This study investigates how a suite of nontechnical factors including socioeconomic characteristics, awareness mechanisms, and perceived barriers jointly influence residential energy-efficiency attitudes and behaviors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 1,003 respondents across four regions-Riyadh, Makkah, Eastern Province and the rest of KSA- it examines determinants of energy-saving behaviors, investment decisions, and engagement with energy-efficiency measures. The results indicate that social influences from family, workplaces, and broader societal norms are positively associated with energy-saving behavior, with 42 % of respondents reporting encouragement from family and peers. Results show that energy behavior is shaped by multiple interacting factors rather than any single dominant driver. Economic salience is critical as households with higher utility bills and price pressure are more likely to adopt energy-saving behaviors, while financial capacity strongly influences the decision to invest in energy efficiency. Awareness of energy waste is found to be generally high, with 44 % of respondents strongly agreeing that energy waste is a common issue and 63.6 % reporting awareness of national energy-efficiency programs. Barriers to energy-saving practices are observed to be predominantly practical and informational rather than motivational with almost 35 % respondents citing lack of awareness of available technologies as the primary barrier. The findings signify the need to move beyond technology-centric strategies toward integrated, people-centered energy-efficiency approaches. Policy frameworks should prioritize delivering clear and actionable information tailored to housing types, and addressing structural barriers such as split incentives.

Sweden implemented a unique policy instrument over two consecutive five-year periods aimed at promoting industrial energy efficiency: a voluntary agreement programme (VAP) known as the Programme for Improving Energy Efficiency in Energy-Intensive Industries (PFE). This paper evaluates the second programme period using process and impact evaluation approaches. The impact evaluation revealed that the programme generated numerous benefits beyond the implementation of energy efficiency measures. The second programme period demonstrated impacts comparable to the first, underscoring the pivotal role of energy management within policy frameworks. Moreover, the findings suggest that VAPs may be among the few policy instruments capable of achieving substantial impact within industrial production processes. The process evaluation identified two critical gaps: a policy gap and a knowledge gap. Many of the positive elements present in the evaluated programme are currently absent from Sweden’s industrial policy mix. The role of the policy operator—as facilitator or intermediary—proved essential, particularly in the context of policies involving energy audits and certified energy management systems. In this case, the Swedish Energy Agency played a central role. The study concludes that continuous energy management, when integrated throughout the entire organization, significantly enhances companies’ capacity to identify and implement energy efficiency measures. This approach not only deepens internal knowledge but also fosters the development of more structured and effective routines. Furthermore, the findings suggest that financial incentives may be essential to ensure the long-term persistence of energy efficiency practices. Consequently, future policy design should include a strong facilitator and incorporate mechanisms that both reinforce organizational knowledge of energy end-use processes and promote sustained engagement over time, preferably involving a financial incentive.

Despite the growing number of scientific investigations on developing taxonomies in various industries and categorizing energy end-use (EEU) processes, research on such frameworks in the data center (DC) sector remains limited, restricting systematic analysis of energy use, benchmarking, and identification of energy efficiency measures. This study seeks to achieve two key objectives: (1) to create a hierarchical taxonomy for categorizing EEU process, (2) and to identify the most relevant energy performance indicators (EnPIs). The methodology combines hierarchical classification of energy flows with quantitative analysis based on time-resolved operational data, allowing for detailed analysis of dynamic system behaviour and allocation of energy use across processes, applied to a DC room with a detached in-rack water cooling system in Sweden operated by Ericsson. The results of this paper present a novel hierarchical taxonomy for a water-cooled DC room with six defined EEU processes, of which four are related to data processing processes and two to support processes. Notably, over 99.9% of total EEU is connected to data processing processes which is a significantly higher figure compared to other production processes in other sectors. Moreover, the established EnPIs can facilitate benchmarking between DCs with similar infrastructures and for monitoring the energy use of various EEU processes. The proposed methodology is transferable to other DC environments with comparable system boundaries and data availability, and its reproducibility is supported by the structured and data-driven methodology, which enables replication of the analytical approach given comparable data availability.

