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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Energy industries & utilities
Water provides benefits as a commodity for agriculture, industry, and households, and as a public good such as fisheries habitat, water quality and recreational use. To aid in cost-benefit analysis under conditions where market determined price signals are usually unavailable, economists have developed a range of alternative valuation methods for measuring economic benefits. This volume provides the most comprehensive exposition to-date of the application of economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. It provides a conceptual framework for valuation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing non-market valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits - including water quality improvement, recreation, and fish habitat enhancement. The book describes the various measurement methods, illustrates how they are applied in practice, and discusses their strengths, limitations, and appropriate roles. In this second edition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated, and in particular the coverage of water markets and valuation of ecosystem services from water has been expanded. Robert Young, author of the 2005 edition, has been joined for this new edition by John Loomis, who brings additional expertise on ecosystem services and the environmental economics of water for recreational and other public good uses of water.
Despite the mechanisms of reservoir sedimentation being well known for a long time, sustainable and preventive measures are rarely taken into consideration in the design of new reservoirs. To avoid operational problems of powerhouses, sedimentation is often treated for existing reservoirs with measures which are efficient only for a limited time. The today's challenge of dam owners and engineers is to guarantee with adequate mitigation measures the future sustainable use of the vital reservoirs supplying water for drinking, food and energy production. Research and development is still urgently needed to identify efficient mitigation measures adapted to the main sedimentation processes involved in reservoirs. During the seventh International Conference on Fluvial Hydraulics "River Flow 2014" at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, scientists and professionals from all over the world addressed the challenge of reservoir sedimentation in a special session and exchanged their knowledge and experiences. Invited and selected contributions, which give an overview on the latest developments and research regarding reservoir sedimentation including case studies, are presented in this book, in the hope that they can contribute to better sustainable use of the vital reservoirs worldwide.
When natural gas was first discovered in Appalachia in the 19th century, its development and growth as a fuel was rapid. Unlike oil and coal, however, gas could be moved only by pipeline and required large containers for storage. It was not possible to cope with peak loads without adding excessive pipeline capacity. This problem was solved just before World War II when two sister gas companies developed a plant to liquefy and store natural gas as a liquid; the liquid was then regasified to deal with peak loads. The liquid is 1/600th the volume of the gas, but it requires storage at the extremely low temperature of -260°F. This worked well until a 1944 disaster in Cleveland when an LNG tank ruptured and caused a major fire with 130 fatalities. The fire did not end the industry but caused it to pause before resuming. Over the next few years the problems in materials, design, standards and siting were solved. The recognition that liquefaction made LNG transportable without a pipeline was the breakthrough. In 1959 a shipload of LNG went from Louisiana to Britain and restarted the LNG industry. It is now a major worldwide energy industry.
The main objective of the research is the analysis of corruption in infrastructure delivery. This includes a review of accountability initiatives in infrastructure delivery and the nature of the impact of greater accountability.
The effect of corrosion in the oil industry leads to the failure
of parts. This failureresults in shutting down the plant to clean
the facility. The annual cost of corrosion to the oil and gas
industry in the United States alone is estimated at $27 billion
(According to NACE International)-leading some to estimate the
global annual cost to the oil and gas industry as exceeding $60
billion. In addition, corrosion commonly causes serious
environmental problems, such as spills and releases. An essential
resource for all those who are involved in the corrosion management
of oil and gas infrastructure, "Corrosion Control in the Oil and
Gas Industry" provides engineers and designers with the tools and
methods to design and implement comprehensive corrosion-management
programs for oil and gas infrastructures. The book addresses all
segments of the industry, including production, transmission,
storage, refining and distribution.
Water provides benefits as a commodity for agriculture, industry, and households, and as a public good such as fisheries habitat, water quality and recreational use. To aid in cost-benefit analysis under conditions where market determined price signals are usually unavailable, economists have developed a range of alternative valuation methods for measuring economic benefits. This volume provides the most comprehensive exposition to-date of the application of economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. It provides a conceptual framework for valuation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing non-market valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits - including water quality improvement, recreation, and fish habitat enhancement. The book describes the various measurement methods, illustrates how they are applied in practice, and discusses their strengths, limitations, and appropriate roles. In this second edition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated, and in particular the coverage of water markets and valuation of ecosystem services from water has been expanded. Robert Young, author of the 2005 edition, has been joined for this new edition by John Loomis, who brings additional expertise on ecosystem services and the environmental economics of water for recreational and other public good uses of water.
