The world is at a pivotal crossroad in energy choices. There is a strong sense that our use of energy must be more sustainable. Moreover, many also broadly agree that a way must be found to rely increasingly on lower carbon energy sources. However, no single or clear solution exists on the means to carry out such a shift at either a national or international level. Traditional energy planning (when done) has revolved around limited cost projections that often fail to take longer term evidence and interactions of a wider set of factors into account. The good news is that evidence does exist on such change in case studies of different nations shifting toward low-carbon energy approaches. In fact, such shifts can occur quite quickly at times, alongside industrial and societal advance, innovation, and policy learning. These types of insights will be important for informing energy debates and decision-making going forward. Low Carbon Energy Transitions: Turning Points in National Policy and Innovation takes an in-depth look at four energy transitions that have occurred since the global oil crisis of 1973: Brazilian biofuels, Danish wind power, French nuclear power, and Icelandic geothermal energy. With these cases, Dr. Araujo argues that significant nationwide shifts to low-carbon energy can occur in under fifteen years, and that technological complexity is not necessarily a major impediment to such shifts. Dr. Araujo draws on more than five years of research, and interviews with over 120 different scientists, government workers, academics, and members of civil society in completing this study. Low Carbon Energy Transitions is written for professionals in energy, the environment and policy as well as for students and citizens who are interested in critical decisions about energy sustainability. Technology briefings are provided for each of the major technologies in this book, so that scientific and non-scientific readers can engage in more even discussions about the choices that are involved.

Prepared and peer-reviewed by some of the foremost experts in the field, this easy-to-use pocket reference offers a wealth of information relating to wind energy and wind energy technologies. Topics covered range from wind resources to wind turbines, covering offshore and onshore power, both stand-alone and grid-connected. The book also includes vital information on international economic support schemes and incentives and environmental issues and is peppered throughout with helpful illustrations, equations and explanations. Renewable energy professionals, students and wind energy entrepreneurs amongst others will find a host of answers in this essential book - a practical assimilation of data, fundamentals and guidelines for application.

Environmental and human catastrophe looms ever larger for planet Earth. Powerful action is required now to turn a deepening global crisis into an unprecedented opportunity for positive change. This book shows how a dramatic transformation of how humans relate to the Earth, and to one another, can be achieved. Surviving the Century is the first major publication by the World Future Council (WFC), a new international voice for future generations. Reflecting the positive mission of the WFC, each chapter addresses a different critical issue in a systematic and constructive way, describing and analysing the topic before indicating real solutions. The eight main issues covered are: countering climate chaos, renewable energy policy, local farming systems, rainforests and climate change, creating sustainable cities, cradle to cradle production systems, a radical vision for trade and creating a living democracy. Surviving the Century is a must-have primer and action plan for all leaders in government, business and NGOs, and for all who want to be part of the historic opportunity to provide solutions to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Published with the World Future Council.

What if the solution to the climate crisis is . . . capitalism? Our age will be defined by the climate emergency. But contrary to the doomist narrative that's taken hold, the world has already begun deploying the solutions needed to deal with it. On a journey across five continents, Climate Capitalism tracks the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. From the Chinese bureaucrat who did more to make electric cars a reality than Elon Musk, to the Danish students who helped to build the world's longest-operating wind turbine, or the American oil executive building the technology that can reverse climate damages, we meet the people working to scale technologies that are finally able to bend the emissions curve. Through stories that bring people, policy and technology together, Akshat Rathi reveals how the green economy is not only possible, but profitable. This inspiring blend of business, science, and history provides the framework for ensuring that future generations can live in prosperity and that the wheels of progress don't falter.

