As the ice around the Arctic landmass recedes, the territory is becoming a flashpoint in world affairs. New trade routes, cutting thousands of miles off journeys, are available, and the Arctic is thought to be home to enormous gas and oil reserves. The territorial lines are new and hazy. This book looks at how Russia deals with the outside world vis a vis the Arctic. Given Russia's recent bold foreign policy interventions, these are crucial issues and the realpolitik practiced by the Russian state is essential for understanding the Arctic's future.Here, Geir Honneland brings together decades of cutting-edge research - investigating the political contexts and international tensions surrounding Russia's actions. Honneland looks specifically at 'region-building' and environmental politics of fishing and climate change, on nuclear safety and nature preservation, and also analyses the diplomatic relations surrounding clashes with Norway and Canada, as well as at the governance of the Barents Sea. The Politics of the Arctic is a crucial addition to our understanding of contemporary International Relations concerning the Polar North.

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment. The original contributions analyse energy as a highly complex, interconnected policy area, including how energy markets and regimes are constituted and the governance institutions that are being designed to challenge existing establishments. A number of contributors focus on intersections between energy and other policy fields or sectors, or nexes. These include the climate change, energy and low carbon transitions nexus; the food, water and forestry nexus; the energy, resources and development nexus, and the global?national?local nexus in energy. Significantly, this Handbook ties the contributions together by exploring opportunities for sustainable transitions and avoiding resource scarcity whilst taking other social needs, such as development, into account. This Handbook will be an essential resource for scholars and students of international political economy, governance and development studies as it covers: the environment, development, human rights, global production, energy transitions and energy security. Contributors include: L. Baker, T. Boersma, J. Britton, E. Brutschin, J. Burton, A.A. Camba, R. Falkner, T. Foxon, C. Fraune, A. Goldthau, D. Gritsenko, A. Hira, R. Hiteva, L. Hughes, J. Jewell, M.F. Keating, C. Kuzemko, A. Lawrence, F. Lira, A. Losz, K. Lovell, H.E.S. Nesadurai, M. Nilsson, S. Onder, R. Quitzow, S. Raszewski, W.B. Renfro, J. Sharples, N. Sitter, M. Skalamera, B.K. Sovacool, C. Strambo, J. Wilson

Nuclear energy is contributing to the long-term solution to stave off climate change. However, current nuclear fission technology accesses only about 1-3% of the nuclear energy content of natural uranium, which is inefficient, and also creates a radioactive waste disposal problem. Combining nuclear fission technology with emerging nuclear fusion technology to create a fusion-fission hybrid would yield extra fusion neutrons to 1) convert much more of the uranium into fissionable material, which would increase efficient utilization of the nuclear fuel resource, and 2) significantly reduce (by fission) the most long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. This book describes fusion-fission hybrid physics and technology. The first parts briefly review nuclear fission principles and describe design and safety of nuclear fission reactors; then the fundamentals of nuclear fusion and fusion reactor concepts are described, together with ongoing and future challenges and anticipated developments in this not-yet matured technology. Chapters cover the scientific basis of nuclear fission and the fission fuel cycle, advanced fission reactors, safety aspects, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear fusion power, future improvements expected, and then the fusion-fission hybrid (FFH) breeder and burner reactor concept principles, with illustrative FFH design concepts, safety analyses, and examples of the use of fusion neutrons for helping to achieve burning and breeding fission fuel cycles. This concise work is essential reading for researchers and policy makers in nuclear energy research and engineering, including advanced students.

The burning of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gasses critically impacts the global environment. By utilizing better techniques and process, businesses can aid in the journey to an economic, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly future for generations to come. Business Models for Renewable Energy Initiatives: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source for the latest scholarly perspectives on present and future business models in the renewable energy sector. Featuring coverage on a range of perspectives and topics such as techno-economics, decentralized power systems, and risk assessment, this book is designed for academicians, students, and researchers seeking current scholarly research on green business opportunities for renewable energy.

Renewable energy is crucial to preserve the environment. This energy involves various systems that should be optimized and assessed to provide better performance. The goal of this book is to present the latest research works on nature-inspired computing approaches applied to the design and development of renewable energy systems. The design and development of renewable energy systems remain a challenge. This book focuses on nature-inspired computing approaches which are the most prevailing solutions. Therefore, the book provides new solutions to the renewable energy domain. It is an essential research book for researchers, students, engineers, and individuals working in the renewable energy industry.

