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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Energy industries & utilities > General
Can catastrophic climate change in this century be averted without
strangling the world economy and global aspirations for improved
living standards?both of which depend on the continuing prominence
of fossil fuels in the 21st century? Power Struggle: World Energy
in the Twenty-First Century argues that it can. Moroney
demonstrates that energy is the cornerstone of world civilization
and global economic growth by measuring the tight coupling between
energy per capita and real standards of living. Fossil fuels-oil,
natural gas, and coal-today account for 88 percent of world energy.
The author shows that renewable energies such as solar, wind,
ethanol, and biodiesel cannot be deployed to replace fossil fuels
on a globally significant scale within the next 50 years. Fossil
fuels, he maintains, will continue to dominate world energy for the
next half-century, in spite of the coming severe depletion of world
reserves of conventional oil and gas. But since the burning of
fossil fuels is the principal source of carbon dioxide emissions,
which are in turn the principal source of global warming, how can
catastrophic climate change be avoided? The solution to the
dilemma, says Moroney, is to capture and permanently store most of
the carbon dioxide emitted by the human race. Half of all human CO2
emissions originate in 8,000 electric power plants, refineries,
steel mills, and other manufacturing facilities around the world.
The technology is at hand to capture the CO2 emissions from these
big plants and store them, permanently and harmlessly, in
geological traps and the deep ocean, instead of releasing them into
the atmosphere. Coal-fired power plants with near-total capture of
CO2 emissions willbecome operational in the United States and
Western Europe as early as 2012. If the world is to thread the
perilous straits of economic and climate catastrophe, international
cooperation and capital investment on a scale unprecedented in
human history will be required. Power Struggle marshals the most
important facts concerning world energy reserves: where oil,
natural gas, and coal, and uranium reserves are located; how long
they will last at projected rates of consumption; and why the most
prosperous countries of the world will increasingly rely on oil and
natural gas imports from the Middle East and Russia. Moroney shows
why it is reasonable to expect that unconventional oil and gas
sources such as heavy crude oil, tar sands, and oil shale will come
on stream as feasible long-term substitutes for the world's
depleted reserves of conventional oil and gas.
Cross Country Pipeline Risk Assessments and Mitigation Strategies
describes the process of pipeline risk management and hazard
identification, using qualitative risk assessment, consequence
modeling/evaluation, pipeline failure rates, and risk calculations,
as well as risk mitigation and control strategies. The book
evaluates potential causes of pipeline failure in the oil and gas
industry based on a wide range of data that cover more than 40
years of operating history. Additionally, it details a consistent
approach that allows for proper estimation of potential risk and
offers methods for mitigating this potential risk. This approach is
then combined with consequence modeling to fully calculate the
different forms of risk presented by pipelines. Cross Country
Pipeline Risk Assessments and Mitigation Strategies is an essential
resource for professionals and experts involved in pipeline design
as well as researchers and students studying risk assessment,
particularly in relation to pipelines.
After decades of stability, power systems are currently undergoing
a rapid transition - demand patterns are evolving, while supply
sources are shifting to renewable energies at an accelerated pace.
This book, written by an experienced energy professional, combines
the various aspects of supply and demand developments to offer a
unified perspective. It highlights the key changes that the world
of electric utilities and power systems will face in the coming
decade, as well as the major challenges that will emerge as a
result. Supplemented by a wealth of global and local data, the book
describes the major patterns that affect both supply and demand,
and provides a quantified analysis of their impacts on power system
grids and markets. Lastly, it explores the new technologies that
can enable the success of these transformations.
This unique volume offers an up-to-date overview of all the main
aspects of groundwater in the Nile Delta and its fringes, as well
as latest research findings. The themes covered include: * Nile
Delta aquifer formation and its characteristics * The use of the
groundwater in the Nile Delta and its implications * Sedimentology
and hydrogeophysical characteristics * Groundwater investigations
and aquifer characterization using current direct resistivity and
induced polarization * Groundwater contamination and degradation *
Saltwater intrusion and its control * Delineation of groundwater
flow and seawater intrusion using various techniques, including
one-dimensional subsurface temperature profiles, geoelectrical
resistivity, and integrated subsurface thermal regime and
hydrogeochemical data * Modeling of groundwater and of saltwater
intrusion in the Nile Delta aquifer * Excessive pumping and
groundwater quality assessment for irrigation and drinking purposes
* Groundwater management for sustainability in the Nile Delta. The
volume appeals to postgraduate students, researchers, scientists,
professionals, decision makers and planners.
