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

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.

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.

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.

How do governments make key decisions on vital economic questions of national importance? Can they advance the national interest on issues that are highly politicized? How do they respond to competing pressures from the international and domestic environments? Forming Economic Policy explores these and other questions in Canada and Mexico, two very different countries which share a common vulnerability to the world economy. Using the case of energy, the book argues that policymakers will address the national interest, but only episodically with the onset of major national crises that invoke a higher and sustained sense of national priorities. These crises are frequently induced by the interaction of domestic and foreign political and economic forces. The conclusions are surprising. Despite profound political and economic differences between these two countries, policymakers have behaved in remarkably similar ways when arriving at key policy decisions. The explanation - which integrates two competing views of politics, the pluralist and the statist - has important implications with regard to the political processes in those states which, like Canada and Mexico, are exposed to the world economy and face problems of political legitimacy at home. Forming Economic Policy will appeal to students and teachers of political economy and comparative politics as well as to those interested in the politics of energy policy.

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

The 1970s were a decade of historic American energy crises - major interruptions in oil supplies from the Middle East, the country's most dangerous nuclear accident, and chronic shortages of natural gas. In Energy Crises, Jay Hakes brings his expertise in energy and presidential history to bear on the questions of why these crises occurred, how different choices might have prevented or ameliorated them, and what they have meant for the half-century since - and likely the half-century ahead. Hakes deftly intertwines the domestic and international aspects of the long-misunderstood fuel shortages that still affect our lives today. This approach, drawing on previously unavailable and inaccessible records, affords an insider's view of decision-making by three U.S. presidents, the influence of their sometimes-combative aides, and their often tortuous relations with the rulers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Hakes skillfully dissects inept federal attempts to regulate oil prices and allocation, but also identifies the decade's more positive legacies - from the nation's first massive commitment to the development of alternative energy sources other than nuclear power, to the initial movement toward a less polluting, more efficient energy economy. The 1970s brought about a tectonic shift in the world of energy. Tracing these consequences to their origins in policy and practice, Hakes makes their lessons available at a critical moment - as the nation faces the challenge of climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.

This book explores the important role that economic performance measurement is playing in the regulation of network utilities in many countries today. The contributors to the book - researchers from academia, regulatory agencies and consulting firms - address the use of efficiency measures in price regulation and in assessing the effects of past regulatory reforms. Industries examined include electricity supply, water supply, telecommunications and airlines, across a range of countries including the USA, UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.Performance Measurement and Regulation of Network Utilities is unique in that, unlike many other books in this area, it is devoted to the use of performance measurement in these regulatory settings. It is a timely contribution to the literature, given that performance measurement is an integral part of the new incentive regulation methods which have been adopted by many regulatory agencies around the world. Academics specialising in regulation and performance measurement and students of regulatory economics courses, organization studies and public sector economics will all find this book of great interest. It will also appeal to regulators, regulatory consultants and regulatory sections of major utilities.

The economics of energy has been a contested issue over the past century. Although it has not figured prominently in mainstream economics, numerous alternative proposals have called for energy to play a more central role in economic theory. In this highly original and enlightening volume, Guido Buenstorf develops a new conceptual approach to the economics of energy which originates from recent advances in evolutionary economics. The book proposes a non-reductionist, evolutionary approach to the economics of energy and sets out by asking how energy use in production contributes to the use value of goods. Based on a sequential production framework, the author re-interprets the notion of factors of production, identifies long-term patterns of change in energy use, and highlights the role of technical interdependence in adopting new energy technologies. This approach is then applied to three historical cases of energy innovation: the transition from wood to coal, the introduction of the steam engine, and the electrification of industrial production. Academics and researchers in the fields of evolutionary economics, ecological economics and innovation will welcome this fresh and illuminating interpretation of the economics of energy and its role in the process of production.

