Large-area flexible organic solar cells

Two major challenges need to be overcome to bridge the efficiency gap between small-area rigid organic solar cells (OSCs) and large-area flexible devices: the first challenge lies in preparing high-quality flexible transparent electrodes with low resistance, high transparency, smooth surface, and superior mechanical properties. Second, the scalable fabrication of thickness-insensitive photoactive layers with low-cost materials is also an essential task. In this review, recent progress and challenges of flexible large-area OSCs are summarized and analyzed. Based on our analysis, strategies and opportunities are proposed to promote the development of stable and efficient flexible large-area OSCs.

Barriers to and Drivers of Energy Management in Swedish SMEs

The energy efficiency gap is known as the difference between optimal level of energy efficiency and the actual level of achieved energy efficiency. Energy management has proven to further close the energy efficiency gap. Energy management may differ depending on whether it concerns a large, energy-intensive company or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs are of high interest since they form a large share of the economy today. For SMEs, a lighter form of energy management, in the form of energy efficiency network participation, has proven to deliver sound energy efficiency impact, while for larger, energy-intensive firms, a certified energy management system may be more suitable. However, various barriers inhibit adoption of energy efficiency measures. While there is an array of research on barriers to and driving forces for energy efficiency in general, research on barriers to, and driving forces for, energy management is rare, one exception being a study of energy-intensive pulp and paper mills. This holds even more so for industrial SMEs. This paper aims to identify the barriers to, and drivers for, energy management in manufacturing SMEs. Results of this explorative study show that the top four barriers to energy management are lack of time/other priorities, non-energy-related working tasks are prioritized higher, slim organization, and lack of internal expert competences, i.e., mainly organizational barriers. The top four drivers for energy management are to reduce production waste, participation in energy efficiency networks, cost reduction from lower energy use, and commitment from top management. Furthermore, results show that energy management among the studied SMEs seems to not be as mature, even though the companies participated in an energy management capacity building program in the form of energy efficiency networks, which, in turn, shows a still largely untapped potential in the societal aim to reduce the energy efficiency and management gaps. The main contribution of this paper is a first novel attempt to explore barriers to, and drivers for, energy management among SMEs.

Overcoming the efficiency gap: energy management as a means for overcoming barriers to energy efficiency, empirical support in the case of Austrian large firms

The energy efficiency gap has been presented as a prevalent paradox in the literature as individuals and firms fail to invest money or effort in seemingly highly profitable efficiency improvements. This article contributes to answering which management tools promote the realization of economic energy savings. This article first provides a comparison of the barriers to energy efficiency in firms from the literature with the prescriptions of ISO standards for energy management. Second, we provide empirical evidence that such ISO-certified large Austrian firms increased implementation of energy efficiency measures by 165% compared to those firms with business-as-usual decision-making methods. These higher conservation efforts observed support the hypothesis that ISO standards are an effective instrument to overcome efficiency barriers in an economic way. The main contributing factors for this achievement are the internalization of the identification process of savings potentials and setting up a stringent decision-making and governance process, thereby increasing implementation rates of measures.

Evaluating Efficiency Change in Taiwan’s Financial Industry

This study evaluates the performance of the financial industry with meta-frontier (MF) dynamic network data envelopment analysis (DN-DEA) from 2009 to 2015. We divide the sample into two groups, Financial Holding group (FHG) and Insurance & Securities group (ISG), for all decision making units (DMUs) of the financial industry. Our goal is to study the effects of operating performance across divisions and across periods and to compare the differences between these two different groups within Taiwan’s bank industry. We find the best business performance was during 2013, where the average value was 0.5485. The best average value of FHG was 0.7192 in 2012, and ISG was 0.7099 in 2010. FHG has best average overall efficiency (OE) value in 2009–2015 periods. However, the average technical efficiency gap ratio (TGR) value of ISG’s (0.7490) is larger than FHG (0.6959), indicating that business performance is affected by group and meta-frontier. FHG has a larger scale than ISG, and so, those firms can input a relatively large proportion of investments and resources to produce better performance. Finally, many DMUs have excess inputs of labor costs and operating expenses, resulting in an average TGR value that is lower than ISG in 2009–2015.

Is imperfect evaluation a deterrent to adoption of energy audit recommendations?

PurposeEnergy-efficiency leads to productivity gains as it can lower operating and maintenance costs, increase production yields per unit of manufacturing input and improve staff accountability. Implementation of energy-efficient technologies amongst industries, the factors influencing them and the barriers to their adoption have been the subject of several studies during the past three to four decades. Though energy-use behaviours of individuals or households are sufficiently explored, industrial energy conservation behaviour is scarcely studied. This study identifies the relationship between the different behavioural elements to open up a door for behaviourally informed intervention research.Design/methodology/approachTotal interpretive structural modelling technique was used to determine the relationship between different elements of the behaviour of energy managers. Expert responses were collected to understand the relationship between the behavioural elements, through telephone interviews.FindingsThe study identified the relationship between the behavioural elements and found imperfect evaluation as the key element with the highest driving power to influence other elements.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors postulate that a behaviourally informed intervention strategy that looks into the elements with high driving power such as imperfect evaluation, lack of focus on energy-saving measures and the lack of sharing energy-saving objectives can lead to: an increase in the adoption of energy efficiency measures and thereby a reduction in the energy efficiency gap; greater productivity gains and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; Preparation of M&V protocol that incorporates behavioural, organisational and informational barriers.Social implicationsVarious policy level interventions and regulatory measures in the energy field which did not address the behavioural barriers are found unsuccessful in narrowing the energy-efficiency gap, reducing the GHG gas emissions and global warming. Understanding the key driving factor of behaviour can help to design an effective intervention strategy to address the barriers to energy efficiency improvement.Originality/valueUnderstanding the key driving factor of behaviour can help to design an effective intervention strategy to address the barriers to energy efficiency improvement. This study argues that through the systematic analysis of the imperfect evaluation of energy audit recommendations, it is possible to increase the adoption of energy efficiency measures that can lead to greater productivity gains and reduced GHG emissions.

The Impact of the Government Policy on the Energy Efficient Gap: The Evidence from Ukraine

This paper aims to check the impact of investment and institutional determinants on the energy efficiency gap. The findings of the bibliometric analysis confirmed the growth of research interests in identifying the core determinants of the energy efficiency gap. The central hypothesises are: the increasing quality of the institutions leads to an increase of green investments in the energy sector and the dual relationships between investment and institutional determinants lead to additional synergy effects, which allow boosting the decline of energy efficiency gaps of the national economy. For the analysis, the times series were collected from the World Data Bank, Eurostat, Bloomberg, for Ukraine for the period of 2002–2019. The following methods were used: the unit root test—for checking the stationarity of data—and the Johansen test and VEC-modelling—for the cointegration analysis. The findings prove that to reduce the energy efficiency gaps in Ukraine by 1% next year, it is necessary to increase green energy investments by 1.5% this year, and the political stability and public perception of corruption by 3% and 1%. The increase of the public perception of corruption by 1.47 points and of political stability by 2.38 points leads to maximising the recovery speed of the Ukrainian energy sector. Thus, while developing the policy to decrease the energy efficiency gaps, the Ukrainian government should consider the level of public perception of corruption and political stability.