The objective of this textbook is to introduce students and professionals to fundamental principles and techniques and emerging technologies in energy informatics and the digitalization of power markets and systems. The book covers such areas as smart grids and artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT), with a focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed to modernize the electric energy infrastructure. It also provides an overview of the smart grid and its main components: smart grid applications at transmission, distribution, and customer level, network requirements with communications technologies, and standards and protocols. In addition, the book addresses emerging technologies and trends in next-generation power systems, i.e., energy informatics, such as digital green shift, energy cyber-physical-social systems (E-CPSS), energy IoT, energy blockchain, and advanced optimization. Future aspects of digitalized power markets and systems will be discussed with real-world energy informatics projects. The book is designed to be a core text in upper-undergraduate and graduate courses such as Introduction to Smart Grids, Digitalization of Power Systems, and Advanced Power System Topics in Energy Informatics.

This book offers a comprehensive review of how plastic pollution is affecting fresh and marine waters, and what the current challenges in plastic waste assessment and management in the aquatic environment are. Plastic waste comprises particles with heterogeneous physicochemical properties such as large size-range, different shapes and polymer types with various additives determining their environmental fate and risk. This complexity raises several open research questions which are explored in this book. Examples are the plastic uptake by aquatic organisms, degradation processes as well as sources and sinks in the environment. Readers will discover real case studies of plastic pollution detection and management in different parts of the world, including Asia, America and Europe, which provide an integrated overview of the global scope of this issue. This book and the companion volume Plastics in the Aquatic Environment - Part II: Stakeholders' Role Against Pollution are valuable resources to students, researchers, policymakers and environmental managers interested in plastic pollution and working towards its reduction.

Floods, species extinction, migration, droughts, super tornadoes - climate change is no longer a threat looming on the horizon but has long since become part of our everyday lives. Limiting the emerging and worsening climate changes is one of the most important challenges of our time. All human induced climate impacts can be traced back to a single factor: Energy. This book provides a comprehensive and readable introduction to the interplay between energy and climate, which also includes the fields of technology, economics, and politics. At the same time, the issue is highly complex and can only be understood in all its details by expert scientists, meaning that the facts are often poorly presented in the political discussion about climate. To put it simply: If we want to stop and even reverse the current climate trends, we need to find answers to the following three questions: * How exactly does our existing way of consuming energy affect the climate? * What options are there for generating energy without negative climate effects, and what do these mean for our lives? * What technological advances will directly help us to achieve this in future? In a non-alarmist yet entertaining manner, the book highlights the key determinants of global energy supply. Readers will come to appreciate the crucial facts about "energy and climate", will be up to date with the latest scientific and technological knowledge, and will understand the global political and economic framework that we need to consider when designing an appropriate future energy and climate policy. At the same time, the author conveys a clear and optimistic message: We already have the technical capabilities (which will be further enhanced in the future) to reverse the devastating climate trends without significantly limiting prosperity. The obstacles lie primarily in economic and political "constraints" and particular conflicts of interest. "A very important book that explains one of the most essential questions of our time - how we can master climate change by an energy transition - with scientific precision and clear words." Georg Kell, founder and former Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact

In the current age of science and technology, our lives have become dominated by countless scientific and technological innovations without which the earth would be a much poorer place. Life as we know would become absolutely bleak and boring without the inventions and advances being made all over the globe. In fact, scientific inventions, discoveries and innovations have ushered in a dramatic revolution in virtually every sphere of life. But at the same time, the skewed use of technology is at loggerheads with the environment. We, and our environment, now face a number of critical challenges and it is in response to this that we wrote this book to raise awareness for environmental issues and related management aspects. With a primary focus on Environmental Management - the rational reconciliation of man and nature, which involves the judicious exploitation and utilization of natural resources without disturbing the ecosystem's balance - it will thus help to improve the relationship between man and environment. Moreover, it offers a wealth of ready-to-use material for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Environment and Water Management. The book systematically addresses a range of key aspects, e.g. scientific principles, methods and ideas, as well as life-long learning skills for students. Further, it provides a solid foundation for applying scientific approaches to environmental problems.

There is a growing realization that human intent and activity are not easily separated from natural forces in the shaping of landscapes. The pervasive Western dichotomy of culture and nature has proved to be a poor basis for scientific research and long-term environmental management. Humans have been major factors in environmental change for thousands of years using fire, intensive hunting and a wide range of agricultural strategies to transform most ecosystems on the earth long before the Industrial Revolution.All these activities contribute to the making of cultural landscapes which incorporate elements generally classified in two groups: tangible empirical evidence of human behavior, and intangible, symbolic meanings. This book investigates the newly emerging scope of interests and project agendas to investigate and preserve cultural landscapes. It presents the historic, archaeological, ethnographic, and environmental traditions of cultural landscape study and the attempts to reconstruct and analyze the complex processes of cultural changes through prehistoric and historic times. The 'guiding light' of the book is that the fullest understanding of a cultural landscape will materialize through interdisciplinary cooperation, which should involve an ecological approach with historical ecology as the guiding tool, applied archaeology, and environmental planning.The book addresses issues of interest to policymakers-makers and planners and those who investigate cultural landscapes.

