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.

Written by an expert in energy business who has been invited to G20/B20 taskforces Covers the latest developments in smart cities, green transport, and carbon solutions Each chapter features practical strategies alongside international examples and case studies

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.

This book investigates the role of law in enabling and addressing the barriers to the development of off-grid renewable electricity (OGRE). The limited development of OGRE is ascribed to a host of social, economic, and legal barriers, including the problem of initial capital costs, existing subsidies for conventional electricity, and lack of technological and institutional capacity. Through the analyses of selected case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America, this book discusses the typical barriers to the development of OGRE from a global perspective and examines the role of the law in addressing them. Drawing together the lessons learnt from the case studies, this book offers robust recommendations on how the development of OGRE will support the goal of achieving universal access to low carbon, reliable, and sustainable electricity globally. This volume will be of great interest to students, scholars, policy makers, investors, and practitioners in the fields of energy law and policy, climate change, and renewable energy development.

Building on insights from ecological economics and philosophy of technology, this book offers a novel, interdisciplinary approach to understand the contradictory nature of Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is rapidly emerging as a cost-effective option in the world economy. However, reports about miserable working conditions, environmentally deleterious mineral extraction and toxic waste dumps corrode the image of a problem-free future based on solar power. Against this backdrop, Andreas Roos explores whether 'ecologically unequal exchange' - an asymmetric transfer of labour time and natural resources - is a necessary condition for solar PV development. He demonstrates how the massive increase in solar PV installation over recent years would not have been possible without significant wage/price differences in the world economy - notably between Europe/North America and Asia- and concludes that solar PV development is currently contingent on environmental injustices in the world economy. As a solution, Roos argues that solar technology is best coupled with strategies for degrowth, which allow for a transition away from fossil fuels and towards a socially just and ecologically sustainable future. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of solar power, philosophy of technology, and environmental justice.

This book addresses the rapidly changing citizen roles in innovation, technology adoption, intermediation, market creation, and legitimacy building for low-carbon solutions. It links research in innovation studies, sustainability transitions, and science and technology studies, and builds a new approach for the study of user contributions to innovation and sociotechnical change. Citizen Activities in Energy Transition gives detailed and empirically grounded overall appraisal of citizens' active technological engagement in the current energy transition, in an era when Internet connectivity has given rise to important new forms of citizen communities and interactions. It elaborates a new way to study users in sociotechnical change through long-term ethnographic and historical research and reports its deployment in a major, decade-long line of investigation on user activities in small-scale renewables, addressing user contributions from the early years to the late proliferation stages of small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RETs). It offers a much-needed empirical and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the activities in which users are engaged over the course of sociotechnical change, including innovation, adoption, adjustment, intermediation, community building, digital communities, market creation, and legitimacy creation. This work is a must-read for those seeking to understand the role of users in innovation, energy systems change and the significance of new digital communities in present and future sociotechnical change. Academics, policymakers, and managers are given a new resource to understand the "demand side" of sociotechnical change beyond the patterns of investment, adoption, and social acceptance that have traditionally occupied their attention.

Developed in partnership between Skills2Learn and Cengage Learning, this highly interactive workbook can be used as a resource tool for all introductory renewable energy vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. This unique workbook is designed to consolidate learners' theoretical knowledge prior to undertaking practical workshop exercises. Introduction to Renewable Energy provides learners with a thorough insight into renewable energies including the different types of heat and electricity producing technologies, the selection process, incentives and government policies. Part of the Renewable Energy Series, this unique write-in workbook can also be used alongside the Skills2Learn Introduction to Renewable Energy virtual reality e-learning programme making this a first-of-its-kind, fully integrated blended learning solution.

