Social innovation is increasingly turned to when attempting to address pressing social needs and emerging issues having a social impact because of its inherent promise for societal improvement. The aim of this paper is to explore, demonstrate and confirm the potential role of social innovations in contributing towards low-carbon transitions in the energy field. The study locates the adequate fields of intervention for energy policymaking for the support of social innovation through a multiple case study of six empirical social innovation cases in the energy field in Europe. We discuss the energy policy context of the social innovation cases and how they contribute to transition as well as their broader impacts. These cases demonstrate many positive effects including measurable impacts in emissions reduction, green investments and an increase in renewable energy production. The study shows that while there has been no general focus on diffusion, some social innovation cases have scaled up nationally and internationally highlighting the potential of transitions to social innovations on the system level. Finally, the paper highlights that legislative and non-legislative policies play a crucial role in the diffusion of social innovations as they are interlinked with administrative and socio-spatial scales and non-energy-related policies or societal fields.

This research investigates, analyses, and quantifies the technological effects of wind turbine repowering (ie, where old turbines are removed and new turbines are installed at the same or a very close location, including the enhanced performance in energy production). In these cases, it is assumed that both old and new turbines are subject to the same wind regime, other than because of technological elements, such as hub height, and thus it is possible to isolate the effects of new technology from the effect of changing local wind conditions. This research is based on the analysis of empirical data on repowering turbines in Denmark and Germany, and on historical production data available for the Danish component of the data set. Technological innovations are expected to enable new wind turbines to capture more energy at the repowering site, mostly through larger rotors and higher hub heights, and this is what this study has analysed. The results show that new turbines in repowering projects are twice as high, have three times the rotor diameter, nine times the swept area, six times the nominal power, and nine times as much electricity as the old turbines. However, the most significant improvement is probably the increase of capacity factor of 7.1% on a per‐turbine basis, or 9.7% on a per‐production basis.

The International Energy Agency Wind Technology Collaboration Programme (IEA Wind TCP) Task 26 - The Cost of Wind Energy represents an international collaboration dedicated to exploring the past, present, and future cost of wind energy. The countries that are currently represented by participating organizations in IEA Wind TCP Task 26 included in this report are Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the European Union, and the United States. This report discusses trends from 2008 through 2016 that affected the cost of land-based wind energy in each country. The cost of wind energy during this period is compared with the market value of wind energy in the respective electricity market for each country. This report builds from previous analysis conducted since the inception of Task 26 in 2009. Schwabe et al. (2011) explored differences in the cost of wind energy in 2008 among countries participating in Task 26 at that time. Vitina et al. (2015) presented turbine- and project-level trends in the wind industry from 2008 to 2012, including wind project size, turbine size, specific power and hub height, project performance, investment costs, operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, and project financing. These inputs are used to calculate the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), a widely recognized metric for understanding how technology performance, capital investment, operations, and financing impact the life cycle cost of building and operating a wind project. Both prior reports - as well as this report - used this metric to estimate the cost of wind energy.

Oceans offer a vast amount of renewable energy. Tidal and wave energy devices are currently the most advanced conduits of ocean energy. To date, only a few life cycle assessments for ocean energy have been carried out for ocean energy. This study analyses ocean energy devices, including all technologies currently being proposed, in order to gain a better understanding of their environmental impacts and explore how they can contribute to a more sustainable energy supply.

The oceans of the earth offer vast amounts of renewable energy. Technologies to harness the power of the seas are at an early stage of development. Even the most advances technologies, namely tidal current and ocean wave still face considerable barriers and many obstacles remain. Research, development and innovation can help overcome those barriers. This review provides an overview over the current state of research in the field of ocean energy. In particular, the authors focus on research beyond technology or technological improvements. This article also highlights areas where research gaps exists and where future research efforts should be directed to.

Ocean energy has the potential to play a significant role in the future energy system, whilst contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions and stimulating economic growth in coastal and remote areas. Ocean energy has attracted increasing interest, particularly in the EU, which is currently at the forefront of ocean energy development.Tidal and Wave energy represents the two most advance types of ocean energy technologies. In the EU, the aim is to reach 100 GW of combined wave and tidal capacity installed by 2050. In order to achieve these targets the sector needs to overcome a series of challenges and barriers with regards to technology readiness, financing and market establishment, administrative and environmental issues and the availability of grid connections especially in remote areas. Currently these barriers are hindering the sector's progress; its ability to attract inwards investments and to engage with the supply chain to unlock cost-reduction mechanisms. A number of policy initiatives and mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that ocean energy technologies could become cost-competitive in the short term, in order to exploit the benefits that these technologies could provide to the EU. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Water footprinting is still in its infancy. So far, an accepted general framework and various water footprint impact assessment methods have been developed. SCA performed a case study to evaluate the usefulness and applicability of water footprinting in industry. For water footprinting becoming a useful tool for decision making there are several problems: data is lacking and of poor quality. In addition, some impact assessment methods are not operational yet. Different operational impact assessment methods might lead to different conclusions because of different pathways or endpoints modelled or different characterisation factors. On-going improvements will solve some of those problems and will hopefully allow to use water footprinting as a robust basis for decision making in industry.

This paper presents a systematic overview of the environmental impacts of new average diesel and petrol cars from a life cycle perspective. An analysis of different technical and non-technical improvement options that could be achieved at each stage of a car’s life cycle was performed. The consequences of the adoption of these options on the environment were estimated. The results show that some of the options analysed could have a major positive impact on the vehicle efficiency and induce large improvements of the environmental profile of passenger cars. The highest improvements are achievable through more efficient power trains (including hybrid car), and through lightweight cars. For some options, burden shifts from one car life cycle phase to another, or from one environmental problem to another, can occur. The results show that besides the purely technological options, those that imply behavioural changes by the driver may also reduce the environmental burden substantially.

A typology of buildings representative of the building stock for the EU-25 was developed characterizing 72 building types in terms of their representativity, geographical distribution, size, material composition, and thermal insulation. The life cycle impacts of the building types were calculated for different environmental impact categories both at building and EU-25 level. The use phase of buildings, dominated by the energy demand for heating is by far the most important life cycle phase for existing and new buildings. The environmental impacts were allocated to single building elements. Ventilation, heat losses through roofs and external walls are important for a majority of single- and multi-family houses. Three improvement options were identified: additional roof insulation, additional façade insulation and new sealings to reduce ventilation. The measures yield a significant environmental improvement potential, which, for a majority of the buildings types analyse represent at least 20% compared to the base case. The major improvement potentials at EU-level lie with single-family houses, followed by multi-family houses. Smaller reductions are expected for high-rise buildings due to the smaller share in the overall building stock. For both roof insulation and reduced ventilation, the measures were shown to be economically profitable in a majority of buildings.