Energy is a key resource for transformational development globally. Oil and gas continue to play a key role in this sector irrespective of the gradual transition towards renewables and will continue to do so in most developing and emerging economies in the near future. The industry is complex and highly capital intensive with significant risk, but also with significant benefits. Such a complex but important sector is generally not well understood both in academic and policy circles. This book fills this void by serving as a comprehensive reference to the oil and gas sector, with a focus on emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). It offers in-depth coverage of the critical and contemporary issues in the economics of oil and gas industry by carefully integrating the relevant theoretical underpinnings and practical policy issues across the value chain of the industry in relation to the development, fiscal arrangements, and the economic and financing aspects of the industry. These insights will significantly deepen the understanding of the industry and extend the knowledge of the sector in ways that existing books do not. The book includes relevant cases and thus, will serve as a valuable resource for students taking courses in market analysis of the oil and gas industry, energy economics, development economics and finance, environmental and resource economics, the political economy of the extractive industry and development studies. Researchers and practitioners working in these areas will also find the book to be a useful reference guide.

Tourism has become one of the most powerful forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. It creates entangled futures of exploitation and dependence, extracting resources and labor, and eclipsing other ways of doing, living, and imagining life. And yet, tourism also creates jobs, encourages infrastructure development, and in many places inspires the only possibility of hope and well-being. Stuck with Tourism explores the ambivalent nature of tourism by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, a region voraciously transformed by tourism development over the past forty years. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at the beach resorts of Cancun, protected natural enclaves along the Gulf coast, historical buildings of the colonial past, and maquilas for souvenir production in the Maya heartland, this book explores the moral, political, ecological, and everyday dilemmas that emerge when, as Yucatan's inhabitants put it, people get stuck in tourism's grip.

The transformation of Britain's energy policy in the last two decades has been more radical than any such change in developed economies. Since 1979 the great state energy monopolies created after the Second World War have been privatised and made subject to competition. Images of Arthur Scargill and the miners' strike of the 1980s remain vivid, but what effect has the new market philosophy had on Britain's energy industries? Since 1979 the National Coal Board, British Gas, and the Central Electricity Generating Board have all been broken up. Energy trading, electricity pools, auctions, and futures markets first developed, but they failed to solve the old energy policy problems of security of supply and network integrity, and the new ones of the environment and reliance on gas. The government introduced a new regulatory regime as a temporary necessity but regulation did not wither away, rather it grew to be more pervasive. Changing the ownership of the industries did not reduce the government's involvement, it simply changed its form. The 1980s and 1990s were years of energy surpluses and low fossil-fuel prices. There was little need to invest, and much of the investment in the so-called dash for gas was artificially stimulated. The new owners sweated the assets, and engaged in major financial engineering. Takeovers consolidated the industry into a smaller number of dominant firms. As investment priorities became more urgent, with the environmental pressures of climate change and the gradual switch to imported gas, the market philosophy was found wanting. Energy policy could not rely solely on the market. And it is the government which finds itself responsible for resolving the core issues of energy policy. Helm's book tells this story. It is a major study of the new market approach to energy policy in Britain since 1979. It describes the miners' strike, the privatisations of the gas, electricity, nuclear generation, and coal industries, and looks at events such as the dash for gas, regulatory failures in setting monopoly prices, and the takeovers and the consolidations of the late 1990s. Helm sets out the achievements of the new market philosophy, but also analyses why it has ultimately failed to turn energy industries into normal commodity businesses. The revised paperback edition includes a new chapter on the White Paper on a low-carbon economy and updated discussions on nuclear power, to incorporate the 2003 Nuclear White Paper, price reviews, and emissions trading.