We are on the verge of a crippling energy crisis that could undermine our economy and change our way of life. In "Who Turned Out the Lights?", Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson, editors of the award-winning nonpartisan Web site PublicAgenda.org, offer a much-needed reality check. Neither 'Drill, Baby, Drill' nor 'Every Day is Earth Day' is an effective energy policy, and these kinds of ideological roadblocks have left us spinning our wheels for too long. If we don't get our act together and do something now, we'll be scrambling to get the energy we need to make life as we know it possible. But while the topic is serious, learning what you need to know about it doesn't have to be. Featuring chapters entitled 'Dam It: Hydroelectric Power' and 'Time for the Nuclear Option?' and sidebars like 'This little piggy went to market while this little piggy passed laws', this book will be anything but dry. By applying the same winning approach they used to irreverently explain the federal budget crisis in "Where Does the Money Go?" , Bittle and Johnson will use pop culture to help define the fundamental concepts that shape the debate and explain the three risks we face: that we won't be able to afford the energy we need, that we'll be dangerously dependent on foreign energy, and that we'll destroy the planet before we have a chance to solve the problem. They will also help readers understand the pros and cons of a range of ideas on the agenda, including alternative fuels, nuclear power, clean coal, electric cars, fixing up our houses, taxing carbon emissions, and many more. In the end, the authors take one position: we must change the way we get and use energy, and there's no more time to waste. Beyond that, they'll leave how to get from here to there as an open question - one Americans simply have to understand better and tackle head on.

When industry giants such as GE, Toyota, and Sharp and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multi-billion dollar investments in clean technology, the message is clear. Developing clean technologies is no longer a social issue championed by environmentalists: it's a money-making enterprise moving solidly into the business mainstream. In fact, as the economy faces unprecedented challenges from high energy prices, resource shortages, and global environmental and security threats, clean tech-technologies designed to provide superior performance at a lower cost while creating significantly less waste than conventional offerings - promises to be the next engine of economic growth.In "The Clean Tech Revolution", authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street trading floors, and in government offices around the globe. By highlighting eight major clean-tech sectors - solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration - they uncover how investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals can profit from this next wave of technological innovation.Finally, Pernick and Wilder shine the spotlight on the winners among technologies, companies, and regions that are likely to reap the greatest benefits from clean tech - and they show you why the time to act is now. Groundbreaking and authoritative, this is the must-read book to understand and profit from the clean technologies that are reshaping our fast-changing world.

This book studies the extent to which nuclear safety issues have contributed towards the stagnation of nuclear power development around the world, and accounts for differences in safety regulations in different countries. In order to understand why nuclear development has not met widespread expectations, this book focusses on six key countries with active nuclear power programmes: the USA, China, France, South Korea, the UK, and Russia. The authors integrate cultural theory and theory of regulation, and examine the links between pressures of cultural bias on regulatory outcomes and political pressures which have led to increased safety requirements and subsequent economic costs. They discover that although nuclear safety is an important upward driver of costs in the nuclear power industry, this is influenced by the inherent need to control potentially dangerous reactions rather than stricter nuclear safety standards. The findings reveal that differences in the strictness of nuclear safety regulations between different countries can be understood by understanding differences in cultural contexts and the changes in this over time. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers working on energy policy and regulation, environmental politics and policy, and environment and sustainability more generally.

This volume is a true shelf reference, providing a thorough overview of the entire renewable energy sphere, while still functioning as a go-to information source for professionals and students when they need answers about a specific technical issue. Crafted over the last 15 years into a problem-solving tool for engineers, researchers, consultants and planners currently working in the field, as well as a detailed map of the renewables universe for those looking to expand into new technological specialties, Renewable Energy by Sorensen offers the most comprehensive coverage of the subject available.
The book has been structured around three parts in order to assist readers in focusing on the issues that impact them the most for a given project or question. PART I covers the basic scientific principles behind all major renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind and biomass. PART II provides in-depth information about how these raw renewable sources can actually be converted into useful forms, transmitted into the grid and stored for future utilization. Finally, PART III undertakes the aspects of energy planning, environmental impacts and socio-economic issues on regional and global levels.
In this fourth edition update, new material includes expanded coverage of biofuels, solar conversion, biomass and fuel cells, storage and transmission, and a new chapter on integrated technologies to introduce the hybrid systems now being explored. New surveys and the most recent research findings are included throughout.
*New, thoroughly updated fourth edition of the authoritative field guide to the entire Renewable Energy universe
*The only books to scientific principles and implementation methods, technologies and socio-economics, environmental impacts and cutting-edge advances, all in one volume.
*New material includes expanded coverage of biofuels, solar conversion, biomass and fuel cells, storage and transmission, and a new chapter on integrated systems.

