The strategic goals of EU energy development have been clarified, based on efforts to increase and comply with environmental protection requirements, reducing energy consumption in the manufacturing and service sector, reduce dependence on energy imports, and increase the involvement of renewable resources in energy. The structure of the unified energy system of Ukraine was monitored. The volumes of electricity released by various power-generating enterprises in Ukraine, as well as the existing capacity of main and inter-state electric power grids for transmission of electricity, were analyzed. The volume of electricity exports and imports of the unified energy system of Ukraine and its possibilities to increase exports to the EU countries have been diagnosed. It has been proven that due to the change in the operating model of the electricity market the liberalization of the electricity market of Ukraine promotes the attraction of investment resources aimed at branching the possibilities of importing electricity generated in Ukraine into the ENTSO-E system. The structural tendencies of changes in generated electricity in final consumption at the expense of renewable energy sources of the European countries and Ukraine were studied. Options for increasing the efficiency of renewable energy sources are proposed The use of renewable energy sources on the basis of leveling out certain disadvantages is proposed. The directions improve the management of electricity enterprises in the conditions of the European integration choice of Ukraine including towards attracting investment resources through the use of public-private partnerships to improve the efficiency of the energy system of Ukraine are substantiated.

Biodiversity conservation cannot operate in Central Eastern European countries without a well-established monitoring system, that is dependent on the citizen scientists input. Here we analyse, based on a Polish case: (1) The contribution of NGOs to the national nature monitoring scheme and their collaboration with governmental and scientific institutions and (2) the motivation of citizen scientists to volunteer for NGOs’ monitoring activities. The study comprises a focus group interview, 30 in-depth interviews with coordinators, citizen scientists, experts and a 23 days long participant observation of a model NGO. We have assessed the monitoring input of NGOs as being a contributory factor influencing the biodiversity conservation effectiveness. The cooperation between governmental, scientific institutions and NGOs exists, but is dependent on national funding. Although NGOs highlight the lack of coherence in monitoring methodology, they are willing to join the biodiversity monitoring, especially at the European Ecological Network – Natura 2000 sites. On the other hand the trust concerning cooperation with citizen scientists is limited. However, despite this, they still turned out to be trustworthy partners. The most effective way to maintain cooperation with citizen scientists is to create a bond in a group and to provide them with the opportunity to develop their passion for nature. Our findings have shed light on the growing importance of citizen scientists in biodiversity governance, providing recommendations for development of the effective monitoring schemes based on the volunteer work of citizen scientists.

The heat supply systems energy efficiency improvement requires the use of increasingly complex methods. The basic ways to reduce heat consumption is by using better thermal insulation, although they have more and more limited possibilities and need relatively large financial outlays. Good effects can be achieved by the better heat source adaptation to the conditions of a specific facility supplied with heat. However, this requires research that identifies the effectiveness of such solutions as well as the tools used to describe selected elements of the system or its entirety. The article presents the results of tests carried out for a gas boiler room supplying heat to a group of residential buildings. The goal was to build a model that would forecast the day range in which the maximum gas consumption occurs for a given day. Having measurements of gas consumption in subsequent hours of the day, it was decided to build a forecasting model determining the part of the day in which such a maximum would occur. To create the model the random forest procedure was used along with the mlr (Kassambara) package. The model’s hyperparameters were tuned based on historical data. Based on data for another period of boiler room operation, the results of the model’s quality assessment were presented. Close to 44% efficiency was achieved. Tuning the model improved its predictive ability.

In the article, the authors analyze and discuss several models used to the calculation of air gauge characteristics. The model based on the actual mass flow (which is smaller than the theoretical one) was proposed, too. Calculations have been performed with a dedicated software with the second critical parameters included. The air gauge static characteristics calculated with 6 different models were compared with the experimental data. It appeared that the second critical parameters model (SCP) provided the characteristics close to the experimental ones, with an error of ca. 3% within the air gauge measuring range.