Cities currently account for about two-thirds of the world s annual energy consumption and about 70 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the coming decades, urbanization and income growth in developing countries are expected to push cities energy consumption and GHG emissions shares even higher, particularly where the majority of people remain underserved by basic infrastructure services and where city authorities are underresourced to shift current trajectories. These challenges are faced by many cities and millions of people in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Region, which is experiencing unprecedented rates of urbanization, as the region s urban population grows almost twice as fast as the world s urban population. Energizing Green Cities in Southeast Asia lays out a blueprint for transforming EAP cities to global engines of green growth by choosing energy efficient solutions to their infrastructure needs. It urges national and municipal governments to reform institutions, build capacity, and strengthen energy planning and governance in order to mainstream energy efficiency on a citywide scale and introduce low-carbon policies in fast-growing cities in the EAP Region which will define the Region's energy future and its GHG footprint. This book is based on case studies undertaken in three pilot cities -- Cebu City (the Philippines), Da Nang (Vietnam), and Surabaya (Indonesia) -- which illustrate the use of an energy efficiency platform -- SUEEP (sustainable urban energy and emissions planning) -- for the identification and prioritization of green investments across all major infrastructure sectors. It presents the SUEEP process as a framework for collaboration between municipal governments, stakeholders, private investors and financing institutions in achieving the green growth objectives at the city level. It also provides step-by-step guidance on the SUEEP framework in the form of a Guidebook to help a city develop its own energy and emissions plan and link its aspirations to actionable initiatives to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions."

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. The Latest Tools and Techniques for Managing Infrastructure AssetsFully updated throughout, this practical resource provides a proven, cost-effective infrastructureasset management framework that integrates planning, design, construction, maintenance, rehabilitation, and renovation. Public Infrastructure Asset Management,Second Edition, describes the most current methodologies for effectively managing roads, bridges, airports, utility services, water and waste facilities, parks, public buildings, and sports complexes. This comprehensive guide covers information management and decision support systems, including proprietary solutions and new technological developments such ascloud storage. The book discusses total quality management, economics, life-cycle analysis, and maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction programming. Up-to-date examples and real-world case studies illustrate the practical applications of the concepts presented in this thoroughly revised reference. This new edition features: Planning, needs assessment, and performance indicators Database management, data needs, and analysis Inventory, historical, and environmental data In-service monitoring and evaluation data Performance modeling and failure analysis Design for infrastructure service life Construction Maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction strategies, policies, and treatment alternatives Dealing with new or alternate concepts Prioritization, optimization, and work programs Integrated infrastructure asset management systems Visual IMS: an illustrative infrastructure management system and applications Available asset management system and commercial off-the-shelf providers Benefits of implementing an asset management system Sustainability, environmental stewardship, and asset management Future directions for infrastructure asset management

Tajikistan suffers severe energy shortages in winter, caused by a combination of low hydropower output during winter, when river fl ows are low, and high demand driven by heating needs. Shortages affect some 70 percent of the population, costing about 3 percent of annual GDP. This fi gure excludes human and environmental costs, as well as the serious negative effect on the business investment climate. If no measures are undertaken to address this problem, then current electricity shortages, estimated at about one-quarter of winter demand (2,700 GWh), could increase to more than one-third of winter demand (4,500 GWh) by 2016. The Government of Tajikistan recognizes both the importance and challenges of energy security and has therefore introduced various measures to help meet demand. Tajikistan s Winter Energy Crisis explores a range of supply and demand alternatives including thermal, run-of-river hydro, other renewables, energy effi ciency, and demand management to further inform its development partners on the country s efforts to meet its winter energy demand. The study recommends that the Government of Tajikistan accelerate its efforts in energy effi ciency and demand management, including tariff reform; add new dual-fi red thermal power supply to complement the existing hydropower supply during winter; and pursue energy imports and rebuild regional energy trade routes to leverage surplus electricity supply in neighboring countries. Energy conservation and demand-side management, effective resource management, and reduction alone could address 40 percent of the shortages, including a signifi cant package of economic measures at the main aluminum smelting plant. The study suggests that by following these recommended actions shortages could be signifi cantly reduced within 4 5 years and a solid base for long-term energy established."

The electric power industry has been transformed over the past forty years, becoming more reliable and resilient while meeting environmental goals. A big question now is how to prevent backsliding. Pollution, Politics, and Power tells the story of the remarkable transformation of the electric power industry over the last four decades. Electric power companies have morphed from highly polluting regulated monopolies into competitive, deregulated businesses that generate, transmit, and distribute cleaner electricity. Power companies are investing heavily in natural gas and utility-scale renewable resources and have stopped building new coal-fired plants. They facilitate end-use efficiency and purchase excess electricity produced by rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines, helping to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. But these beneficial changes have come with costs. The once-powerful coal industry is on the edge of ruin, with existing coal-fired plants closing and coal mines shutting down. As a result, communities throughout Appalachia suffer from high unemployment and reduced resources, which have exacerbated a spiraling opioid epidemic. The Trump administration's efforts to revive the coal industry by scaling back environmental controls and reregulating electricity prices have had little effect on the coal industry's decline. Major advances therefore come with warning signs, which we must heed in charting the continuing course of sustainable electricity. In Pollution, Politics, and Power, Thomas O. McGarity examines the progress made, details lessons learned, and looks to the future with suggestions for building a more sustainable grid while easing the economic downsides of coal's demise.