The catchment area of the Mekong River and its tributaries extends from China, through Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and to Vietnam. The water resources of the Mekong region - from the Irrawaddy and Nu-Salween in the west, across the Chao Phraya to the Lancang-Mekong and Red River in the east- are increasingly contested. Governments, companies, and banks are driving new investments in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional 'development'. Their plans and interventions should provide some benefits, but also pose multiple burdens and risks to millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains and aquatic resources, in particular, the wild capture fisheries of rivers and lakes. This book examines how large-scale projects are being proposed, justified, and built. How are such projects contested and how do specific governance regimes influence decision making? The book also highlights the emergence of new actors, rights and trade-off debates, and the social and environmental consequences of 'water resources development'. This book shows how diverse, and often antagonistic, ideologies and interests are contesting for legitimacy. It argues that the distribution of decision-making, political, and discursive power influences how the waterscapes of the region will ultimately look and how benefits, costs and risks will be distributed. These issues are crucial for the transformation of waterscapes and the prospects for democratizing water governance in the Mekong region. The book is part of the action-research of the M-POWER (Mekong Program on Water, Environment and Resilience) knowledge network. Published with IFAD, CG|AR Challenge Program on Water & Food, M-POWER, Project ECHEL-EAU and HEINRICH BOLL STIFTUNG
The vocabulary and discourse of water resource management have expanded vastly in recent years to include an array of new concepts and terminology, such as water security, water productivity, virtual water and water governance. While the new conceptual lenses may generate insights that improve responses to the world's water challenges, their practical use is often encumbered by ambiguity and confusion. This book applies critical scrutiny to a prominent set of new but widely used terms, in order to clarify their meanings and improve the basis on which we identify and tackle the world's water challenges. More specifically, the book takes stock of what several of the more prominent new terms mean, reviews variation in interpretation, explores how they are measured, and discusses their respective added value. It makes many implicit differences between terms explicit and aids understanding and use of these terms by both students and professionals. At the same time, it does not ignore the legitimately contested nature of some concepts. Further, the book enables greater precision on the interpretational options for the various terms, and for the value that they add to water policy and its implementation.
This study assessed the downstream river system adaptation in response to upstream damming on the Ribb River, Ethiopia, to irrigate 15,000 ha. It combined primary and secondary data, and the application of remote sensing and mathematical modeling. The pre-dam morphodynamic trends of the Ribb River were analyzed for 59 years based on aerial photographs, satellite images, and newly collected field data. Three dam operation scenarios were developed to analyze the long-term hydro-morphological effects of the dam on the downstream river reaches. It also assessed the applicability of physics-based analytical equations (Equilibrium Theory) compared to a 1D numerical model (SOBEK-RE) to determine the least-morphologically impactful dam operation scenario on the river reaches downstream of the dam. Moreover, a HEC-RAS 2D hydrodynamic model was developed to assess the effect of the dam on the flooding extent of the Fogera Plain. This was used to study the potential implications of hydrological alteration on the ecology of the floodplain wetlands, as they are the habitats of important fish and bird species. The results contribute to knowledge on the hydro-morphological and environmental impacts of dams on downstream river systems. The developed methodologies and findings may be used to study future hydro-morphological and ecological changes that may arise due to other dam operations or climate change.
Field Practices for Wastewater Use in Agriculture discusses the growing importance of wastewater application in the field of agriculture. Addressing the tremendous need for the irrigation sector to reduce the demand for freshwater in agriculture, this volume looks at wastewater as a source for agricultural irrigation. The volume is divided into four sections: current and emerging issues in wastewater use in agriculture, wastewater management with biological systems, effective field practices for wastewater use, and case studies that provide information on scientific analytical studies on the environment under the influence of wastewater quality from different pollution sources. This book sheds light on the vast potential of wastewater use in agricultural irrigation while also considering safety of the agricultural products for human consumption. Much emphasis has also been given to technological aspects for the treatment of wastewater to protect our environment for better public health protection.
The book reveals the changing dynamics of the helium industry on both the supply-side and the demand-side. The helium industry has a long-term future and this important gas will have a role to play for many decades to come. Major new users of helium are expected to enter the market, especially in nuclear energy (both fission and fusion). Prices and volumes supplied and expected to rise and this will prompt greater efforts towards the development of new helium sources and helium conservation and recycling.