This book investigates the economic effects of investing in solar energy technologies, given assumptions about the cost of the technologies, and the amount of solar energy that can be supplied. It makes long-range projections of economic growth and capital investment in the 1980-2000 period.

Taking a comparative case study approach between Canada and Germany, this book investigates the contrasting response of governments to anti-wind movements. Environmental social movements have been critical players for encouraging the shift towards increased use of renewable energy. However, social movements mobilizing against the installation of wind turbines have now become a major obstacle to their increased deployment. Andrea Bues draws on a cross-Atlantic comparative analysis to investigate the different contexts of contentious energy policy. Focusing on two sub-national forerunner regions in installed wind power capacity - Brandenburg and Ontario - Bues draws on social movement theory to explore the concept of discursive energy space and propose explanations as to why governments respond differently to social movements. Overall, Social Movements against Wind Power in Canada and Germany offers a novel conceptualization of discursive-institutional contexts of contentious energy politics and helps better understand protest against renewable energy policy. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of renewable energy policy, sustainability and climate change politics, social movement studies and environmental sociology.

This book addresses the problem of how to make a large-scale socio-technical transition to renewable energy, so as to realize an environmentally sustainable economy in the long run. Transition thinking has in a short time managed to occupy a central position in the policy debate on sustainable development. The transition approach offers an innovative view on the role and content of public policy, compared with traditional views from economic, administrative and political sciences. The main motivation for using this notion is that while it links up with the system-wide approach of sustainable development, it has the advantage of shifting the attention from a vague end goal (blueprint) to the processes leading towards this goal. These processes in turn provide a concrete basis for thinking about appropriate public policies, taking account of the complex relations between technologies, institutions and behaviours. This book offers perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, addressing macro, regional and local scales. Contributions come from mainstream economics, evolutionary economics, sociology, political sciences, innovation studies, spatial economics and decision theory. Important lessons are also drawn from historical transitions. Managing the Transition to Renewable Energy will appeal to academics and researchers in environmental science and economics, environmental and technological policy advisors, evolutionary economists and researchers on technological innovation.

Solar power has come of age. Not only has it become one of the key alternatives to fossil fuels, it can now be deployed in a way that makes a viable business with a financial profit. This book shows industry professionals and students how to do just that. Solarnomics describes the economics of building and operating a solar power plant today and provides a window into a future in which several technologies collaborate, and in which all participants in the electricity grid become smarter at scheduling both the supply and demand for electric power to give humanity a future that is sustainable, both environmentally and economically. The book shows how to estimate costs and revenues, how to tweak the design of a project to improve profitability, how to calculate return on investment, how to assess and deal with risk, how to raise capital, how to combine solar with batteries to make a hybrid microgrid, and how to be prepared for future developments in the evolving smart electricity grid. Solarnomics will enable professionals in the solar industry to assess the potential profitability of a proposed solar project, and it will enable students to add an extra dimension to their understanding of sustainability.

The rapid and sustained economic growth of the past two decades has led to marked increases in energy demand in the region and developing Asia will continue to lead the energy demand growth. The increase in energy demand threatens energy security and efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions, affecting health and social well-being. These common energy challenges will need to be addressed through concerted efforts. This book provides several multi-dimensional quantitative analysis of the relationship between energy and other subjects including but not limited to income and economic growth, environment and health, food and agricultural production. The book also provides the most constructive policy recommendations concerning the relationship between energy, economic development, social development, and environmental development.

