Neven Duic

University of Zagreb · Department of Energy, Power Engineering and Environment (FSB)

To achieve the transition towards net-zero carbon economy and transport, reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases and improving the quality of life in the coastal areas, decarbonization of various naval fleets will be essential. In this research, gradual decarbonization, using different hybrid, electric and hydrogen technologies for decarbonizati...

Energy Communities (ECs) are promoted by European Union to play a key role in achieving the goal of a just energy transition with active participation of citizens. Many countries are adopting relevant European Directives and integrate ECs in their legislative framework. To this direction, this paper concentrates on analyzing the existing conditions...

This 42nd volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management includes two articles from the 2023 Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) conference series as well as two ordinary articles. The two first articles establish links between the energy systems analysis model EnergyPLAN an...

Given the possible economic consequences, poorer countries have more challenges in delivering their Nationally Determined Contributions. As a developing country, Chile has pledged to attain carbon neutrality by 2050. While Chile has implemented several mitigation measures, it still relies heavily on carbon sequestration, intending to sequester arou...

The present paper reviews the hot topics at the 18th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water, and Environment Systems (SDEWES) held from 24 to 29 September 2023 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The selected papers, including aspects of biomass energy application, energy saving in building, low-carbon development and climate change adaptation,...

Accurate distributed photovoltaic power forecasting is crucial for both electricity retailers and distribution network operators. Mining the rich correlations within distributed photovoltaic data has immense potential to boost forecasting accuracy. However, existing correlation modeling approaches often demand centralized aggregation of raw power d...

Visionary action for integrating across systems towards decarbonisation is a crucial need for better respecting the life-support systems of the planet and providing benefits for humanity. Upholding this guiding vision, the 18th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems has provided new insights to inform an inte...

To meet the nationally determined contributions proposed by the countries that signed the Paris Agreement, investments must be made in renewable generation technologies such as solar and wind. However, due to their high variability, these technologies pose challenges in terms of meeting demand or generating excess electricity. For this reason, ener...

With this volume 40 the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management can celebrate its 10 years anniversary. In this editorial we take a closer look at the journals impact over its first 10 years of existence and highlight the articles that have made the largest impacts in the scientific community from a citation perspective....

As global energy crises and climate change intensify, offshore wind energy, as a renewable energy source, is given more attention globally. The wind power generation system is fundamental in harnessing offshore wind energy, where the control and design significantly influence the power production performance and the production cost. As the scale of...

This paper presents an overview for the Special Issue of Clean Technology and Environmental Policy journal (CTEP), and it includes accepted papers from: 5th South East European Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) held from May 22–26, 2022, in Vlore, Albania. 3rd Latin American Conferences on Sust...

This editorial article discusses recent findings in the optimization and engineering for sustainable development. The current Special Issue (SI) of the Optimization and Engineering journal stems from the 2022 Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Conferences. These events included the 5th South East European, 3rd Latin Am...

The current applications in the energy sector are based largely on fossil fuels which release greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. To face the issue of global warming, the energy sector has to transfer to and develop sustainable energy solutions that do not release carbon emissions. This is one of the primary motivators for the SDEWES confer...

The number of data centres (DC) in recent years is growing rapidly, and with that, the share in total consumption of electricity is growing too. A significant amount of electricity is transformed into heat energy which increases the optimal temperature in DC for component operation. This heat needs to be removed and usually, it doesn’t have any fur...

In this critical decade for climate action, rapid and far-reaching transitions depend on the choices and actions that are taken now and in the near-term. Integrated approaches that advance the sustainable development of energy, water and environment systems have crucial roles in enabling shifts in direction and better protecting the life-support sy...

The utilization of anaerobic systems for biogas production integrates various aspects such as renewable energy generation, waste management, waste treatment, and biofertilizer production. This study introduces a model that focuses on the economic optimization of a biomass supply network for biogas production in urban areas. The selected feedstocks...

This 38th volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management presents some of the newest work within in the energy planning, energy systems analyses and district heating area. Articles focus on multi objective optimisarion for a community in the Alps, carbon neutrality in Estonia, the prospects of heat pumps combined...

Small Islands usually rely on fossil fuels for their energy supply and face common challenges such as high energy costs and carbon dioxide emissions. For these reasons they represent interesting cases for analysing the transition towards a clean and secure energy system. Nevertheless, integrating non-dispatchable Renewable Energy Sources in the pow...

The aim of this study was to analyse specific greenhouse gas emissions savings for a variety of agricultural residues, industrial by-products, and municipal biowaste. One of the most viable alternatives to fossil fuels is bioenergy, particularly biogas produced by the anaerobic digestion of renewable feedstocks. The revised Renewable Energy Directi...

