In The Next Industrial Revolution, Vincent Petit builds on his earlier work, The Age of Fire Is Over (2021), where he explored how key transformations in consumption patterns impact our energy system in ways that have been seldom envisioned. He further develops this work here, and traces how these transformations apply to our modern industrial system, the bedrock of our global economic development and wealth creation.Petit argues that the world is on the cusp of the next centennial transformation of our industrial system, driven by major technological enhancements, considerable opportunities for productivity step changes, but also significant resiliency and environmental challenges.Through a deep and unique exploration of the innovation landscape and global context in each major sector of industry, the author sheds light on the key changes that will transform not only every sector of activity, but also the way they interact with one another to produce nothing short of a complete redesign of our industrial system.The way such transformation will unfold will, however, depend on the complex entanglement of technological progress, policy, business transformations and cultural evolutions. Through different scenarios, the author highlights some of the key decisions that need to be made today, in order to make the most of this opportunity.

With immense consumption of resources, increased global warming, and environmental pollution, the energy sector has inevitably embraced sustainability. Countries are releasing plans and programs to shift their fossil fuel-dependent energy sectors into clean energy sectors, and projections show that renewable energy will be a significant part of nations' energy mixes in the near future. Optimization and decision-making techniques have been commonly used in the energy sector as problems encountered in this sector are complex and therefore need comprehensive techniques to solve them. With the uncertainty and high-cost issues of renewable resources, the complexity increases in the sector and requires optimization and decision-making techniques. Optimization and Decision-Making in the Renewable Energy Industry analyzes renewable energy sources using current mathematical methods and techniques and provides advanced knowledge on key opportunities and challenges. The book discusses current and trending mathematical methods, tests their validity and verification, and considers their practical application in the field. Covering topics such as urban sustainability and renewable energy systems, this reference work is ideal for practitioners, academicians, industry professionals, researchers, scholars, instructors, and students.

A thoroughly updated introduction to the current issues and challenges facing managers and administrators in the investor and publicly owned utility industry, this engaging volume addresses management concerns in five sectors of the utility industry: electric power, natural gas, water, wastewater systems and public transit. Beginning with a brief overview of the historical development of the industry, the author examines policy issues including the consequences of dealing with deteriorating infrastructure, an aging workforce, climate warming, funding for repair and replacement of facilities, and the demands for meeting the needs of a growing population. In addition to reviewing issues related to various management tasks, he includes chapters on physical and cyber threats and management ethics, liberally laced with real-life examples of utilities' dealings with these challenges. Many tables, figures and boxes expand on key points from the text. Accessible and comprehensive, this thoughtful exploration of the various issues facing administrators and operators in public utilities in the new century will prove a useful overview for students of business and economics, utility staff, and directors of local utility governing boards.

This book addresses the question: how effective are countries in promoting the innovation needed to facilitate an energy transition? Chapters explore energy policy and institutions, innovation policy in general, as well as energy innovation in key countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, China, Japan and Korea, and the EU. At the heart of Energy Innovation for the 21st Century is a fascinating set of international empirical case studies covering supply and demand side technologies at different levels of maturity. These are set within an analytical framework encompassing the functions of technological innovation systems and innovation metrics. The book explores energy, science and technology policies, contextualising the case studies to aid the assessment of the overall performance of innovation systems. Drawing together lessons for energy innovation policy and institutional design, this book is a much-needed resource for sustainability and innovation scholars and researchers. Policy-makers and practitioners will also benefit from the practical advice offered in this timely volume.

This book compares water allocation policy in three rivers under pressure from demand, droughts and a changing climate: the Colorado, Columbia and Murray-Darling. Each river has undergone multiple decades of policy reform at the intersection of water markets and river basin governance - two prominent responses to the global water crisis often attempted and analyzed separately. Drawing on concepts and evidence about property rights and transaction costs, this book generates lessons about the factors that enable and constrain more flexible and sustainable approaches for sharing water among users and across political jurisdictions. Despite over 40 years of interest in water markets as a solution to water scarcity, they have been slow to develop. Intensified competition has also stimulated interest in river basins as the ideal unit to manage conflicts and tradeoffs across jurisdictions, but integration has proven elusive. This book investigates why progress has been slower and more uneven than expected, and it pinpoints the principles and practices associated with both successes and failures. Garrick synthesizes theoretical traditions in public policy and institutional economics, to examine the influence of path dependency and transaction costs on water allocation reform. Using evidence from historical sources, public policy analysis and institutional economics, the book demonstrates that reforms to water rights and transboundary governance arrangements must be combined and complementary to achieve lasting success at multiple scales. The original approach of this book, and its comparison of three prominent sites of reform, makes it an asset to practitioners of water policy, as well as water governance scholars and academics in public policy and economics who are focused on environmental policy, property rights and institutional change.