The disputes that arise between host states and investors in the energy sector put a high number of valuable and vital projects in the countries at risk. Investment treaty arbitration mechanisms, as the traditional remedy, have provided a solution to these problems for decades. However, as the number of disputes increases, the sufficiency of arbitration in responding to disputes became questionable in addition to the long-lasting and costly cases. Accordingly, ADR mechanisms outside the arbitration cannon have triggered growing interest among practitioners. Despite the attraction and the apparent benefits of ADR such as being cheaper, faster and with better outcomes compared to arbitration, there are also hurdles in front that hinder the application of ADR. This has lead to the underuse of ADR in appropriate contexts. This study has been conducted to research the gap for the applicability of the ADR methods for investment disputes in the energy sector with the doctrinal analysis of the existing literature either promoting or opposing ADR. Its findings provide guidance for alternative dispute resolution practitioners on when to use ADR, how to use ADR and on what disputes ADR to be used to resolve conflicts in International Energy Investment.

This book argues that renewable electrification in developing countries provides important opportunities for local economic development, but new pathways are required for turning these opportunities into successful reality. Building Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Industrialisation offers a novel input into the debate on development of capabilities for sustainable industrialisation and delivers key insights for both researchers and policy makers when it comes to the question of how to increase the economic co-benefits of renewables expansion. The chapters in the book use a tailored analytical framework in their studies of renewable electrification efforts in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They draw on a mix of project, sector and country level case studies to address questions such as: What capabilities are developed through on-going renewable electrification projects in developing economies? How can the expansion of renewable electrification be supported in a way that also encourages sustainable economic development? What role do international linkages (South-South and North-South) play and what role should they play in the greening of energy systems in developing economies? The authors provide a new understanding of how green transformation and sustainable industrialisation can be combined, highlighting the opportunities and constraints for local capability building and the scope for local policy action. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of development studies, energy studies, sustainability and sustainable development, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in development organisations and national governments. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003054665, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book argues that renewable electrification in developing countries provides important opportunities for local economic development, but new pathways are required for turning these opportunities into successful reality. Building Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Industrialisation offers a novel input into the debate on development of capabilities for sustainable industrialisation and delivers key insights for both researchers and policy makers when it comes to the question of how to increase the economic co-benefits of renewables expansion. The chapters in the book use a tailored analytical framework in their studies of renewable electrification efforts in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They draw on a mix of project, sector and country level case studies to address questions such as: What capabilities are developed through on-going renewable electrification projects in developing economies? How can the expansion of renewable electrification be supported in a way that also encourages sustainable economic development? What role do international linkages (South-South and North-South) play and what role should they play in the greening of energy systems in developing economies? The authors provide a new understanding of how green transformation and sustainable industrialisation can be combined, highlighting the opportunities and constraints for local capability building and the scope for local policy action. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of development studies, energy studies, sustainability and sustainable development, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in development organisations and national governments. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003054665, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book explores the intrinsically multiscale issue of renewable energy transition from a local, national and transnational perspective, and provides insights into current developments in the Upper Rhine Region that can serve as an international model. Organised around the exploration of stakeholder issues, the volume first describes a framework for public action and modelling and then articulates a triple complementary focus from the viewpoint of law, economics and sociology. This multidisciplinary approach is anchored in the social sciences, but also explores the ways in which technological issues are increasingly debated in the implementation of the ecological transition. With a focus on the Upper Rhine Region of France, Germany and Switzerland, the contributions throughout analyse how concrete regional projects emerge, and whether they are carried out by local authorities, private energy groups, network associations or committed citizens. From this, it appears that real-world energy transition modes can be best understood as permanent transactional processes involving institutional regulations, economic levers and barriers and social interactions. This book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars focusing on renewable energy transition, stakeholder issues, environment and sustainability studies, as well as those who are interested in the methodological aspects of the social sciences, especially within the fields of sociology, law, economy, geography, political science, urbanism and planning.

The Energy Transition, the inevitable shift away from cheap, centralized, largely fossil-based energy systems, is one of the core challenges of our time. This book provides a coherent and novel insight into the nature of this challenge and possible strategies to accelerate and guide such transitions. It brings together prominent European scholars and practitioners from the fields of energy transition research and governance to draw attention to the current complex dynamics in the energy domain, and offer elegant and provocative explanations for current crises and lock-ins. They identify multiple energy transition pathways that emerge and increasingly compete, and emphasize the need and possibilities for novel governance. By analysing the complexity of energy transition processes and the difficulties in shifting to sustainable pathways, this text questions the extent to which actually governing energy transitions is already reality, just an illusion, or a bare necessity.

