The future of biomass energy in the global energy system depends on many major factors, among others on the attitude of society in rural areas to the biomass energy and the renewable energy resources. Biomass energy plays increasing role in rural areas with its contribution to the self sufficiency of people in the countryside. The paper deals with the analysis the opportunities of utilization o...

The rise of renewable energy sources (RES) comes with a shift in attention from government and market energy governance to local community initiatives and self-regulation. Although this shift is generally welcome at domestic and EU level, the regulatory dimension, at both levels, is nevertheless not adapted to this multi-actor market since prosumers are not empowered and energy justice is far f...

BACKGROUND The power to influence many social determinants of health lies within local government sectors that are outside public health's traditional remit. We analyse the challenges of achieving health gains through local government alcohol control policies, where legal and professional practice frameworks appear to conflict with public health action. METHODS Current legislation governing l...

BACKGROUND Although there is global growth in outdoor smokefree areas, little is known about the associated smokefree signage. We aimed to study smokefree signage at playgrounds and to compare field observations with images from Google Street View (GSV). METHODS We randomly selected playgrounds in 21 contiguous local government areas in the lower North Island of New Zealand, all of which had ...

Effective smokefree outdoor policies (SFOP) can reduce the normalisation of smoking and aid quitting.1-3 In New Zealand (NZ), more than 90% of local government authorities have some ‘educational’ outdoor smokefree policies, but these are not enforceable by law.4 We used a case study of NZ’s capital city (Wellington) to explore the issues and options for progressing SFOP in pedestrian-dense urba...

The purpose of this study is to introduce the establishment process, policy target, and projects for "Chungnam's master plan on environmental health policy (2017-2020)" as the local government's role in addressing local environmental health challenges. We first analyzed existing studies and social issues on the media related to "Chungnam's master plan" to understand Chungnam's environmental hea...

Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed. This spatial distribution of weak supporters and strong, local opponents mirrors opposition to other policies with diffuse public benefits and concentrated local costs. I use a natu...