This research presents a conceptual model to illustrate how people living in rural areas can harness bioenergy to create beneficial ‘community-driven’ income-generating activities. The research is contextualised within the rural developing areas of Bangladesh where people live in abject poverty and energy deficiency. The research methodology applied in this study aims to determine the basic requirements for implementing community-based anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities and illustrate how an AD facility positively impacts upon the lives of rural communities directly after its installation. The survey results demonstrate that implementing a biogas plant can save 1 h and 43 min of worktime per day for a rural family where women are generally expected to for cook (by the long-term tradition). In addition to the positive impacts on health and climate change through adoption of clean energy generation, this time saving could be utilised to improve women′s and children’s education. The research concludes that, by providing easy access to clean bioenergy, AD can change people’s quality of life, yielding major social, economic and environmental transformations; key benefits include: extending the working day; empowering women; reducing indoor air pollution; and improving people’s health and welfare. Each of these tangible benefits can positively contribute towards achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This work demonstrates the potential to increase the implementation of AD systems in other developing world countries that have similar geographic and socioeconomic conditions.

Calculations towards determining the greenhouse gas mitigation capacity of a small-scale biogas plant (3.2 m³ plant) using cow dung in Bangladesh are presented. A general life cycle assessment was used, evaluating key parameters (biogas, methane, construction materials and feedstock demands) to determine the net environmental impact. The global warming potential saving through the use of biogas as a cooking fuel is reduced from 0.40 kg CO₂ equivalent to 0.064 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of dung. Biomethane used for cooking can contribute towards mitigation of global warming. Prior to utilisation of the global warming potential of methane (from 3.2 m³ biogas plant), the global warming potential is 13 t of carbon dioxide equivalent. This reduced to 2 t as a result of complete combustion of methane. The global warming potential saving of a bioenergy plant across a 20-year life cycle is 217 t of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is 11 t per year. The global warming potential of the resultant digestate is zero and from construction materials is less than 1% of total global warming potential. When the biogas is used as a fuel for cooking, the global warming potential will reduce by 83% compare with the traditional wood biomass cooking system. The total 80 MJ of energy that can be produced from a 3.2 m³ anaerobic digestion plant would replace 1.9 t of fuel wood or 632 kg of kerosene currently used annually in Bangladesh. The digestate can also be used as a nutrient rich fertiliser substituting more costly inorganic fertilisers, with no global warming potential impact.

The enormous growth in the cellular networks and ubiquitous wireless services has incurred momentous energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thereby, imposed a great challenge to the development of energy-efficient sustainable cellular networks. With the augmentation of harvesting renewable energy, cellular base stations (BSs) are progressively being powered by renewable energy sources (RES) to reduce the energy crisis, carbon contents, and its dependency on conventional grid supply. Thus, the combined utilization of renewable energy sources with the electrical grid system is proving to be a more realistic option for developing an energy-efficient as well as an eco-sustainable system in the context of green mobile communications. The ultimate objective of this work is to develop a traffic-aware grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) optimal power supply system endeavoring the remote radio head (RRH) enabled heterogeneous networks (HetNets) aiming to minimize grid energy consumption and carbon footprint while ensuring long-term energy sustainability and energy efficiency (EE). Moreover, the load balancing technique is implemented among collocated BSs for better resource blocks (RBs) utilization and thereafter, the performance of the system is compared with an existing cell zooming enabled cellular architecture for benchmarking. Besides, the techno-economic feasibility of the envisaged system has been extensively analyzed using HOMER optimization software considering the dynamic nature of solar generation profile and traffic arrival rate. Furthermore, a thorough investigation is conducted with the help of Monte-Carlo simulations to assess the wireless network performance in terms of throughput, spectral efficiency (SE), and energy efficiency as well under a wide range of design scenarios. The numerical outcomes demonstrate that the proposed grid-tied solar PV/battery system can achieve a significant reduction of grid power consumption yielding up to 54.8% and ensure prominent energy sustainability with the effective modeling of renewable energy harvesting.

With the proliferation of cellular networks, the ubiquitous availability of new-generation multimedia devices, and their wide-ranging data applications, telecom network operators are increasingly deploying the number of cellular base stations (BSs) to deal with unprecedented service demand. The rapid and radical deployment of the cellular network significantly exerts energy consumption and carbon footprints to the atmosphere. The ultimate objective of this work is to develop a sustainable and environmentally-friendly cellular infrastructure through compelling utilization of the locally available renewable energy sources (RES) namely solar photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT), and biomass generator (BG). This article addresses the key challenges of envisioning the hybrid solar PV/WT/BG powered macro BSs in Bangladesh considering the dynamic profile of the RES and traffic intensity in the tempo-spatial domain. The optimal system architecture and technical criteria of the proposed system are critically evaluated with the help of HOMER optimization software for both on-grid and off-grid conditions to downsize the electricity generation cost and waste outflows while ensuring the desired quality of experience (QoE) over 20 years duration. Besides, the green energy-sharing mechanism under the off-grid condition and the grid-tied condition has been critically analyzed for optimal use of green energy. Moreover, the heuristic algorithm of the load balancing technique among collocated BSs has been incorporated for elevating the throughput and energy efficiency (EE) as well. The spectral efficiency (SE), energy efficiency, and outage probability performance of the contemplated wireless network are substantially examined using Matlab based Monte–Carlo simulation under a wide range of network configurations. Simulation results reveal that the proper load balancing technique pledges zero outage probability with expected system performance whereas energy cooperation policy offers an attractive solution for developing green mobile communications employing better utilization of renewable energy under the proposed hybrid solar PV/WT/BG scheme.