Sport is more than just a game—it's a global phenomenon that shapes cultures, economies, and communities. Football, the world's most popular sport, is a prime example. Yet beneath the surface lies an overlooked environmental cost. As the climate crisis accelerates, the sprawling network of football facilities—stadiums, training grounds, and infrastructure—emerges as a silent contributor to environmental degradation and the transgression of planetary boundaries. Two common types of fields exist: artificial and natural turf. Research on environmental impacts of these turfs remains limited, especially in cold climates. This study presents a life cycle assessment of 1 m2 artificial and natural football turfs in Nordic climates, evaluating their environmental impacts such as global warming potential, eutrophication potential and ecotoxicity potential across construction, use, maintenance, and end-of-life phases over operational lifespans of 10, 20 and 30 years. Natural turf exhibited the highest overall environmental impacts over the operational lifespan, e.g. the global warming potential was 30.6 kg CO2 eq/m2 while the artificial turf reached 15.6 kg CO2 eq/m2. During the construction phase, artificial turf generated significant emissions, mainly from material production. In the use phase, natural turf showed the greatest impacts due to diesel consumption and fertilizer application. At the end-of-life stage, artificial turf's sand and infill were reused, while the turf carpet and shock pad were incinerated for energy recovery. However, without recycling, artificial turf would represent the highest environmental burden among the evaluated alternatives. Implementing effective recycling and energy recovery strategies is essential to mitigate its environmental impact. Furthermore, sourcing turf materials locally, combined with substituting conventional maintenance equipment with electric robotic alternatives, can further reduce overall environmental impacts.

The complexity of the electricity system is increasing due to various transitions and events taking place within and outsideof the electricity market such as increased loads from distributed power supplies. The risk for various disturbances may increase withthese transitions and events, including non-electricity system related disturbances like climate change. There is an urgent need to improveresilience of the electricity system so that it can handle also low probability and high impact disturbances. The objective of this paper isto analyse seven resilience principles, originally developed for socio-ecological systems, and interpret them for the electricity system.Results from the analysis indicate that the resilience principles can be seen to represent different categories in the socio-technical systemthat is the electricity system. These categories are technology, learning, information, stakeholder, organisation, and governance. Theresilience principles enable a holistic view of the electricity system, and they can function as a support during the work to increaseresilience of the electricity system.

In our digitalized world, Data Centers (DCs) serve as crucial infrastructure. Within the DC sector, data processing operations, including processes such as process cooling, hold special significance when investigated from an energy efficiency perspective, as they account for a substantial portion of total energy end-use. Therefore, it is important to prioritize data processing operations in energy management. The objective of this research is to explore the application of AI-powered clustering techniques to identify cooling operational statuses. Additionally, this research offers valuable perspectives on using AI for visualizing and identifying cooling patterns that deviate, which can provide valuable insights into DC energy management. The study object consists of a DC room equipped with Liquid Cooling Packages (LCPs). The findings show that the cooling power density on average is 9.1 kW/m 2 . Through analysis of the elbow curve, the optimal number of clusters is identified to be three. One of the identified clusters, i.e., Cluster 3, is characterized by large time periods with no supplied cooling from the LCPs. When comparing Clusters 1 and 2, Cluster 1 has a higher temperature difference between the chilled water supply and return, but a lower LCP return temperature compared to Cluster 2. Moreover, the quantified cooling characteristics contribute to the understanding of the LCPs’ operational statuses and cooling performance, which is useful for implementing targeted improvements, e.g., adjusting PID parameters, in the cooling infrastructure.