When the Nuclear Safety Commission in Japan reviewed safety-design guidelines for nuclear plants in 1990, the regulatory agency explicitly ruled out the need to consider prolonged AC power loss. In other words, nothing like the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was possible-no tsunami of 45 feet could swamp a nuclear power station and knock out its emergency systems. No blackout could last for days. No triple meltdown could occur. Nothing like this could ever happen. Until it did-over the course of a week in March 2011. In this volume and in gripping detail, the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, a civilian-led group, presents a thorough and powerful account of what happened within hours and days after this nuclear disaster, the second worst in history. It documents the findings of a working group of more than thirty people, including natural scientists and engineers, social scientists and researchers, business people, lawyers, and journalists, who researched this crisis involving multiple simultaneous dangers. They conducted over 300 investigative interviews to collect testimony from relevant individuals. The responsibility of this committee was to act as an external ombudsman, summarizing its conclusions in the form of an original report, published in Japanese in February 2012. This has now been substantially rewritten and revised for this English-language edition. The work reveals the truth behind the tragic saga of the multiple catastrophic accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.It serves as a valuable and essential historical reference, which will help to inform and guide future nuclear safety and policy in both Japan and internationally.
The first in the Routledge Television Guidebooks series, Science Fiction TV offers an introduction to the versatile and evolving genre of science fiction television, combining historical overview with textual readings to analyze its development and ever-increasing popularity. J. P. Telotte discusses science fiction's cultural progressiveness and the breadth of its technological and narrative possibilities, exploring SFTV from its roots in the pulp magazines and radio serials of the 1930s all the way up to the present. From formative series like Captain Video to contemporary, cutting-edge shows like Firefly and long-lived popular revivals such as Doctor Who and Star Trek, Telotte insightfully tracks the history and growth of this crucial genre, along with its dedicated fandom and special venues, such as the Syfy Channel. In addition, each chapter features an in-depth exploration of a range of key historical and contemporary series, including: -Captain Video and His Video Rangers -The Twilight Zone -Battlestar Galactica -Farscape -Fringe Incorporating a comprehensive videography, discussion questions, and a detailed bibliography for additional reading, J. P. Telotte has created a concise yet thought-provoking guide to SFTV, a book that will appeal not only to dedicated science fiction fans but to students of popular culture and media as well.
This book studies the limits imposed by the depletion of fossil fuels and the requirements of climate stabilization on economic growth with a focus on China. The book intends to examine the potentials of various energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and other renewables, as well as energy efficiency. Unlike many other books on the subject, this book intends to argue that, despite the large potentials of renewable energies and energy efficiency, economic growth eventually will have to be brought to an end as China and the world undertake the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. China has overtaken the US to become the world's largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter. Their energy consumption is dominated by coal and China now accounts for one quarter of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, China is set to become the world's largest oil importer in the next decade. This book will consider energy development in the broader context of economic and social changes, especially the historical dynamics of the capitalist world system. Historical lessons of capitalism and socialism will be discussed. The book will evaluate the implications of ecological limits to growth on the economic system and argue that the existing capitalist system is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability.
This is an easy-to-read textbook providing the reader with the basis to comprehend the major energy technologies from a physical and economical perspective. The journey through the book begins with some background theory on the physics and economics of energy. Major energy technologies (fossil, nuclear and renewable) are explored in-depth, explaining how they work and the costs involved. Finally, the journey ends by exploring the technical and economic feasibility of supplying the world by 2050 with sustainable energy only. Numerous examples are provided to allow the reader to relate important concepts to real-life. The reader s understanding of the material can then be tested using the exercises at the end of each chapter. This textbook is the first to thoroughly present the physics and the economics of energy. It is intended for graduate students and practitioners interested in the field of energy. It also enables the general reader to distinguish between political statement and fact."
Renewable energy is a fast expanding field, welcomed by many as part of the answer to climate change and energy security concerns. But can renewables deliver? This book reviews the basic technological options and what is happening around the world, so as to convey the sense of excitement that abounds in this new area of technological development. But it also looks at the problems, including local environmental impacts and the need to deal with the variability of some renewable energy sources.
