The rapidly growing world population and rising consumption of biofuels are increasing demand for both food and biofuels. This exaggerates both food and fuel shortages. Using food crops such as corn grain to produce ethanol raises major nutritional and ethical concerns. Nearly 60% of humans in...

Detailed energy outputs and inputs were assessed for the following crops, cultured in the U.S. and developing countries: corn, wheat, rice, soy, potato, cassava, tomato, citrus and apple. In addition, the labor input for each crop was analyzed.

Objectives Whilst much has been written about the role of the 'bottom up' approach to renewable energy, there is still no clear insight into why only some schemes work. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how adopting a social constructivist approach gives more insight into the factors...

With energy security, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development as three main motives, global energy policies have evolved, now asking for higher shares of renewable energies, shale oil and gas resources in the global energy supply portfolios. Yet, concerns have recently been raised...

For the time being, the society is facing serious problems related to the environmental protection. These problems are closely linked with the needs of the human community, needs which are permanently growing as compared to the resources which are more and more limited. After the accession to...

Purpose – The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far-reaching implications for economic operators. This paper aims to analyze LCA limitations for biofuels based on RED from an environmental accounting...

Use of renewable energy sources is one solution to decrease green house gas emissions and the use of polluting fossil fuels. Renewables differ in their environmental and societal impacts, and to design sound renewable energy policy, societies need to assess the trade-offs between alternative...

Jacobson et al. (2013, hereinafter J13), presented the technical and economic feasibility of converting New York States' all-purpose energy infrastructure (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry) to one powered by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) producing electricity and...

Energy and climate policies are usually seen as measures to internalize externalities. However, as a side effect, the introduction of these policies redistributes wealth between consumers and producers, and within these groups. While redistribution is seldom the focus of the academic literature...