The world is on the verge of an unprecedented increase in the production and use of biofuels for transport. The combination of rising oil prices, issues of security, climate instability and pollution, deepening poverty in rural and agricultural areas, and a host of improved technologies, is propelling governments to enact powerful incentives for the use of these fuels, which is in turn sparking investment. Biofuels for Transport is a unique and comprehensive assessment of the opportunities and risks of the large-scale production of biofuels. The book demystifies complex questions and concerns, such as the food v. fuel debate. Global in scope, it is further informed by five country studies from Brazil, China, Germany, India and Tanzania. The authors conclude that biofuels will play a significant role in our energy future, but warn that the large-scale use of biofuels carries risks that require focused and immediate policy initiatives. Published in association with BMELV, FNR and GTZ.

The first book to look at how energy companies can develop brands as they move to more sustainable energy solutions. The world is facing climate crisis, and never before has the world been looking at the energy industry to solve the delivery of power in ways that do not damage the planet. Includes insights from energy business leaders and is therefore more than an academic thesis, but a practical guide to resolving these branding and sustainability challenges.

* No other text deals so comprehensively with the post-extraction stages of geothermal energy. A core reference work for many years to come* Offers key details on the main applications and technologies associated with geothermal energy* The contributing authors from across the globe represent foremost international experts in this fieldGeothermal energy refers to the heat contained within the Earth that generates geological phenomena on a planetary scale. Today, this term is often associated with man's efforts to tap in to this vast energy source. This detailed reference text describes the various methods and technologies used to exploit the earth's heat. Beginning with an overview of geothermal energy and the state of the art, leading experts in the field cover electricity generation, non-electric uses, environmental impact and economic, financial and legal considerations. Case studies are included throughout. Each chapter is written by a different author, but to a set style, beginning with aims and objectives, ending with references, self-assessment questions and answers.While written primarily for professionals and students interested in learning more about geothermal energy, the book also offers those new to the field and the general geothermal community an opportunity to understand and review the potential of this exciting alternative energy source.

Solar power has taken a journey from what was once considered the lunatic fringe to mainstream society and industry. Looking specifically at the Solex project in Carnarvon, Western Australia, which pioneered the harvest of solar energy, this book offers an introduction to the development of renewable energy and the rise of dispersed, embedded solar energy systems in Australia in the early 2000s. Fullarton shows how a practical demonstration of innovative existing technology can have an incredible impact on a national scale. The ideas behind the Solex project were adopted by the broader community and were eventually taken up enthusiastically by the general population of Australia. Analyzing government and utility policies throughout the 2000s, the book traces how ambivalence was followed by wholehearted incentives to the roll-out of alternative energy and then by active opposition to alternative energy in favor of traditional fossil fuel as government philosophies changed.

Hydroelectricity is the world's largest-and cleanest-source of renewable -energy. But despite lively interest in renewables generally, there is an information vacuum about the smallest version of the technology dubbed "the simplest, most reliable and least expensive way to generate power off grid." Highly illustrated and practical, Microhydro is the first complete book on the topic in a decade. Covering both AC and DC systems, it covers principles, design and site considerations, equipment options, and legal, environmental, and economic factors. Scott Davis has decades of experience operating, installing, designing, selling, and teaching about microhydro technology. An award-winner in the field, he currently works as a system designer and retailer with an alternative energy company for whom he has authored an on-line microhydro course.

Low-Carbon Energy Security from a European Perspective draws on the European Commission's funded project MILESECURE-2050. It considers low-carbon energy security and energy geopolitics in Europe, with a focus on four thematic clusters: challenging the energy security paradigm; climate change and energy security objectives (the components of a secure and low-carbon energy system); energy security in a geopolitical perspective, as it relates to economics, resource competition, and availability; and the influence of large scale renewable energy projects on energy security and shifting geopolitical alliances. An overarching narrative is that optimizing the energy system simultaneously across different objectives may be impossible, i.e., lowest cost, least environmental impact, minimal downtime, regional supply. This book explores these charged topics through insights from a series of novel, new energy project case studies, and demonstrates the need for difficult political conversations within Europe and beyond by posing fundamental yet new questions about the energy security paradigm.