The Economics and Econometrics of the Energy-Growth Nexus
recognizes that research in the energy-growth nexus field is
heterogeneous and controversial. To make studies in the field as
comparable as possible, chapters cover aggregate energy and
disaggregate energy consumption and single country and multiple
country analysis. As a foundational resource that helps researchers
answer fundamental questions about their energy-growth projects, it
combines theory and practice to classify and summarize the
literature and explain the econometrics of the energy-growth nexus.
The book provides order and guidance, enabling researchers to feel
confident that they are adhering to widely accepted assumptions and
procedures.
The establishment of clean, safe water is one of the major
challenges facing societies around the globe. The continued
urbanization of human populations, the increasing manipulation of
natural resources, and the resulting pollution are driving
remarkable burden on water resources. Increasing demands for food,
energy, and natural resources are expected to continue to
accelerate in the near future in response to the demands of these
changing human populations. In addition, the complexity of human
activities is leading to a diversity of new chemical contaminants
in the environment that represent a major concern for water
managers. This will create increased pressure on both water
quantity and quality, making it increasingly difficult to provide a
sustainable supply of water for human welfare and activities.
Although protection of water resources is the best long-term
solution, we will also need innovative novel approaches and
technologies to water treatment to ensure an adequate superior
quality resource to meet these needs. Solving tomorrow's water
issues will require unique approaches that incorporate emerging new
technologies. Great advances have been made in the area of
nanotechnology. Due to their unique physical and chemical
properties, nanomaterials are extensively used in antibacterial
medical products, membrane filters, electronics, catalysts, and
biosensors. Nanoparticles can have distinctly different properties
from their bulk counterparts, creating the opportunity for new
materials with a diversity of applications. Recent developments
related to water treatment include the potential use of carbon
nanotubes, nanocompositae, nanospheres, nanofibers, and nanowires
for the removal of a diversity of chemical pollutants. By
exploiting the assets and structure of these new materials, such as
increased surface area, high reactivity, and photocatalytic action,
it will be possible to create technologies that can be very
efficient at removing and degrading environmental pollutants.
Understanding and using these unique properties should lead to
innovative, cost-effective applications for addressing the
complexities of emerging needs for water treatment and protection.
Although still in the early stages, research into the application
of nanotechnology shows great promise for solving some of these
major global water issues. This comprehensive text describes the
latest research and application methods in this rapidly advancing
field.
As long as commodity and securities markets have been in operation,
market manipulation has been a serious concern. Now that many
electricity and natural gas markets have been opened to
competition, manipulation threatens to destroy the value of these
markets as well. Yet market manipulation itself remains
ill-defined, with uncertain legal and economic principles operating
on both sides of regulatory proceedings. Andrew N. Kleit's Modern
Energy Market Manipulation offers an in-depth exploration of this
crucial gray area. It presents a coherent definition of market
manipulation, and drawing upon the substantial available legal
evidence, it examines two categories of manipulation cases: those
in which the allegations clearly fit the definition of manipulation
but in which the facts of the case are unclear, and conversely,
those in which the facts of the case are clear but in which it is
uncertain whether they actually constitute manipulation. Throughout
his discussions, Professor Kleit casts a critical eye not only on
energy companies but also on the legal decisions and processes at
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which acts as both
prosecutor and judge in manipulation matters, and which has
consistently sided with its own staff and against defendants. As
this book deftly shows, both defendants and prosecutors alike have
benefitted from the ambiguities at the heart of existing
definitions of market manipulation. Modern Energy Market
Manipulation is essential reading for regulators, jurists,
litigants, and business managers, and it is of interest to anyone
who wants to learn about the enforcement mechanisms of federal
regulators.
Agile Energy Systems: Global Distributed On-Site and Central Grid
Power, Second Edition, offers new solutions to the structure of
electricity provision made possible by new energy technologies. The
book begins by showing how five precipitating forces led to the
deregulation debacle in California, including major technological
changes and commercialization, regulatory needs mismatched to
societal adjustments, inadequate and flawed economic models, a lack
of vision, goals, and planning that lead to energy failures, and
questionable finance and lack of economic development. The second
half of the book examines the civic market paradigm for new
economic models and how to plan for complexity using California as
an example of how the problem of centralized power systems can be
seen in the worst drought that California has ever seen.
