The demand for secure, affordable and clean energy is a priority call to humanity. Challenges associated with conventional energy resources, such as depletion of fossil fuels, high costs and associated greenhouse gas emissions, have stimulated interests in renewable energy resources. For instance, there have been clear gaps and rushed thoughts about replacing fossil-fuel driven engines with ele…
Energy poverty occurs when a household is unable to secure a level and quality of domestic energy services—space cooling and heating, cooking, appliances, information technology—sufficient for its social and material needs. This somewhat contested and broad definition lies at the tip of a vast scientific and policy iceberg, involving complex socio-technical relat…
The performance of more efficient technologies is often dependent on how they are used by householders, if at all. Moreover, short-term efficiency gains may be wiped out by increasing overall consumption in order to reach newly perceived levels of comfort, convenience and stand-ards. This increase in consumption manifests, for example, through social pressure to…
Each energy crisis has echoes of the past, and the acute strains on marketstoday are drawing comparison with the most severe energy disruptions in modern energy history, most notably the oil shocks of the 1970s. Then, as now, there were strong geopolitical drivers for the rise in prices, which led to high inflation and economic damage. Then, as now, the crises brought to the surface some underl…