Increasingly, citizen and public participation are considered central to achieving the energy transition to a low carbon future. Such participation has different dimensions in new energy infrastructure, in terms of both renewable energy installations and additional electricity grid developments. Participation includes active involvement in decision making, the ability to invest in developer-led projects, and capacity for community owned renewable energy projects. This also includes community benefit funding (CBF), whereby a local fund is established by the developer and provided to communities impacted by infrastructural developments. There is a growing body of experience with CBF, but it has not received much attention in the scientific literature. In addition, there is a paucity of analysis of the design, implementation, and evaluation of CBF schemes. This research intervention addresses this gap using a modified Delphi panel approach to explore areas of consensus and divergence on these dimensions of CBF programs. We bring together national and international experts on community benefit funding who work on key areas of relevance such as policy formation, strategy design, fund administration, and community development to deliberate on the role of CBF in supporting future developments towards energy system change. The method implemented draws out lessons learned concerning community benefit funding and insights concerning its future design, implementation, and monitoring from a range of sectors and perspectives. While participant experts within the study are made up of three groups: the public, private and academic sectors, the results have specific application in relation to CBF associated with renewable energy production whereby the financial benefit accrued is long lasting over time. This is critically important in the context of the scale of growth planned and the significant associated levels of CBF that will transfer from private funds to public good. The results highlight where there is consensus and divergence of opinion for the design, delivery, and monitoring of CBF, which can usefully inform policy deliberations as well as advancing knowledge as we see CBF growing in significance both in Ireland and internationally.
Public schools remain underexamined in clean cooking research despite their substantial energy demands and distinctive financing and governance arrangements. This study examined institutional energy use and expenditure, the operational consequences of energy insecurity, barriers to the clean cooking transition, schools’ energy-management and adaptation strategies, and the comparative suitability of alternative cooking technologies in southern Tanzania. We conducted a mixed-methods study in 27 purposively selected public schools across five local government authorities in the Ruvuma and Mtwara regions. We collected data through semi-structured interviews, field observations, and available school records. We analysed them using descriptive statistics, thematic analysis, and an equal-weight multi-criteria assessment of six cooking technologies across nine economic, technical, environmental, and institutional criteria. Firewood was the primary cooking fuel in 26 of the 27 schools, whereas grid electricity was the principal lighting source in 23 schools, revealing a divergence between electrification and the cooking energy transition. Firewood-dependent boarding schools spent approximately TZS 1.59–2.80 million per month on cooking fuel, compared with approximately TZS 1.55 million in the boarding school using LPG. Energy insecurity disrupted water pumping, grain milling, administrative activities and laboratory practical work. Limited financing, high initial investment requirements, infrastructure gaps, limited technical capacity, unreliable energy supplies, and institutional approval processes constrained the transition. Schools responded through energy diversification, backup systems, electricity prioritisation, improved cookstoves, and investment or planned investment in alternative energy systems. Under the equal-weight assessment, electricity and biogas jointly achieved the highest suitability score of 16, followed by LPG at 14. The findings demonstrate that the clean cooking transition in public schools is shaped not simply by technology availability, but by the financial, infrastructural and organisational capacity required to adopt and sustain cleaner systems. By extending clean cooking analysis beyond households, the study provides an institutional basis for planning more sustainable school energy transitions in Tanzania. Clinical trial number Not applicable.
Green finance is increasingly used to mobilise capital for low-carbon transition, yet its relationship with renewable-energy outcomes may depend on financial, institutional, and structural conditions that differ across countries. This study examines green finance as a policy transmission channel associated with low-carbon transition in a balanced panel of 25 European and 25 African countries over 2000–2024 (1,250 country-year observations). Low-carbon transition is measured by renewable energy consumption, with renewable electricity output used as an alternative outcome, and capital allocation efficiency, financial development, institutional quality, economic development, and industrial structure are examined alongside green finance. Two-way fixed effects with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, dynamic System GMM, panel threshold regression, and country-grouped XGBoost with SHAP interpretation are employed. Green finance is positively and significantly associated with low-carbon transition in the fixed-effects and System GMM models, in both institutional-quality threshold regimes, and under the alternative outcome. Capital allocation efficiency is positive but insignificant, whereas financial development is positive and significant only in the baseline and dynamic models. Institutional quality conditions the green finance relationship nonlinearly: interaction models indicate positive moderation, but the threshold model shows a smaller green-finance coefficient above the estimated threshold. Economic development and industrial structure are specification-sensitive, and slope-homogeneity tests reveal significant cross-country heterogeneity. Country-grouped XGBoost attains an out-of-fold R² of 0.509, indicating meaningful but incomplete generalisability to unseen countries. Green finance therefore shows the most consistent association with renewable-energy-based transition, supporting context-sensitive sustainable-finance policies across European and African economies. Clinical trial number Not applicable.
The global energy transition necessitates a critical re-evaluation of bioenergy’s role and moving beyond its conventional perception as a mere renewable source, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). Biomass torrefaction, a mild thermochemical pretreatment, emerges as a pivotal technology that can fundamentally upgrade biomass into a high-quality solid biofuel. This review examines torrefaction as a socio-technical pathway that may contribute to multidimensional energy security while identifying potential energy justice implications across distributive, procedural, recognitional, and restorative dimensions within the bioenergy sector. This review systematically synthesizes recent advancements in torrefaction science, reactor design, and sustainability assessment. A novel analytical framework is developed to evaluate its role in enhancing energy security across the dimensions of availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability. Crucially, this review offers a systematic energy justice-oriented assessment of the torrefaction pathway, critically evaluating its implications across the distributive, procedural, recognitional, and restorative justice dimensions. The analysis reveals that the techno-economic promise of torrefaction is necessary but insufficient for its sustainable integration. Its success depends on active governance that is explicitly coupled with justice-oriented frameworks. This review concludes by proposing an integrated research and policy agenda that prioritizes co-benefit strategies, robust sustainability certification, and community-centric business models to steer the development of torrefaction towards a future of security, low carbon, and equity. Not applicable.
This study investigates the socioeconomic and structural drivers of residential photovoltaic (PV) solar energy adoption in Cameroon using the Afrobarometer Round 10 dataset for 2024. Despite the country's vast solar potential, the uptake of decentralized energy remains uneven. Employing a robust probit model with spatial interactions, we analyze how household characteristics, information access, and infrastructure constraints influence the decision to adopt PV systems in the region. Our empirical results indicate that access to the national electricity grid is strongly associated with lower solar adoption, reducing the probability of PV uptake by 25.3
