 400,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar home systems (SHS) were sold in northwestern China under the US$316 million World Bank/Global Environment Facility-supported Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP). REDP has been hailed as a best practice example in SHS deployment...

This article summarizes the threats that wind farms pose to birds before surveying the recent literature on avian mortality and summarizing common methodological problems with such studies. Based on operating performance in the United States and Europe, the paper then offers a preliminary...