Energy is a sector where there has always been a serious modelling tradition, but with the worldwide trend away from planned economies to new market structures, the risk, uncertainties and competitive aspects which need to be incorporated pose new challenges to analyse strategic as well as economic behaviour. Systems Modelling for Energy Policy addresses the strong and apparently countervailing themes dominating energy policy in the current decade: - concerns about global warming have stimulated an intense and methodologically diverse level of analytical activity aimed ultimately at greater international co-ordination in policy and planning
- simultaneously we are witnessing a worldwide trend away from planned national energy policies to new market structures
To accommodate these shifts in focus, more comprehensive analytical procedures are needed to address technical challenges in handling large models whilst smaller, policy-specific behavioural models may give greater insight to the strategic challenges involved in maintaining focus on key industry restructuring issues for which past data is not available. This volume provides a comprehensive and up-to-date reference to the range of issues and modelling alternatives that a systems perspective gives to the analysis of energy policy. Practitioners, analysts and researchers will find new studies and comparative modelling insights in this book which are not easily accessed elsewhere.
This book examines the implications for public law of the
regulation of privatized utilities, asking how these institutions
fit into our constitutional understanding regarding accountability,
individual rights and territorial government. It argues that new
approaches are needed if constitutional and regulatory principles
are to accommodate one another. This is of particular interest in
the context of recent constitutional reforms and the growing
influence of European integration. After describing the
institutions, their powers and duties, particular attention is paid
to the position of consumers, the role of the European Community,
territorial government and the place of individual rights. The book
concludes by looking at price control, the coming of competitive
markets for utility services and the future of the regulatory
system in the light of convergence, multi-utilities and the
government's planned reforms.
Europe's Energy Transition: Insights for Policy Making looks at the
availability and cost of accessing energy and how it significantly
affects economic growth and competitiveness in global markets. The
results in this book, from a European Commission (EC) financed
project by INSIGHT_E, provide an overview of the most recent
analyses, focusing on energy markets and their implications for
society. Designed to inform European policymaking, elements of this
book will be integrated into upcoming EC policies, giving readers
invaluable insights into the cost and availability of energy, the
effect of price increases affecting vulnerable consumer groups, and
current topics of interest to the EC and ongoing energy debate.
INSIGHT_E provides decision-makers with unbiased policy advice and
insights on the latest developments, including an assessment of
their potential impact.
This book describes the concept and design of the
capacitively-coupled chopper technique, which can be used in
precision analog amplifiers. Readers will learn to design
power-efficient amplifiers employing this technique, which can be
powered by regular low supply voltage such as 2V and possibly
having a +/-100V input common-mode voltage input. The authors
provide both basic design concepts and detailed design examples,
which cover the area of both operational and instrumentation
amplifiers for multiple applications, particularly in power
management and biomedical circuit designs.
Pyrolysis and Gasification of Biomass and Waste provides an
authoritative review of thermal biomass conversion technologies and
their implementation now and in the future. These proceedings
include over 70 papers and case studies presented by leading
experts from Europe and North America in Strasbourg in October
2002. Covering both technical issues and commercial opportunities,
the papers include numerous diagrams, tables and figures presenting
up-to-date details of how the latest pyrolysis and gasification
technology is being put into practice. The meeting covered a wide
range of raw materials and processes, addressing topics such as:
small and large scale gasification; fast pyrolysis of biomass;
liquefied wood fuel; full-scale application of sewage sludge
pyrolysis; ammonia production and reduction; gasification of sorted
MSW; green diesel; gas engines; gas cleaning and process design;
technical and non-technical barriers to commercial exploitation. A
key aim of the Strasbourg meeting was to create recommendations for
strategies and policies in these areas, which the European
Commission can use in its forward planning, especially with regard
to sustainable energy supply, greenhouse gas mitigation and
associated environmental issues. This book is an invaluable
reference source for anyone concerned with these issues, and
essential reading for researchers, engineers, waste managers and
other professionals involved with the utilisation of green fuels
and feedstocks, gasification and the contemporary biomass industry.