Is the earth's oil supply starting to run out, or is there far more oil than some experts believe? This book points out flaws in the research used to warn of an oil shortfall and predicts that large new reserves of oil are soon to be tapped. In the last decade, oil experts, geologists, and policy makers alike have warned that a peak in oil production around the world was about to be reached and that global economic distress would result when this occurred. But it didn't happen. The "Peak Oil" Scare and the Coming Oil Flood refutes the recent claims that world oil production is nearing a peak and threatening economic disaster by analyzing the methods used by the theory's proponents. Author Michael C. Lynch, former researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), debunks the "Peak Oil" crisis prediction and describes how the next few years will instead see large amounts of new supply that will bring oil prices down and boost the global economy. This book will be invaluable to those involved in the energy industry, including among those fields that are competing with oil, as well as financial institutions for which the price of oil is of critical importance. Lynch uncovers the facts behind the misleading news stories and media coverage on oil production as well as the analytic process that reveals the truth about the global oil supply. General readers will be dismayed to learn how governments have frequently been led astray by seeming logical theories that prove to have no sound basis and will come away with a healthy sense of skepticism about popular economics.

Energy security is a burning issue in a world where 1.4 billion people still have no access to electricity. This book is about finding solutions for energy security through the international trading system. Focusing mainly on the European Union as a case study, this holistic and comprehensive analysis of the existing legal and geopolitical instruments strives to identify the shortcomings of the international and EU energy trade governance systems, concluding with the notion of a European Energy Union and what the EU is politically prepared to accept as part of its unified energy security. This snapshot of multilateral, regional and bilateral energy trade governance deals with energy transit from the perspective of the Energy Charter Treaty as a means to enhance EU energy security, and examines the system of law and governance of international trade in unconventional fossil fuels. The authors analyze concerns that arise from preferential trade agreements and renewable energy from the EU's perspective, and explain how the EU can diversify its energy supply to improve its energy security. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, lawyers, economists, policymakers, and think tanks dealing with the links between energy security and international trade, as well as those communities relating to other energy-related disciplines.

The book provides an integrated energy/exergy analysis method to identify the energy utilization issues and systematically propose the cost-effective energy-saving and CO2 mitigation/capture solution. There is a strong market needs on energy-saving and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. CO2 mitigation/capture will achieve economic benefit of fuel, power, and carbon tax saving as well as environmental GHG reduction. The book is a professional book for energy-saving and GHG gas mitigation technology in oil & gas, oil refining, and chemical industry. It is an integrated technical book that combines energy utilization theory and practical method, including: thermodynamic analysis for unit operation and process units; energy and exergy calculation for various process streams and utilities; three-link energy/exergy analysis model; energy/exergy balance of equipment, process units, and entire plant; approach and technology of energy saving; optimization of pipeline and equipment; pinch energy-saving technology and its application; CO2 capture and utilization with 8 case studies incorporated for all different scenarios; key energy-saving technologies such gas turbine, FCCU regeneration CO combustion and energy recovery, flue gas turbine system optimization, low-grade heat recovery and utilization. The book is intended for engineers and professional personnel who are working in process engineering, EPC companies, chemical and petrochemical plants, refineries, oil & gas production facilities, power generation plant. It can also be a professional reference or textbook for undergraduate or graduate-level university students and teaching personnel of chemical, energy, and process engineering faculties of universities.

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.

