In order to assess the influence of energy reduction initiatives, to determine the expected annual cost, to calculate life cycle cost, emission impact, etc. it is crucial to be able to assess the energy consumption reasonably accurate. The present work undertakes a theoretical and empirical study of the uncertainty of energy consumption assessment of domestic buildings. The calculated energy co...

This paper presents our reflections on the issue of behavioral change according to energy conservation constraints and on the status of sustainability in the design of ambient interactive systems at home. We point out how ergonomics contributes to the study of human factors underlying energy consumption. Relating to situated cognition and human computer interaction, our approach relies both on ...

Persuasive systems make it possible to change people’s behaviour. These persuasive systems build into mobile applications can use the technology available in mobile devices (sensors, always connected and always nearby). This paper investigates how a mobile application can influences the domestic energy consumption. The study consists of two parts: an interview and a literature study. In the int...

The energy consumptions in households and the energy resources used for fulfilling the energy needs have been changing in a quite short period of time. The present study aims to provide a background of the energy consumptions in Portugal in a European context. A significant part of the energy consumptions is related to buildings. It is estimated that buildings use about 40% of all the energy ne...

This paper studies the optimal growth of a developing non-renewable natural resource producer. It extracts the resource from its soil, and produces a single consumption good with man-made capital. Moreover, it can sell the extracted resource abroad and use the revenues to buy an imported good, which is a perfect substitute of the domestic consumption good. The domestic technology is convex-conc...

The cluster variation method known in statistical mechanics and condensed matter is revived for weighted bipartite networks. The decomposition (or expansion) of a Hamiltonian through a finite number of components, whence serving to define variable clusters, is recalled. As an illustration the network built from data representing correlations between (4) macroeconomic features, i.e. the so-calle...

Energy demand in China has grown at an alarming rate over the past fifteen years. In 1995, the Chinese economy consumed 33.25 quadrillion Btus of energy, and by 2011, that number had more than tripled to 109.62 quadrillion Btus (EIA, 2013). China surpassed the U.S. in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 and in terms of total energy consumed in 2009. Though forecasts vary about how quickly...

Article history: Received 18 November 2013 Received in revised form 26 August 2014 Accepted 26 August 2014 Available online 7 September 2014 Extending Sadorsky (2010), this paper focuses on nonlinear effects of financial development and income on energy consumption. Utilizing five alternative measures of financial development, it employs a panel threshold regression approach to reexamine the ef...