Clean Coal Engineering Technology, Second Edition provides significant information on the major power generation technologies that aim to utilize coal more efficiently, and with less environmental impact. With increased coal combustion comes heightened concerns about coal's impacts on human health and climate change, so the book addresses the reduction of both carbon footprints and emissions of pollutants, such as particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. Part 1 provides an essential grounding in the history of coal use alongside coal chemical and physical characteristics, worldwide distribution, and health and environmental impacts. Part 2 introduces the fundamentals of the major coal utilization technologies and examines the anatomy of a coal-fired power plant before going on to provide an overview of clean coal technologies for advanced power generation. Next, users will find a group of chapters on emissions and carbon management that have been extensively enlarged and updated for the second edition, thus reflecting the ever-increasing importance of this area. The final section of the book focuses on clean coal technology programs around the world and the future role of coal in the energy mix. This fully revised and selectively expanded new edition is a valuable resource for professionals, including environmental, chemical, and mechanical engineers who seek an authoritative and thorough one-volume overview of the latest advances in cleaner power production from coal.

Atmospheric Impacts of the Oil and Gas Industry provides the most up-to-date scientific and technological methods available to quantify oil and gas industry emissions and atmospheric impacts in a manner that is relevant to the development of, compliance with, and enforcement of effective policy and regulations. The book offers a concise survey of these methods to facilitate the implementation of solutions that promote sustainable energy production. Part I covers a technical and descriptive summary of air quality and global change issues relevant to the oil and gas industry, with Part II summarizing state-of-the-art methods pertaining to the analysis and solution of the problems identified in the earlier section. Examples of state-of-the-art methods covered include real-time monitoring with chemical ionization mass spectrometry, drone-mounted mini-lasers and gas cells, tomographic remote sensing, inverse modeling of emissions, 3D fluid, chemical, and transport models, and contemporary control technologies, such as flare minimization, oxidation catalysts, and vapor recovery. In addition, field studies, policy-relevant modeling assessments, and regulatory decisions from multiple geographic regions are presented, providing readers best practices from real world applications.

Advanced separations technology is key to closing the nuclear fuel cycle and relieving future generations from the burden of radioactive waste produced by the nuclear power industry. Nuclear fuel reprocessing techniques not only allow for recycling of useful fuel components for further power generation, but by also separating out the actinides, lanthanides and other fission products produced by the nuclear reaction, the residual radioactive waste can be minimised. Indeed, the future of the industry relies on the advancement of separation and transmutation technology to ensure environmental protection, criticality-safety and non-proliferation (i.e., security) of radioactive materials by reducing their long-term radiological hazard. Advanced separation techniques for nuclear fuel reprocessing and radioactive waste treatment provides a comprehensive and timely reference on nuclear fuel reprocessing and radioactive waste treatment. Part one covers the fundamental chemistry, engineering and safety of radioactive materials separations processes in the nuclear fuel cycle, including coverage of advanced aqueous separations engineering, as well as on-line monitoring for process control and safeguards technology. Part two critically reviews the development and application of separation and extraction processes for nuclear fuel reprocessing and radioactive waste treatment. The section includes discussions of advanced PUREX processes, the UREX+ concept, fission product separations, and combined systems for simultaneous radionuclide extraction. Part three details emerging and innovative treatment techniques, initially reviewing pyrochemical processes and engineering, highly selective compounds for solvent extraction, and developments in partitioning and transmutation processes that aim to close the nuclear fuel cycle. The book concludes with other advanced techniques such as solid phase extraction, supercritical fluid and ionic liquid extraction, and biological treatment processes. With its distinguished international team of contributors, Advanced separation techniques for nuclear fuel reprocessing and radioactive waste treatment is a standard reference for all nuclear waste management and nuclear safety professionals, radiochemists, academics and researchers in this field.