The challenges in Russia's energy sector are changing. On the demand side, Europe is seeking to limit its dependence on Russian oil and gas, with the result that China and other Asian countries are likely to eventually become growing export markets for Russian energy. On the supply side, oil and gas fields in West Siberia are diminishing and in future Russia's energy will have to come more from East Siberia and the Arctic, which will necessitate new infrastructure development and the employment of advanced technologies, which may increase Russia's dependence on commercial partners from outside Russia. This book explores the challenges facing Russia's energy sector and the resulting security implications. It includes a discussion of how far the Russian state is likely to continue to monopolise the energy sector, and how far competition from private and foreign companies might be allowed.
Death, Men and Modernism argues that the figure of the dead man becomes a locus of attention and a symptom of crisis in British writing of the early to mid-twentieth century. While Victorian writers used dying women to dramatize aesthetic, structural, and historical concerns, modernist novelists turned to the figure of the dying man to exemplify concerns about both masculinity and modernity. Along with their representations of death, these novelists developed new narrative techniques to make the trauma they depicted palpable. Contrary to modernist genealogies, the emergence of the figure of the dead man in texts as early as Thomas Hardy's Jude theObscure suggests that World War I intensified-but did not cause-these anxieties. This book elaborates a nodal point which links death, masculinity, and modernity long before the events of World War I.
This volume examines energy security in a privatized, liberalized, and increasingly global energy market, in which the concept of sustainability has developed together with a higher awareness of environmental issues, but where the potential for supply disruptions, price fluctuation, and threats to infrastructure safety must also be considered. Part I commences with an essential introductory chapter which defines energy security and sets forth the key issues and themes of the book. There then follow several cross-cutting chapters which include sceptical analysis of energy security claims from an environmental perspective and a broader geopolitical analysis of energy security. Part II examines a wide variety of international, regional, and national approaches to energy security issues. Energy security concerns differ considerably from country to country, however most of the chapters examining particular nations provide an economic and historical context of their energy security concerns, followed by a detailed analysis of the legal provisions relating to each of the main energy sectors (oil, gas, coal, electricity, nuclear, and renewable energies). This entails examination of regulation, organization, and planning for security and other purposes. In a number of cases, energy security law is shaped by other factors such as market liberalization, environmental protection, and competition policy. Part III comprises two final chapters, the first contrasting the various national and regional approaches and analysing cross-cutting issues, whilst the concluding chapter forecasts future trends in the legal regulation of energy security.
The oil and gas industry is going through a major technological shift. This is particularly true of the Norwegian continental shelf where new work processes are being implemented based on digital infrastructure and information technology. The term Integrated Operations (IO) has been applied to this set of new processes. It is defined by the Centre for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry as 'work processes and technology to make smarter decisions and better execution, enabled by ubiquitous real time data, collaborative techniques and access to multiple expertise'. It's claimed that IO is efficient, optimises exploration, reduces costs and improves safety performance. However, the picture is not as clear-cut as it may appear. On the one hand, the new work processes do not prevent major accidents: IO-related factors have been identified in recent events such as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. On the other hand, IO technology provides improved decision-making support (such as access to real-time data and expertise), which can reduce human and material losses and damage to the environment. Given these very different properties, it's vital that the industry has a detailed understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of IO, which this book sets out to do from a multidisciplinary point of view. It analyses Integrated Operations from the angles of statistics, management science, human factors and resilience engineering. These varied disciplines provide a multifaceted understanding of IO that better informs risk assessment practices, as well as explaining new techniques and methods and provides state-of-the-art guidance to risk assessment practitioners working in the oil and gas industry.
Britain was the first country to exploit atomic energy on a large scale, and at its peak in the mid-1960s, it had generated more electricity from nuclear power than the rest of the world combined. The civil atomic energy programme grew out of the military programme which produced plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1956, Calder Hall power station was opened by the Queen. The very next year, one of the early Windscale reactors caught fire and the world's first major nuclear accident occurred. The civil programme ran into further difficulty in the mid-1960s and as a consequence of procrastination in the decision-making process, the programme lost momentum and effectively died. No nuclear power stations have been built since Sizewell B in the late 1980s. This book presents a study of Government papers that have recently become available in the public domain. For the first time in history, the research reactor programme is presented in detail, along with a study of the decision-making by the Government, the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA), and the Central Electricity Board (CEGB).This book is aimed at both specialists in nuclear power and the interested public as a technical history on the development and ultimate failure of the British atomic energy programme.
