Editorial Note: ICEEEE 2017

Abstract

In recent years, the wide concerns about global warming and harmful emissions from carbon fuels have resulted in an emerging interest in the development of renewable energy applications. Solar energy, with a reputation for being inexhaustible and environmentally benign, is one of the most important parts of renewable energies and has been widely used in residential, industrial, remote, and transportation areas. Generally solar energy can be used in two ways: electricity and heat. Solar thermal technology uses the solar heat energy to heat water or air for applications such as space heating, water heating, and cooling for homes and businesses. Solar thermal energy can also be harvested for power generation such as concentrating solar power plant. Solar photovoltaic technology converts solar energy into electricity using semiconducting material solar cell.

International Conference on Energy Engineering and Environmental Engineering (ICEEEE) is an annual event for renewable energy specialists to provide the opportunities for policy, technology, education, research, marketing, and business on renewable energy and exchange their idea, to present their work, to establish network, and to develop a new vision for the cooperative future of the energy. ICEEEE consists of Plenary, Keynotes, Workshops, Industrial sessions to introduce the research and development accomplished in their companies, Academic sessions and Posters. It is widely believed that the renewable energy is one of the important and fast-growing industries intended to ensure the renewable energy needs with maximum efficiency and minimal damage to the environment. By using renewable energy sources like wind turbines, the dependence on fossil fuel gas and oil reserves can also be decreased. With all these various benefits, there are still numerous challenges that should be improved and solved. In this regard, ICEEEE, which was held in Xiamen, China from April 15th to 17th 2017, provided a convenient platform for the discussion of renewable energy problems for finding new ways to solve them, ICEEEE gave the opportunity for all participants to present their developments and their opinion in such areas such as the wind energy, solar energy, hydrogen, fuel cell, and other renewable energy areas. The effectiveness of this conference has been shown by the huge amount of the interesting presentations with the fruitful discussions. We have had many submissions of outstanding and qualified research articles from ICEEEE 2017 to be published in the International Energy Journal. However, only 12 articles by a strict reviewing process are accepted for publication. The accepted papers are in the field of renewable energy policy, tidal energy, heat recovery, wind energy, geothermal energy, solar energy), energy storage systems, smart grid, and bioenergy. To be exact, these accepted papers cover the topics in energy portfolio energy conservation, energy efficiency, biomass and bioenergy, renewable energy, electricity supply and demand, energy storage, energy in buildings, and on economic and policy issues, provided such topics are within the context of the broader multi-disciplinary scope of International Energy Journal. We hope that this special issue will be of great help for many researchers and practitioners. We also would like to thank Prof. S. Kumar (Editor, International Energy Journal) for his great support and effort throughout the whole publication process. We are also grateful to the referees for their professional and timely reviews.