This book highlights the challenges faced by renewable energy enterprises (REEs) in emerging markets, by reflecting on the enterprises' own stories and experiences. Research into REEs has focused largely on successful businesses and business models, and developed markets. With significant opportunities for renewable energy enterprise in emerging markets, this book presents a unique business-level perspective. It highlights the key barriers and outlines the strategic and operational solutions for success articulated by the entrepreneurs themselves. The research draws on interviews with entrepreneurs in twenty-eight emerging markets, including Barbados, Cambodia, Chile, Ghana, Indonesia, India, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. The book concludes by summarising the key solutions for success and illustrating how successful REEs put them into practice. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of renewable energy, sustainable business and the sustainability agenda in emerging markets.

This book examines the nature of the 'energy curriculum' in Arctic Higher Education and provides invaluable data and new models to assess levels of Sustainable Development Literacy. Drawing on course mapping conducted in Higher Education institutions across the Arctic, Arruda looks at the nature, structure, and design of the Arctic Higher Education curriculum in order to assess levels of Sustainable Development Literacy and considers the extent to which Arctic Higher Education courses align to UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Using data from four key case studies in Norway, Canada, and the US, and applying a framework drawn from different knowledge systems (Traditional Knowledge and Western educational system), she analyses the different educational approaches and pedagogies used and specifically considers how Higher Education in this region can contribute to the accomplishment of Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. The book concludes by proposing new models to assess Higher Education adherence to ESD and outlines how a culturally inclusive curriculum can invite different groups of people to engage in a meaningful Sustainable Development debate, learning experience, and knowledge application. This innovative volume will be of great interest to multicultural students, scholars, and educators of Sustainable Development, climate change, energy, Arctic studies, and global Higher Education across the Arctic and non-Arctic nations.

This book addresses the rapidly changing citizen roles in innovation, technology adoption, intermediation, market creation, and legitimacy building for low-carbon solutions. It links research in innovation studies, sustainability transitions, and science and technology studies, and builds a new approach for the study of user contributions to innovation and sociotechnical change. Citizen Activities in Energy Transition gives detailed and empirically grounded overall appraisal of citizens' active technological engagement in the current energy transition, in an era when Internet connectivity has given rise to important new forms of citizen communities and interactions. It elaborates a new way to study users in sociotechnical change through long-term ethnographic and historical research and reports its deployment in a major, decade-long line of investigation on user activities in small-scale renewables, addressing user contributions from the early years to the late proliferation stages of small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RETs). It offers a much-needed empirical and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the activities in which users are engaged over the course of sociotechnical change, including innovation, adoption, adjustment, intermediation, community building, digital communities, market creation, and legitimacy creation. This work is a must-read for those seeking to understand the role of users in innovation, energy systems change and the significance of new digital communities in present and future sociotechnical change. Academics, policymakers, and managers are given a new resource to understand the "demand side" of sociotechnical change beyond the patterns of investment, adoption, and social acceptance that have traditionally occupied their attention.

Miscanthus has been enthusiastically promoted as a second generation biomass crop, and this book provides a comprehensive review of this knowledge. Miscanthus, also known as elephant grass, is a high yielding grass crop that grows over three metres tall, resembles bamboo and produces a crop every year without the need for replanting or fertiliser application . The rapid growth, low mineral content, and high biomass yield of Miscanthus increasingly make it a favourite choice as a biofuel, outperforming switchgrass and other alternatives. There is over 20 years of research evidence to support its promotion as a second generation biomass crop. The author reviews many field measurements of yields as well as the physiology of the crop, and why it is so productive while at the same time requiring low inputs to grow it. It also shows how as a key biofuel crop it can contribute to mitigating climate change and how uptake of the adoption of Miscanthus production can be promoted, particularly in Europe and North America. The book will be key reading for students taking courses in the areas of Environmental Science and Engineering, Climate Change Impacts, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. It will also be of interest to researchers of second generation biomass crops, and policy developers working in biofuel production and utilization.