A "quick look up guide," Electricity Cost Modeling Calculations places the relevant formulae and calculations at the reader's finger tips. In this book, theories are explained in a nutshell and then the calculation is presented and solved in an illustrated, step-by-step fashion. A valuable guide for new engineers, economists (or forecasters), regulators, and policy makers who want to further develop their knowledge of best practice calculations techniques or experienced practitioners (and even managers) who desire to acquire more useful tips, this book offers expert advice for using such cost models to determine optimally-sized distribution systems and optimally-structured power supplying entities. In other words, this book provides an Everything-that-you-want-to-know-about-cost-modelling-for-electric-utilities (but were afraid to ask) approach to modelling the cost of supplying electricity. In addition, the author covers the concept of multiproduct and multistage cost functions, which are appropriate in modelling the cost of supplying electricity. The author has done all the heavy number-crunching, and provides the reader with real-world, practical examples of how to properly quantify the costs associated with providing electric service, thus increasing the accuracy of the results and support for the policy initiatives required to ensure the competitiveness of the power suppliers in this new world in which we are living. The principles contained herein could be employed to assist in the determination of the cost-minimizing amount of output (i.e., electricity), which could then be used to determine whether a merger between two entities makes sense (i.e., would increase profitability). Other examples abound: public regulatory commissions also need help in determining whether mergers (or divestitures) are welfare-enhancing or not; ratemaking policies depend on costs and properly determining the costs of supplying electric (or gas, water, and local telephone) service. Policy makers, too, can benefit in terms of optimal market structure; after all, the premise of deregulation of the electric industry was predicated on the idea that generation could be deregulated. Unfortunately, the economies of vertical integration between the generation.

The conventional and modern well test interpretation methods are an important tool in the petroleum engineer's toolkit. Used in the exploration and discovery phase of a field, they are performed to determine the quality of a well or to permit estimation of producing rates at different producing pressures. However once a field enters the middle and later development phase, the reservoir flow environment grows increasingly complex and conventional or modern methods do not satisfy the needs of old field development and evaluation. Based on over 10 years of field and research experience, Streamline Numerical Well Test Interpretation Theory and Method provides an effective method for the determination of residual oil distribution for the middle and mature phases of a field. One of the most advanced books available, the author explains the development history of well test theory, analyzes the limitation of modern well test interpretation method, and proposes the concept and framework of numerical well test. This is quickly followed by an introduction of basic principles and solution procedures of streamline numerical simulation theory and method. The book then systematically applies streamline numerical well test interpretation models to a multitude of reservoir types, ranging from single layer reservoir to multi-layer reservoirs. The book presents multi-parameter streamline numerical well test automatic match interpretation method based on double-population genetic algorithm, which lays the foundation to fast automatic match of numerical well test. The book introduces streamline numerical well test interpretation software with independent intellectual property right which is programmed based on the above theoretical studies.

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should.

The World for Sale lifts the lid on one of the least scrutinized corners of the world economy: the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard, and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets, enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centers.

The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.

Succinct and understandable, this book is a step-by-step guide to the mathematics and construction of electrical load forecasting models. Written by one of the world's foremost experts on the subject, Electrical Load Forecasting provides a brief discussion of algorithms, their advantages and disadvantages and when they are best utilized. The book begins with a good description of the basic theory and models needed to truly understand how the models are prepared so that they are not just blindly plugging and chugging numbers. This is followed by a clear and rigorous exposition of the statistical techniques and algorithms such as regression, neural networks, fuzzy logic, and expert systems. The book is also supported by an online computer program that allows readers to construct, validate, and run short and long term models.

Materials for Ultra-Supercritical and Advanced Ultra-Supercritical Power Plants provides researchers in academia and industry with an essential overview of the stronger high-temperature materials required for key process components, such as membrane wall tubes, high-pressure steam piping and headers, superheater tubes, forged rotors, cast components, and bolting and blading for steam turbines in USC power plants. Advanced materials for future advanced ultra-supercritical power plants, such as superalloys, new martensitic and austenitic steels, are also addressed. Chapters on international research directions complete the volume. The transition from conventional subcritical to supercritical thermal power plants greatly increased power generation efficiency. Now the introductions of the ultra-supercritical (USC) and, in the near future, advanced ultra-supercritical (A-USC) designs are further efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption in power plants and the associated carbon dioxide emissions. The higher operating temperatures and pressures found in these new plant types, however, necessitate the use of advanced materials.