Providing critical insights that will interest readers ranging from
economists to environmentalists, policymakers, and politicians,
this book analyzes the economics and technology trends involved in
the dilemma of decarbonization and addresses why aggressive policy
is required in a capitalist political economy to create a sea
change away from fossil fuels. The environmental damage across the
globe is a result of the success of capitalist industrialism-250
years of carbon pollution resulting from consumption of fossil
fuels to drive the economy and the worldwide aspiration to
ever-increasing levels of economic development. But capitalism has
also produced the tools to solve the problems it has created in the
form of a technological revolution in low-carbon renewables,
distributed resources, and intelligent systems to integrate supply
and demand. This book comprehensively examines the political
economy of electricity and analyzes the challenge of transforming
today's electricity sector to meet the dual goals of
decarbonization and development expressed in the Paris Agreement.
Author Mark Cooper defines the dilemma of development and
decarbonization as the great challenge facing the electricity
industry and documents how the economic resources costs of a 100
percent-renewable portfolio has declined to the point that
decarbonization can pay for itself, making the low-carbon renewable
technologies that enable desired environmental and public-health
benefits an easy sell. He identifies the substantial benefit of
increasing use of information, communications, and advanced control
technologies; shows how targeted innovation could speed the
transition by a decade or two and lower the overall cost of the
transition by as much as half; and explains why the flexible,
multi-stakeholder approach of the Paris Agreement is the correct
approach. Presents comprehensive and understandable reviews of more
than 200 recent empirical studies of market imperfections in the
energy efficiency and climate change literature, providing a basis
for targeting policies at the most important causes of poor market
performance Argues that aggressive action to induce change and
overcome resistance, using targeted policies rather than
broad-based taxes, is the strategy that will create movement
towards a decarbonized economy and world Provides a logical
decision-making framework and portfolio analysis that enables
policymakers and regulators to choose, explain, and defend their
decisions, objectively and transparently
This book is a concise review of the current status and future
prospects of concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology. Starting
with a summary of the current technical and economic status of CPV
technology, it identifies the factors that hold CPV back in the
commercial market. The main technical areas considered are solar
cells, tracking and optics. The solar cells section focuses on
spectrum splitting systems, which offer potentially higher
efficiency than multi-junction cells with reductions in the
manufacturing constraints that lead to high costs. It also offers a
brief survey of the latest developments in spectral splitting
alongside a discussion of the advances in solar cell manufacturing
that aid the development of such systems. Further, it examines
electrical design principles for spectral splitting systems that
can improve the spectral stability of these systems' performance.
The section on tracking includes a description of tracking
integration with an update of the review published in Nature,
presenting the latest advances in the field and focusing on
surveying conceptual approaches rather than providing an exhaustive
description of the literature. The optics section explores 3D
printing and other emerging methods of fabricating optics for both
prototype and large-scale production, as well as new classes of
concentrators, particularly those based on novel photonic materials
such as angular filters. Lastly, the authors consider the impact
that environmental factors have on the performance of CPV in
non-standard environments before concluding with a discussion of
the combinations of technologies that they anticipate will most
effectively boost CPV in the commercial market.
The second of two works resulting from the author's extensive
study of energy and the world economy, this book examines the
international macroeconomic aspects of energy adjustment.
Specifically, the author analyzes the ways in which economies
adjust to external shocks, particularly the oil price shock and
other energy market changes of the 1970s and early 1980s. He seeks
to put the recessions experienced by industrial countries during
the last decade in historical and analytical perspective, arguing
that with the increasing openness of the world economy, the effects
of the domestic policies of the industrial economies are
increasingly relevant to the economic prospects of developing
countries. He argues further that the apparent problems of the
global economy during the post-1973 era--stagnant growth,
inflation, the international debt crisis, and rising
protectionism--are in part the result of a deterioration in the
economic performance of industrial countries.
The author begins by examining the effects of energy supply
disturbances on the world economy. Subsequent chapters explore such
issues as challenges to economic stabilization policy; the impact
of external shocks on the economies of less developed countries,
especially with regard to inflation and balance of payments
problems; the relationship between world payment imbalances and
recycling problems; and the link between energy markets and the
international debt crisis. Finally, the author provides a
theoretical framework for the international adjustment to energy
shocks, focusing on flexible exchange-rate policy responses to
exogenous shocks in the 1970s and the contribution of exchange rate
misalignment to the international debt crisis of the 1980s.
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