This book focuses on the rapidly maturing solar photovoltaic (PV) industry, which is achieving an ever-increasing share of U.S. and global power production. There is a growing need for all stakeholders - owners, maintenance technicians, utilities, and installers - to fully understand the operations and maintenance of PV systems, and how to monitor and diagnose systems post installation. Recognizing this need, this book covers monitoring and diagnostic techniques and technologies, including how to identify the causes of poor performance, and measure and verify power production. Drawing on global case studies, it details how to achieve optimal PV power output in the field through an overview of basic electrical, the solar PV module and Balance of System, and processes and software for monitoring, measurement, and verification. It also provides an overview of the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioner's (NABCEP) new PV System Inspector credential, which will be outlined in the final chapter. Equipping the reader with the knowledge and confidence required to maximize the output of solar PV installations, Solar Photovoltaics Power Optimization will be an essential resource for PV practitioners and students.

This work is an account of the pioneering days of hydro-electricity in Scotland. It shows how each hydro project brought its own set of technical challenges, underlining the remarkable engineering achievements involved in bringing hydro-electric power to the wild glens of the Scottish Highlands. It concludes by looking at the future of hydro-electric power worldwide. Is hydro-electric power the sustainable technology of choice in a new century already riven with ecological angst.

This book gathers the main scientific outputs related to POREEN, a four-year project on partnering opportunities between Europe and China in the renewable energy and environmental industries, financed by the European Commission. It investigates the main challenges and opportunities related to Sino-European cooperation in the green sector with a focus on sustainable growth. The first part of the book outlines the characteristics of Chinese and European cooperation, from a policy, macro and microeconomic point of view. It examines the key elements of green policy developed so far, bilateral trade flows, as well as bilateral investment flows. The second part presents an overview and recommendations on what legal framework is necessary to boost integration between Europe and China. In addition, corporate social responsibility and firm related aspects are considered. The third part of the book focuses on engineering-related research activity. It highlights the state of the art of Europe-China cooperation in key areas such as low carbon buildings, mobility and transportation that may have a huge potential impact on bilateral cooperation between Europe and China in the years ahead.

Foreword by Lord Browne of MadingleyReviews of the First Edition:'The entire text is quite readable and can be moved through with relative ease. This reviewer heartily recommends that, regardless of your background, you read this book to really get a grasp of the cutting-edge of climate finance.'LSE Review of BooksRenewable Energy Finance (Second Edition) describes in rich detail current best practices and evolving trends in clean energy investing. With contributions by some of the world's leading experts in energy finance, the book documents how investors are spending over $300 billion each year on financing renewable energy and positioning themselves in a growing global investment market. This second edition documents, with practical examples, the ways in which investors have funded over $2.6 trillion in solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects over the past decade. The book will be a go-to reference manual for understanding the factors that shape risk and return in renewable energy, the world's fastest growing industrial sector. The book is suitable for executives new to the field, as well as advanced business students.Edited by Dr Charles Donovan, Principal Teaching Fellow at Imperial College Business School and formerly Head of Structuring and Valuation for Global Power at BP, the book will give readers a unique insiders' perspective on how renewable energy deals actually get done.

Public banks are banks located within the public sphere of a state. They are pervasive, with more than 900 institutions worldwide, and powerful, with tens of trillions in assets. Public banks are neither essentially good nor bad. Rather, they are dynamic institutions, made and remade by contentious social forces. As the first single-authored book on public banks, this timely intervention examines how these institutions can confront the crisis of climate finance and catalyse a green and just transition. The author explores six case studies across the globe, demonstrating that public banks have acquired the representative structures, financial capacity, institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and geographical reach to tackle decarbonisation, definancialisation, and democratisation. These institutions are not without contradictions, torn as they are between contending public and private interests in class-divided society. Ultimately, social forces and struggles shape how and if public banks serve the public good.

