Clean Energy Supply and Energy Efficiency Analysis in Agricultural Production Systems
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Biosystem and Biological Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 2061
Special Issue Editor
Interests: energy in agriculture; renewable energy; precision agriculture; conservation agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Sources of fossil energy have been one of the main drivers of the continuous development of agricultural production systems from the Green Revolution era (1950s and 1960s) until today. This has led in increased yields and reduced worker fatigue in both open-field crop production and controlled environment agricultural construction but has also been accompanied by the associated greenhouse gas emissions that make significant contributions to global warming potential and climate change.
In the last three decades, a series of technologies and strategies with the ability to increase energy use efficiency as well as others producing energy using alternative methods (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, etc.) have been developed and have become commercial after continuous research and innovation progress. They have mainly found applications in urban and industrial environments, and in the meantime, they have become technically optimized and cheaper. Agricultural systems have not adopted such solutions to a great extent, but today, the technical, economic, and political circumstances seem to be optimal for the high integration of clean energy production and energy efficient systems in crop production.
To do so, this Special Issue is devoted to technical, economic and social solutions that assist in defossilising the agricultural sector by considering how combined energy and crop production that do not affect yield output can be major drivers for rural development and make great contributions for climate change mitigation.
Dr. Thanos Balafoutis
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- renewable energy sources
- energy efficiency
- carbon compensation
- defossilisation
- agricultural systems
- direct energy use
- indirect energy use
- life cycle assessment
- greenhouse gases emission
- climate change