Over the years, due to the climate crisis, sustainable economic growth and biodiversity protection have been increasingly promoted. Scientists, researchers, and experts in the field of sustainable development highlighted that bio-based restoration of ecosystems and responsible management of existing resources are needed to meet the needs of future...

Electricity generation from photovoltaic (PV) plants plays a major role in the decarbonization of the energy sector. The core objective of this paper is to identify the most important conditions for the future development of PV in order to achieve its greatest possible benefits of PV systems for society. This analysis is based on the documentation...

The 16th conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) has been successfully held on Oct. 10−15, 2021 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The Chair as well as the initiator of SDEWES series, Prof. Neven Duic, who is the professor in the University of Zagreb, serves as the associate editor of Energy Storage and Saving (E...

This paper presents an overview for the Special Issue (SI) of Clean Technology and Environmental Policy journal (CTEP), and it includes accepted papers from 16th Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) held from October 10–15, 2021, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Considering CTEPs policy of high-quality rese...

The heating sector of the European Union covers 80% of the household’s final energy consumption, which shows its relevance for the energy transition to the carbon neutral society, as set out in the Green Deal. Since most of the heat demand is located in the high heat density areas, district heating shows to be a promising solution for reducing the...

Europe’s decarbonisation ambitions can’t be achieved without the full and rapid decarbonisation of its buildings which represent over 36% of its greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of which are linked to space heating and domestic hot water preparation. District heating, and in recent times, cooling must play a large role in satisfying this dema...

Grounded in the idea of meeting the needs of generations across time, sustainable development bears a close relationship to the way in which humanity consumes energy. Nevertheless, the historic notion that energy demand growth reflects improved living standards, economic development and prosperity are challenged when sustainability constraints and...

Integrated approaches in energy, water and environmental systems can improve the climate change reduction process. New scientific developments and advancements have provided numerous opportunities in the comprehensive human progress direction. In this regard, we have reviewed the 16th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Envir...

Accurate wind farm cluster power forecasting is of great significance for the safe operation of the power system with high wind power penetration. However, most of the current neural network methods used for wind farm cluster power forecasting have the following three problems: (1) lack of consideration of dynamic spatio-temporal correlation among...

In this research, we present a new long-term energy planning model that considers endogenous capacity investment, energy dispatch, Power-to-X, and demand response technologies. A thorough literature review of existing energy planning models is also presented, allowing to present the distinctive characteristics of the proposed model. The proposed mo...

The urgency of mitigating climate change comes with opportunities to transition society towards a more sustainable future. Numerous options exist for immediate, deep, and sustained efforts to realise a 43% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Beyond the recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this editorial extend...

Today, coal is responsible for 40% of annual CO2 emissions. At the same time, global warming causes climate changes accompanied with catastrophic meteorological phenomena all over the world. After the 2015 Paris Agriment many countries set ambitious energy policy to reduce the annual greenhouse gas emission. The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, C...

Sustainability has become a broad societal goal, aiming to ensure that human beings coexist safely and harmoniously with nature over a longer time. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy is coming to an end. The development and merits of sustainable energy supply, advanced technology, and economic features have received signif...

The background of this Special Issue (SI) of the Optimization and Engineering (OPTE) journal is the 2021 Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) Conference. This broad field was discussed by the participants of the 16th SDEWES Conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This SI aims to bring together articles that discu...

The impact of the transport sector on climate change and carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere can be decreased by the utilization of biofuels and e-fuels. The chemical kinetics for calculating the combustion process of new biofuels and e-fuels is often excessively computationally demanding for numerical simulations, leading to the developme...

This review article reveals the status of research within the application of renewable energy sources. It focuses on the status of renewable technologies, the role of renewable energy sources in meeting sustainable development goals, the status of the research into the sustainability of the renewable energy systems, and finally on the integration o...

Current disposal of end-of-life plastics by landfilling or incineration raises serious environmental concerns, simultaneously representing an irretrievable loss of valuable resources. Especially this is evident for materials that have a complex structure, like polyurethane foams. In this work, co-pyrolysis with sawdust was carried out to analyze an...

The Spanish national energy and climate plan (PNIEC) has recently been published, leading the worldwide task of climate change mitigation towards a net zero-carbon economy by 2050. The objective scenario of the PNIEC expects to reach a renewable share in the power system of 74% by 2030. In this context, three contributions are developed: i) providi...