The Common Concern of Humankind today is central to efforts to bring about enhanced international cooperation in fields including, but not limited to, climate change. This book explores the expression's potential as a future legal principle. It sets out the origins of Common Concern, its differences to other common interest legal principles, and expounds the potential normative structure and effects of the principle, applying an approach of carrots and sticks in realizing goals defined as a Common Concern. Individual chapters test the principle in different legal fields, including climate technology diffusion, marine plastic pollution, human rights enforcement, economic inequality, migration, and monetary and financial stability. They confirm that basic obligations under the principle of 'Common Concern of Humankind' comprise not only that of international cooperation and duties to negotiate, but also of unilateral duties to act to enhance the potential of public international law to produce appropriate public goods.

Foreword by Lord Browne of MadingleyReviews of the First Edition:'The entire text is quite readable and can be moved through with relative ease. This reviewer heartily recommends that, regardless of your background, you read this book to really get a grasp of the cutting-edge of climate finance.'LSE Review of BooksRenewable Energy Finance (Second Edition) describes in rich detail current best practices and evolving trends in clean energy investing. With contributions by some of the world's leading experts in energy finance, the book documents how investors are spending over $300 billion each year on financing renewable energy and positioning themselves in a growing global investment market. This second edition documents, with practical examples, the ways in which investors have funded over $2.6 trillion in solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects over the past decade. The book will be a go-to reference manual for understanding the factors that shape risk and return in renewable energy, the world's fastest growing industrial sector. The book is suitable for executives new to the field, as well as advanced business students.Edited by Dr Charles Donovan, Principal Teaching Fellow at Imperial College Business School and formerly Head of Structuring and Valuation for Global Power at BP, the book will give readers a unique insiders' perspective on how renewable energy deals actually get done.

Local Content and Sustainable Development in Global Energy Markets analyses the topical and contentious issue of the critical intersections between local content requirements (LCRs) and the implementation of sustainable development treaties in global energy markets including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, South America, Australasia and the Middle East While LCRs generally aim to boost domestic value creation and economic growth, inappropriately designed LCRs could produce negative social, human rights and environmental outcomes, and a misalignment of a country's fiscal policies and global sustainable development goals. These unintended outcomes may ultimately serve as disincentive to foreign participation in a country's energy market. This book outlines the guiding principles of a sustainable and rights-based approach - focusing on transparency, accountability, gender justice and other human rights issues - to the design, application and implementation of LCRs in global energy markets to avoid misalignments.

As windfarms proliferate across the UK, visualisation as a means of predicting the scale and impacts of wind turbines has become a highly controversial subject. The purpose of any visualisation is to inform so that judgements can be made by professionals and the general public alike. Yet after nearly two decades, post-construction shocks are still common and the public demand for comprehensible and reliable pre-planning visuals increases. In Windfarm Visualisation, the author draws together a blend of knowledge and experience to explain the many scientific disciplines involved. He gives an overview of how some simple fixed standards facilitate proper validation and testing to restore confidence in visualisations which allow realistic prediction and effective planning. Photography is both an art and a science which, if used scientifically, must be capable of being tested. Current practice is found at best to be impractical and at worst an artifice to diminish potential impacts. Under scrutiny, flaws in the adopted methodology are exposed, pseudo-science is repudiated and wide-ranging problems for the public, planners and decision-makers explored and explained.The assumption that perspective geometry equates to what we see is challenged and the case is made that visual representation must take full account of human visual perception. This simple subject has been subverted by needless complexity. In Windfarm Visualisation this complexity is stripped away to provide a refreshingly informative text covering the fundamentals of photomontage visualisation, the unique challenges of representing windfarms and some simple recommendations for fixed photographic standards and presentation formats to restore confidence in predictive visualisation. It is also a scientific detective story into what we see, how it can be misrepresented and manipulated by self-interested parties and how visualisation itself has become the unwitting victim of its own potential to reliably inform the planning system and the public.