On 26 April 1986, the unthinkable happened near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat: two massive steam explosions ruptured No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, immediately killing 30 people and setting off the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosions were followed by an open-air reactor core fire that released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere for the next nine days, spreading across the Soviet Union, parts of Europe, and especially neighbouring Belarus, where around 70% of the waste landed. The following clean-up operation involved more than half a million personnel at a cost of $68 billion, and a further 4,000 people were estimated to have died from disaster-related illnesses in the following 20 years. Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident (including 95 villages in Belarus), and much of the area returned to the wild, with the nearby city of Pripyat now a ghost town. Chernobyl provides a photographic exploration of the catastrophe and its aftermath in 180 authentic photos. See the twisted wreckage of No. 4 Reactor, the cause of the nuclear disaster; marvel at historic photos of the clean-up operation, with helicopters spraying decontamination liquid and liquidators manually clearing radioactive debris; see the huge cooling pond used to cool the reactors, and which today is home to abundant wildlife, despite the radiation; explore the ghost town of Pripyat, with its decaying apartment blocks, empty basketball courts, abandoned amusement park, wrecked schools, and deserted streets.

Network industries such as electricity, gas, rail, local public transport, telecommunications and postal services are recognised by the EU as crucial for fostering European social and territorial cohesion. Providing an overview of key policy reforms in these industries and an empirical evaluation, this thought-provoking book offers a critical perspective on the functioning of the networks that provide vital services to EU citizens. Key features include: analysis of policy reforms and their effects on the welfare of citizens as users an innovative focus on the neglected topic of the role of state-owned or state-invested enterprises assessment of changes in policy framework reform from the consumer's point of view a comparative country analysis evaluation of cross-cutting issues related to reform including privatisation, unbundling, performance and impact. The Reform of Network Industries will appeal to academic researchers in the fields of industrial economics, policy and regulation and the economics of European integration, as well as students of business and law. Policymakers, regulators and public administrators will also find this book a stimulating read. Contributors include: P. Bance, R. Cardinale, P. Castelnovo, A. Chassy, S. Clo, A. Cosic, L. Diestelmeier, J. Doleschel, S. Drufuca, G. Esposito, M. Florio, S. Groenblom, R. Hirsch, T. Holvad, T. Kaloud, M. Lampropoulou, A. Maxim, A. Negrelli, T.A. Nguyen, N. Rosetto, A. Roukouni, R.P. Sanchez, S. Thomas, J. Urban-Kozlowska, J. Willner

This work on environmental planning focuses on open-cast mining. It addresses the issues around open-cast mining that are central to the context of social science debate: risk; the division of public and private; environmental protest and politics; and new social movements.

Infrastructure systems provide the services we all rely upon for our day-to-day lives. Through new conceptual work and fresh empirical analysis, this book investigates how financialisation engages with city governance and infrastructure provision, identifying its wider and longer-term implications for urban and regional development, politics and policy. Proposing a more people-oriented approach to answering the question of 'What kind of urban infrastructure, and for whom?', this book addresses the struggles of national and local governments to fund, finance and govern urban infrastructure. It develops new insights to explain the socially and spatially uneven mixing of managerial, entrepreneurial and financialised city governance in austerity and limited decentralisation across England. As urban infrastructure fixes for the London global city-region risk undermining national 'rebalancing' efforts in the UK, city statecraft in the rest of the country is having uneasily to combine speculation, risk-taking and prospective venturing with co-ordination, planning and regulation. This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of business and management, economics, geography, planning, and political science. Its conclusions will be valuable to policymakers and practitioners in both the public and private sectors seeking insights into the intersections of financialisation, decentralisation and austerity in the UK, Europe and globally.

The Economics of Electricity Markets provides a cutting-edge analysis of the critical issues involved in the design and operation of electricity markets, as well as an assessment of alternative institutional arrangements that have either been implemented or are under discussion in Europe and the US.The book illustrates how a sound market design can render electricity trading and retailing very much like that of other commodities. Social and political concerns, rather than engineering or economics, are what make electricity markets 'special'. The expert contributors address a wide set of issues that arise when competition is introduced to the electricity industry, ranging from the design of spot and real-time power markets to alternative approaches to congestion management, from competition policy in wholesale electricity markets to the benefits and costs of retail competition, and from regulatory measures to ensure generation capacity adequacy to the politicization of generation investment decisions as a way of pursuing sustainability targets. This highly informative book will appeal to academics, students and researchers in the field of advanced energy economics, and will prove essential reading for energy regulators, professionals and executives wishing to explore the theoretical foundations underpinning their day-to-day activities. Contributors: G. Cervigni, A. Commisso, A. Creti, D. Perekhodtsev, C. Poletti, P. Ranci

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