European legislation and incentives programmes for demand Side management

Abstract

Energy is now intrinsically linked to technological development, given it powers all such systems. The use of fossil fuels to supply the required energy is causing global environmental and health issues and is impacting on all life forms on the planet. Given increasing energy consumption, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are consequentially increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to replace fossil fuels with renewable energies, biofuels and eco materials and related technologies and to try and find a way to develop sustainable zero emission solutions for all areas including constructions, transport and water resources.A critical and evolutionary way of thinking about the energy (and other resource) demand, management and supply is necessary because there is a clear concern about irreversible impacts to the world and a scarcity of the resources as well. Energy supplies should be mostly or entirely through renewable resources and highly efficient technologies put in place to achieve solution such as nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB).At the same time, all the energy and resource use processes should be optimised in order to maximise the benefits, reduce the costs and promote stakeholders (consumers, companies or governments) network, toward a circular economy. This could be the way to supply the demand without increasing the scarcity of the resources and to simultaneously achieve environmental benefits. Therefore, it should be possible to improve productivity with the same amount of resources, by e.g. maximising the potential of smart grids and heuristically develop solutions with stakeholders.The concept of Demand Side Management (DSM) emerged after the energy crisis and it employs solutions such as reducing the daily peak load. At the same time, creating an educational grid is important to change the established paradigms, in order to promote critical thinking about the wasted resources and thinking holistically about overall consumption. This paradigm shift is changing the market, making it more competitive and reducing inefficiency by promoting the efficient use of resources including deployment of energy storage during the periods of low consumption in daily peak shift.All these issues present a new way of thinking in the path towards sustainability, maximising the circular economy and reducing environmental impacts, making connections and using the Internet of Things to provide more information to all stakeholders. All these changes in social behaviour are related to the rational use of resources and make it easier to improve the existing infrastructures instead of building new ones. This paper analyses the state of the art at the European level in the production and use of renewable resources. A survey and analysis of the incentives to consumers and the policies to encourage the circular economy, and a parallel analysis of benefits and drawbacks, was made. It is intended to identify the main forms of intervention and improvement, culminating in a reflection on how they should be applied in order to imp...

Research on Power Demand Side Information Quality Indicators and Evaluation Based on Grounded Theory Approach

“…With the rapid development of information technology, the power industry has also entered the era of big data, the main content of DSM is load management for end-users, which narrowly refers to the electricity consumption information of enterprises and other users, while the demand side of electricity information, which in a broad sense includes all the information that affects the demand for electricity such as government policies, regulations, documents, power load fluctuations, the speed of socio-economic development, natural disasters, and even the dictation of the person in charge, etc., will have an effect on electricity demand [31].…”

Dry Hydrogen Production in a Tandem Critical Raw Material-Free Water Photoelectrolysis Cell Using a Hydrophobic Gas-Diffusion Backing Layer

“…The existence of several concerns related to the increasing energy demand and the related environmental crisis [1][2][3][4][5][6] indicates the need to identify innovative, effective and low cost solutions. Photoelectrochemical water splitting (PWS) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] is recognised as a promising strategy and it attracts particular interest for storing solar energy into the chemical bonds of hydrogen as fuel [26][27][28], which can be further utilised in fuel cells [29][30][31][32][33][34], internal combustion engines and to progressively decarbonize industrial processes [35][36][37][38][39].…”

Carbon Quota and Efficiency Power Plants Implementation Decision

“…Although a EPP is not an entitative power plant, compared with power generation resources, it has the same importance in the optimal allocation of regional power supply and demand resources. It is an effective and convenient way to realize energy conservation and emission reduction and control power consumption [36]. EPPs have many advantages, such as zero emission, zero pollution, non-land occupation and non-construction cost.…”