The energy revolution is already underway as people around the world embrace renewable energy in their communities. This groundbreaking book summarises why we must switch to renewables and explains how this can be achieved where you live. It is packed full of success stories from energy pioneers in the UK, America, Europe, Asia and Africa. It shows how we can all play a vital role in the energy revolution and change the world, one community at a time!Drawing on the author's two decades of experience as a renewable energy engineer, community activist, consultant, business leader and government adviser, Energy Revolution gives you the tools to develop projects in your locality. This handbook covers everything needed to structure your community power company - the technology, site assessment, legal and business planning, fundraising and financial modelling - whilst putting people at the heart of your strategy. Change the system from the bottom up and make the next great leap forward to achieving clean, affordable, democratic energy. It's time for us to take control, relocalise, reduce costs and carbon emissions, repower our neighbourhoods and join the energy revolution.

In the first and only book to explore Scotland's part in the green revolution and what the future may hold, Westbrook refutes common arguments against wind power with hard facts and a wry sense of humour.

Solar energy is a substantial global industry, one that has generated trade disputes among superpowers, threatened the solvency of large energy companies, and prompted serious reconsideration of electric utility regulation rooted in the 1930s. One of the biggest payoffs from solar's success is not the clean inexpensive electricity it can produce, but the lessons it provides for innovation in other technologies needed to address climate change. Despite the large literature on solar, including analyses of increasingly detailed datasets, the question as to how solar became inexpensive and why it took so long still remains unanswered. Drawing on developments in the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, and China, this book provides a truly comprehensive and international explanation for how solar has become inexpensive. Understanding the reasons for solar's success enables us to take full advantage of solar's potential. It can also teach us how to support other low-carbon technologies with analogous properties, including small modular nuclear reactors and direct air capture. However, the urgency of addressing climate change means that a key challenge in applying the solar model is in finding ways to speed up innovation. Offering suggestions and policy recommendations for accelerated innovation is another key contribution of this book. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy technology and innovation, climate change and energy analysis and policy, as well as practitioners and policymakers working in the existing and emerging energy industries.

This book focuses on the rapidly maturing solar photovoltaic (PV) industry, which is achieving an ever-increasing share of U.S. and global power production. There is a growing need for all stakeholders - owners, maintenance technicians, utilities, and installers - to fully understand the operations and maintenance of PV systems, and how to monitor and diagnose systems post installation. Recognizing this need, this book covers monitoring and diagnostic techniques and technologies, including how to identify the causes of poor performance, and measure and verify power production. Drawing on global case studies, it details how to achieve optimal PV power output in the field through an overview of basic electrical, the solar PV module and Balance of System, and processes and software for monitoring, measurement, and verification. It also provides an overview of the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioner's (NABCEP) new PV System Inspector credential, which will be outlined in the final chapter. Equipping the reader with the knowledge and confidence required to maximize the output of solar PV installations, Solar Photovoltaics Power Optimization will be an essential resource for PV practitioners and students.

The European Union is poised to establish a genuine European Energy Union with the new powers conferred on it by the Lisbon Treaty. Since 2014, it has been developing and implementing an energy strategy that responds to the three overarching priorities of climate change, political security, and economic competitiveness by 2030. The European Energy Union aims to provide secure, sustainable and affordable energy throughout the cycle of production, transport and consumption. This book outlines the legal regime underpinning this regulatory strategy, which integrates EU law with international law and with the law of the member states and affiliated states. It analyses and explains the increasing interaction between these legal orders in achieving the shared objective of transforming the European and global energy systems. This book will appeal to scholars and students of energy law and policy at both European and international levels.

This book offers a complete introduction for novices to understand key concepts of biocatalysis and how to produce in-house enzymes that can be used for low-cost biofuels production. The authors discuss the challenges involved in the commercialization of the biofuel industry, given the expense of commercial enzymes used for lignocellulose conversion. They describe the limitations in the process, such as complexity of lignocellulose structure, different microbial communities' actions and interactions for degrading the recalcitrant structure of lignocellulosic materials, hydrolysis mechanism and potential for bio refinery. Readers will gain understanding of the key concepts of microbial catalysis of lignocellulosic biomass, process complexities and selection of microbes for catalysis or genetic engineering to improve the production of bioethanol or biofuel