With only a handful of British coalmines remaining active and with targets set to reduce carbon emissions, the coal industry now seems to be heading towards extinction. Yet, it was coal that turned Britain into a world-leader during the Industrial Revolution and established the conditions for the modern state. In the 20th century, it generated building programmes on a massive scale concerning miners' welfare, settlements and housing. The form, space, organisation, and aesthetics of architecture became of critical importance not just to the process of the industry's modernisation but also how it was perceived and understood both within and outside its workforce. But despite the centrality of coal mining and its workers to the development of modern Britain, as well as the contemporary recognition that aspects of its innovative architecture received, its built legacy has often been overlooked and physically almost completely erased. Divided into three parts, this is the first book which provides a critical and comprehensive examination of the architecture of coal in Britain and how it responded to the needs of the industry and, perhaps more significantly, its labour force. Part I explores the relationship between the architecture of coal and the provision of welfare. While this produced a series of enlightened built projects for miners and their communities especially between the wars - educational buildings, reading rooms, holiday camps, welfare institutes, sports grounds, swimming pools, medical centres, children's playgrounds, etc. - it focusses on the paradigmatic integration of aesthetics and programme seen most emphatically in the creation of over 600 pithead baths. Part II looks at settlement and the relationships between responses to often adverse conditions within domestic environments in mining settlements and the development of broader and influential theories and practices concerning housing. Finally, Part III explores the modernisation of the industry during the post-war period arguing that that architectural design and representation became pivotal to the functional and symbolic requirements of the newly Nationalised entity and its position within, and singular contribution to, post-war society.
With major structural changes will need to be thoroughly reexamined. This book discusses decision making for problems where a particular decision affects the options available at the next decision time. The deregulation of the electric utility industry will shift the emphasis from a cost-based to a price-based approach; the resulting occuring in the electric power industry, many long-standing ways of operation increase in uncertainty requires that a stochastic approach be adopted for optimal decision-making. This monograph covers a wide range of topics including dynamic programming, ordinal optimization, price modelling and forecasting, future market decisions, reserve market decisions and decisions in a congested market place.
This book sheds light on how global warming has caused the ongoing environmental disaster in the Arctic, namely its melting. This development, if left unabated, will have a major negative environmental impact, not only on the Arctic itself, but on the entire planet, including the worsening of global warming and rising sea levels. The latter is a major threat to all island countries and all countries having coastlines with open seas with major environmental, social, economic, political and military/security implications. The Arctic melting is bringing about challenges while opening doors for certain opportunities. These are the accessibility of the region's large oil, gas and coal reserves and minerals, including rare earth elements. They are in demand both in the Arctic littoral states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and USA) and the Greater Arctic countries (Iceland, Finland and Sweden) as well as in other parts of the world. In particular, major oil and gas importers (China, India, Japan and South Korea) are interested in the Arctic energy resources, the main non-regional countries with a capability to engage in the region. The obvious importance of the regional energy and mineral resources makes the division of the region among the regional countries crucial. The melting of the Arctic ice will also lead to the availability for at least a few months a year of a Northern Sea Route and a Northwest Passage connecting Europe to North America and the North-Eastern part of Asia. The importance of these northern routes and the Arctic mineral and energy resources is contributing to a growing military presence of mainly the USA and Russia in this region, which could lead to an arms race. This book offers invaluable insights on the issues that have grave implications for energy security and geopolitics in the arctic.
Stability of the electricity industry is crucial for economic growth of all nations. Sustainable economic growth cannot be accomplished without secured energy supply. The book underlines how management of the electricity industry should be conducted and the efficient form of electricity market structure. The book also studies the electricity industry in Korea which has been a strongly supportive and vital factor in the economic development of Korea for the last few decades. The book focuses on the three market players of the electricity market and they are the suppliers, consumers and the government-related organizations. It includes detailed information on generation and finances at the generator level and analyzes the efficiency differences among generators, plants and business units by using different performance measurement methods. It identifies and analyzes different production factors' effectiveness and relationships in generation. The comprehensive analysis helps to provide explanations in the differences in the performance of the studied units. The book also discusses the implications of the findings for future resource allocation and how we can further enhance the efficiency of the industry. The book will appeal to those interested in energy and energy policies, as well as researchers and practitioners in the economic development and electricity and utilities industry. |
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