Why do organisations 'leave money on the floor' by neglecting highly cost effective measures to improve energy efficiency? This question lies at the heart of policy debates over climate change and is a focus of continuing dispute within energy economics. This book explores the nature, operation and relative importance of different barriers to energy efficiency through a comprehensive examination of energy management practices within a wide range of public and private sector organisations. The authors use concepts from new institutional economics to explain individual and organisational behaviour in relation to energy efficiency, and identify the mechanisms through which such barriers may be overcome. In doing so, they are able to shed new light on the 'barriers debate' and provide a valuable input to the future development of climate policy. Combining a critical evaluation of different theoretical perspectives with detailed case study research, this significant new book analyses how and why organisations waste energy and suggests practical policy measures to help prevent these losses. It will be required reading for professional economists, academics and students with an interest in energy use, environmental policy and organisational economics. It will also be highly relevant for policymakers and consultants working on the important policy issues surrounding energy efficiency and climate change.

This book is the latest annual review of utility regulation and deregulation, published in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the London Business School. It contains a series of chapters from leading practitioners in the field which comment on the most significant and up-to-date developments. Topics include US telecoms deregulation, road network regulation, UK competition policy, Ofcom and light touch regulation, railway regulation, the liberalisation of European utility markets, postal regulation, investment and regulation, and energy regulation in the UK. Two papers are presented on each issue: the first by a distinguished academic or industry expert and the second, a shorter comment, usually by the relevant regulator. Together they show how regulation and deregulation are evolving, and highlight the successes which have been achieved and the failures which must be overcome. This book will be of considerable value to practitioners, policymakers and academics involved in regulatory reform and regulatory economics. It will also be of interest to anyone wishing to gain an overview of international regulatory policies.

Sustainable development and global climate change have figured prominently in scientific analysis and international policymaking since the early 1990s. This book formulates technology strategies that will lead to environmentally sustainable energy systems, based on an analysis of global climate change issues using the concept of sustainable development. The authors focus on environmentally compatible, long-term technology developments within the global energy system, while also considering aspects of economic and social sustainability. The authors analyze a large number of alternative scenarios and illustrate the differences between those that meet the criteria for sustainable development and those that do not. As a result of their analysis, they identify a variety of promising socio-economic and environmental development paths that are consistent with sustainable development. One sustainable-development scenario and its policy implications are then presented in detail from a technology change perspective. The authors propose ambitious targets for technology adoption that are judged to achieve the desired socio-economic and environmental goals. Although the optimal policy mix to pursue these targets is clearly country-specific, the authors suggest that energy-related R&D that leads to technology performance improvements and the promotion of technology adoption in niche markets are the policy options which will yield the most significant long-term benefits. Policymakers, economists and researchers working on sustainability, energy economics, and technology change and innovation will welcome this topical and highly readable book.

What happens when a radically-new fuel or technology transforms the energy system? How does the energy system evolve at different stages of economic development? What are the implications for people's lives and their environment? Building on an award-winning article, in this exciting book Roger Fouquet investigates the impacts of technological innovations and economic development over the last seven hundred years on our ability to provide heat, power, transport and light. Using a unique data set, collected over a decade, the analysis identifies the forces driving revolutions in energy services. It highlights the tendency of markets to produce ever-cheaper energy services, which in turn incite greater energy consumption. It also examines how these revolutions affect people's well-being and the environment. The framework, analysis and insights in this book offer an original perspective on future energy markets, transitions to low-carbon economies and strategies for addressing climate change. Heat, Power and Light is an invaluable and unique contribution to this profoundly important topic. As such it will appeal to a wide audience of energy economists, climate change analysts, policymakers, economic and technology historians and economists more broadly.

Who Needs Nuclear Power challenges conventional thinking about the role of civil nuclear power in a rapidly changing energy context, where new energy carriers are penetrating markets around the world. Against the backdrop of a global energy transition and the defining issue of Climate Change, Chris Anastasi assesses new nuclear build in a fast-moving sector in which new technologies and practices are rapidly emerging. He considers various countries at different stages of nuclear industry development, and discusses their political, legal and technical institutions that provide the framework for both existing nuclear facilities and new build, as well as a country's technical capability. He also highlights the critical issue of nuclear safety culture, exploring how organisations go about instilling it and maintaining it in their operations and encouraging it in their supply chains; the critical role played by independent regulators and international institutions in ensuring the integrity of the industry is also highlighted. This book provides a balanced and holistic view of nuclear power for both an expert and non-expert audience, and a realistic assessment of the potential for this technology over the critical period to 2050 and beyond.