Giant Coal-Derived Gas Fields and Their Gas Sources in China presents a thorough look at 32 coal-derived gas fields in China. This reference book includes two main parts, the first discussing the geologic characteristics of the tectonic, stratigraphy, source and cap rock assemblage for the accumulation periods. The second part features multiple differential indexes, charts, phase states (gas, liquid, solid), and the methods used to determine the sources of the coal-derived giant gas fields. As the first comprehensive coverage of the methods of gas to source correlation in China, this book will be a classic reference for researchers working in natural gas geology and geochemistry, and teachers working in universities around the world.

Handbook of Biofuels Production, Second Edition, discusses advanced chemical, biochemical, and thermochemical biofuels production routes that are fast being developed to address the global increase in energy usage. Research and development in this field is aimed at improving the quality and environmental impact of biofuels production, as well as the overall efficiency and output of biofuels production plants. The book provides a comprehensive and systematic reference on the range of biomass conversion processes and technology. Key changes for this second edition include increased coverage of emerging feedstocks, including microalgae, more emphasis on by-product valorization for biofuels' production, additional chapters on emerging biofuel production methods, and discussion of the emissions associated with biofuel use in engines. The editorial team is strengthened by the addition of two extra members, and a number of new contributors have been invited to work with authors from the first edition to revise existing chapters, thus offering fresh perspectives.

The European Union's renewable energy policy is one of the most ambitious attempts to facilitate a transition towards more sustainable energy systems. This book provides a comprehensive guide to the policy and its implementation. It contains key case studies for understanding how member states have shaped the policy, how the EU has affected the policies of its member states and how renewable energy policies have diffused horizontally. An analysis of its external dimension is also included. This remarkable guide is the first comprehensive attempt to shed light on the complex dynamics of renewable energy promotion in the European multilevel system. Theoretically driven, the study employs Europeanization as an analytical framework for assessing policy change, both at the EU level and in the member states, and compares the development of renewable energy policies in the electricity and transport sectors from the 1980s to the present. Comprising contributions from leading scholars, the book is an indispensible guide for academics, researchers and students interested in EU energy and climate policies in general and EU renewable energy policy specifically, as well as practitioners and stakeholders involved in renewable energy policy and climate protection. Contributors include: A. Ancygier, M. Bechberger, P. Bocquillon, S. Davidescu, L. Di Lucia, M.R. Di Nucci, H. Dyrhauge, G. Escribano, A. Evrard, J. Fairbrass, R. Fernandez, B. Hirschl, R. Hiteva, T. Hoppe, K. Jankowska, H. Joergens, T. Maltby, D. Ohlhorst, E. OEller, D. Russolillo, I. Solorio, E. van Bueren, T. Vogelpohl

Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources Handbook: Evaluation and Development is a must-have, helpful handbook that brings a wealth of information to engineers and geoscientists. Bridging between subsurface and production, the handbook provides engineers and geoscientists with effective methodology to better define resources and reservoirs. Better reservoir knowledge and innovative technologies are making unconventional resources economically possible, and multidisciplinary approaches in evaluating these resources are critical to successful development. Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources Handbook takes this approach, covering a wide range of topics for developing these resources including exploration, evaluation, drilling, completion, and production. Topics include theory, methodology, and case histories and will help to improve the understanding,integrated evaluation, and effective development of unconventional resources.

It is imperative to promote and maintain sustainability in all areas of the world. By developing effective energy usage frameworks, regional communities can better achieve this goal. Sustainable Local Energy Planning and Decision Making: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an authoritative reference source featuring the latest scholarly research on an operational framework for decision support for local and regional authorities to aid in sustainable energy planning. Including extensive coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as emission trends, energy balance, and climate change, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the development of regional sustainable energy plans.

Martin Chick's book is a major economic and historical study of the development of electricity and energy policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945. Using newly available archival material the author draws important comparisons between these countries and includes all of the fuel and power industries. Among the issues covered within this book are: nationalisation and privatisation; regulation, deregulation and liberalisation; marginal cost pricing; investment appraisal; the OPEC oil price hikes of the 1970s; the European Coal and Steel Community; domestic and international threats to national energy security; the electricity blackouts in California; the efforts of the European Commission to promote competition in national and transnational electricity markets; and the influence of history on current discussions of energy policy. The book blends economic theory with historical evidence and is as interested in the political factors affecting the implementation of theory as in the theory itself. It will be of interest to all students and scholars of environmental studies, politics, economics, business and industrial history, as well as to anyone interested in placing the current debates on electricity and energy policy in their historical perspective