Long term-energy planning has gradually moved towards finer temporal and spatial resolutions of the energy system to design the decarbonization of the society. However, integrated assessment models (IAMs), focusing on a broader concept of sustainability transition, are typically yearly-resolution models which complicates capturing the specific supp...

It is well‐known that the pollutant formation processes and temperature distribution in various combustion systems that operate at high temperatures are influenced by radiation heat transport. Detailed modeling of radiation transport in internal combustion (IC) engines demands additional computational power, and hence the calculation of radiation p...

Wind power has received extensive attention due to its superiorities of clean and pollution-free. However, because of the randomness and volatility of wind power, accurate power prediction is needed to help its consumption. Wind speed is the key to wind power prediction, but traditional prediction method cannot accurately grasp the wind speed varia...

This 34th volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management includes papers from the 2021 conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) held October 10-15, 2021, in Dubrovnik, Croatia as well as the 7th International Conference on Smart Energy Systems held September 21-22 i...

The European Union and other signatories to the Paris Climate Accord have agreed to limit global warming to 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Previously published studies have examined the optimal energy system structure required to satisfy carbon neutrality end goals. This research focuses on addressing the intermediate steps towards decarbo...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the supply chains of traditional fossil fuels. According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) from 2020, oil-refining activity fell by more than the IEA had anticipated. It was also assumed that the demand in 2021 would likely be 2.6 million bpd below the 2019 levels. However, re...

This article positions collective renewable energy prosumerism as a social movement that engages in energy system transformation. Collective renewable energy prosumer initiatives engage in ‘prefigurative’ work through their discursive framings (ways of thinking), their activities (ways of doing) and their understanding and enactment of social relat...

This paper is the editorial for the virtual special issue (VSI) of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (RSER) dedicated to 4 SDEWES Conferences held in 2020, namely: (i) the 2nd Latin American Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (LASDEWES 2020) held from February 9 to 12, 2020 in Buenos Aires, Argenti...

In developing countries, national-level institutions are often limited by key transportation energy efficiency indicators. A transportation model based on 40 artificial neural networks was developed to fill this gap. Data on energy efficiency indicators for 28 European countries have been collected to train a model for predicting these indicators u...

This paper presents an overview for the special issue of Clean Technology and Environmental Policy journal (CTEP), and it includes invited papers from four Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) held in 2020. Conferences whose paper are a part of this overview are: 15th SDEWES Conference (01st Septe...

Since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, European Union has made contributions to increase the share of renewable energy in its energy mix and limit global warming to 2 °C. Additionally, the European Union has with the passing of the “European Green Deal”, set a plan to transition to a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 which is planned to be...

District heating systems are almost always located in densely populated urban areas where various heat sources are available, such as cooling and refrigeration systems in supermarkets, shopping malls, and power transformers. These urban sources often have a large share of waste heat, which is usually emitted into the environment. This waste heat co...

The ongoing process of climate change has shown that sustainable development of humankind is a necessity. Existing resources need to be used in a form of a circular economy, and no more in a linear economy as has been the case until now. Resources need to be better managed to meet the needs of future generations. Therefore, energy, water and enviro...

Following the 2015 Paris Agreement and other agreements which have been signed after, sustainable energy development is becoming the major goal in many countries. EU have set the targets to reduce the annual greenhouse gas emission by 40% in 2030 and 80% for 2050 compared with 1990 levels. For achieving this ambitious energy policy, three major tec...

This editorial provides an overview of ten scientific articles published as the Special paper selection in Thermal Science. The papers were selected from almost six hundred contributions, presented at the 16th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES 2021), held on October 10-15, 2021 in Dubrovnik, Croa...

Anthropogenically caused climate change is among the main problems that society faces today. To limit the increase in average global surface temperature, several countries have developed targets (e.g., goals of the Paris agreement) that seek to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions levels, particularly from the energy and transport sectors. The ins...

The sustainable transition of an entirely coal-powered energy system is a challenge that can be solved by integrating variable renewable energy sources and considering the synergic effect between energy supply and different sectors of energy consumption. This research shows how the scaling-up in variable renewable energy sources uptake and sector c...

This issue presents some of the latest findings within energy planning research and form a special issue for the 2021 5th Annual Conference of the Portuguese Association of Energy Economics as well as for the 2020 Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems conference series. The work presented probes into the effects of the...

Integrated approaches across energy, water and environment systems can accelerate the process of mitigating climate change through urgent action. New scientific advances that extend multiple opportunities in this direction have emanated from the 2nd Latin American, 1st Asia Pacific, 4th South East European and 15th Conferences on Sustainable Develo...