According to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, 55% of the EU’s emission reductions will require renovations of the least efficient buildings. Therefore, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of how owners of single-family houses perceive energy efficiency measures, energy renovation, and barriers and drivers that influence their decision-making. Moreover, the homeowner’s perception of green loans is important, as one piece of the puzzle in how to finance these implementations. Swedish single-family houses account for 40% of residential energy use and 45% of heated area, and they are mostly privately owned. These decision-making processes are, to a large degree, unknown, as the main focus has been on professional actors and tenants, not on single-family and privately owned buildings. This paper presents the perspective of these owners and discussions related to their decision-making. It is therefore important to evaluate the barriers and drivers involved in this decision-making process from the perspective of house owners, and to include socio-economic factors as well as the potential for green loans. This study includes single-family house owners in two cities of different sizes who responded to a survey regarding their perspectives on energy renovation. The results showed that homeowners with lower incomes were more neutral about barriers to energy renovation. In contrast, house owners with higher incomes, and those who moved into their houses more recently, prioritized other types of renovations and investment over energy renovations. According to households where the respondents were over 60 years old, barriers such as lack of capital and time are not perceived as significant barriers to energy renovation. Moreover, this study showed that households with younger owners, those who moved recently to their homes, and those with higher incomes, are more likely to take loans for energy renovations. For these younger households and those who moved into their houses relatively recently a window of opportunity could therefore be identified, where tailored policies can be targeted toward the sector when houses are recently sold. In all cases, except for those over 70 years, respondents stated that green loans increased their interest in energy efficiency investments. Copyright © 2024 Niknafs, Holmqvist, Thollander and Rohdin.

The automotive industry is the world’s largest manufacturing activity, characterized by complex productionprocesses and some energy-intense processes which use a significant quantity of raw materials. The production processes responsible for the highest energy end-use take place in the paint shop. Depending on the type of paintshop processes, the energy use can account for up to 75 % of the plant’s total energy end-use. This study aims to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the complexity of adopting decarbonization measures and to provide support for planning and decision-making in practice. By adopting a bottom-up perspective, a longitudinal case study was conducted on a state-of-the-art automotive paint-shop between November 2019 and March 2023. To achieve the study’s aim, a bottom-up methodology was developed comprising several steps: i) analysis of decarbonization measures, ii) mapping of process energy use and CO2 emissions, and iii) economic analysis. The data-based methodology is flexible and can be applied in different automotive paint-shops. Main findings show that i) incremental energy efficiency measures have the fastest adoption level, with relatively high savings potential,and most of these are cost effective; ii) radical process innovation measures have a higher savings potential, but long-term adoption levels due to the radical innovations required in the supply chain, and the highly specialized knowledge needed in the pre-treatment process; and iii) the primary drivers for implementing the measures are to achieve the climate targets and establish a leading position in the sector, rather than focusing primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the measures.

Recent studies claim that national policies fall short of the ambitious goal to limit global temperature increase to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, revealing an ambition gap between current commitments and those needed to reach climate neutrality. To bridge this gap, commitments must increase more than fivefold to achieve the necessary reduction in GHG emissions. Voluntary initiatives (VIs), gaining interest as an approach to support the Paris Agreement's ambition, have the potential to bridge the commitment gap and limit the expected temperature increase to 2°C if all their voluntary commitments to climate neutrality are fulfilled. While decarbonizing the manufacturing sector is crucial for climate targets, no prior study has explored the theoretical potential of industry-related VIs to bridge the gap for industrial decarbonization. This paper addresses this gap by examining the potential contribution of these VIs, analyzing criteria related to arena and agenda creation, operationalization, and accountability. By applying the transition management framework innovatively, the study investigates eighty-three industry-related VIs led by both state and non-state actors. The research process, involving the development of an analytical framework, VIs selection, data collection and validation, categorization, and analysis, provides insights into how the design affects VIs' potential for industrial decarbonization. The main findings highlight, firstly, the need for clearly defined and measurable targets, enhanced commitments, and robust accountability mechanisms, especially for non-state actor-led initiatives. Secondly, increased participation from energy-intensive sector companies due to their pivotal role for GHG emission reduction. Lastly, collaboration between state and non-state actors is critical for bridging the decarbonization gap in manufacturing industries. Additionally, the similarity between VIs and voluntary agreement programs (VAPs) is highlighted, with VAPs been overseen by governmental bodies with administrative authority. Given the urgency of addressing climate change, an unanswered question remains: Will future policies transition away from voluntariness towards more mandatory administrative character?