For a century, almost all light-duty vehicles (LDVs) have been powered by internal combustion engines operating on petroleum fuels. Energy security concerns about petroleum imports and the effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on global climate are driving interest in alternatives. Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels assesses the potential for reducing petroleum consumption and GHG emissions by 80 percent across the U.S. LDV fleet by 2050, relative to 2005. This report examines the current capability and estimated future performance and costs for each vehicle type and non-petroleum-based fuel technology as options that could significantly contribute to these goals. By analyzing scenarios that combine various fuel and vehicle pathways, the report also identifies barriers to implementation of these technologies and suggests policies to achieve the desired reductions. Several scenarios are promising, but strong, and effective policies such as research and development, subsidies, energy taxes, or regulations will be necessary to overcome barriers, such as cost and consumer choice. Table of Contents Front Matter Overview Summary 1 Introduction 2 Alternative Vehicle Technologies: Status, Potential, and Barriers 3 Alternative Fuels 4 Consumer Attitudes and Barriers 5 Modeling the Transition to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels 6 Policies for Reducing GHG Emissions from and Petroleum Use by Light-Duty Vehicles 7 Policy Options Appendixes Appendix A: Statement of Task Appendix B: Committee Biographies Appendix C: Meetings and Presentations Appendix D: Reports on Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions Projections to 2050 Appendix E: Glossary, Conversion Factors, and Acronyms and Abbreviations Appendix F: Vehicles Appendix G: Fuels Appendix H: Modeling

Poorly implemented energy subsidies are economically costly to taxpayers and damage the environment. This report aims at providing the emerging lessons form a representative sample of case studies in 20 developing countries that could help policy makers to address implementation challenges, including overcoming political economy and affordability constraints. The sample has selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including the country s level of development (and consumption), developing country region, energy security and the fuel it subsidies (petroleum fuel, electricity, natural gas). The case studies were supported by data collection related to direct budgetary subsidies, fuel and electricity tariffs, and household survey data. The analysis provides strong evidence of the success of reforms in reducing the associated fiscal burden. For the sample of countries, the average energy subsidy recorded in the budget was reduced from 1.8% in 2004 to 1.3%GDP in 2010. The reduction of subsidies is particularly remarkable for net energy importers. Pass-through of international fuel prices was also notable in the case of electricity generated by fossil fuel. For the sample of countries, the average end-user electricity tariff increased by 50%, from USD 6 cents in 2002 to USD 9 cents per kWh in 2010. In spite of the relatively price inelastic demand for gasoline and diesel, fossil fuel consumption in the road sector (per unit of GDP) declined in the 20 countries examined from 53 (44) in 2002 to about 23 kt oil equivalent per million of GDP in 2008 in the case of gasoline (Diesel). The most notable decline in consumption was recorded in the low and lower middle income countries. This reflects the much higher rate of growth in GDP in this group of countries and underlines the opportunities to influence future consumption behavior rather than modifying the existing consumption patterns, overcoming inertia and vested interests. Similar trends are recorded for power consumption. While there is no one-size-fits-all model for subsidy reform, implementation of compensatory social policies and an effective communication strategy, before the changes are introduced, reduces helped with the implementation of reforms."

This applied study addresses the large flood exposures of Central Europe and proposes efficient financial and risk transfer mechanisms to mitigate fiscal losses from such natural catastrophes. In 2010 the V-4 Visegrad countries (i.e., Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) demonstrated their historical vulnerability to floods - Poland suffered $3.2 billion in flood related losses, comparable to it $3.5 billion of losses in 1997. Flood modeling analysis of the V-4 shows that a disaster event with a 5 percent probability in any given year can lead to economic losses in these countries of between 0.6 percent to 1.9 percent of GDP, as well as between 2.2 percent to 10.7 percent of government revenues. Larger events could quadruple such losses. The European Union Solidarity Fund is available as a mechanism for disasters but it comes into effect at only very high levels of losses, does not provide sufficient funding, and is not speedy. An insurance-like mechanism for National Governments can be tailored for country-portfolio needs for buildings, properties and critical infrastructure. By virtue of the broad territorial scope, fiscal support should use mechanisms that provide payments triggered by physical flood measurements in selected areas (rather than site-by-site losses as in the traditional insurance industry). A multi-country mechanism for insurance pooling of risks to protect infrastructure can also provide major cost efficiencies for all governments, using parametric-or index contracts. Savings from pooling can range from 25 to 33 percent of the financing costs that each country would otherwise have paid on its own. There are several instruments and options for both insurance, and debt financed mechanisms for funding catastrophes. All instruments can be analyzed based on equivalencies in terms of market spreads. A hybrid-like instrument, the catastrophe bond, is really a risk transfer instrument but structured as a debt security. The V-4 countries should therefore begin to set up the financial mechanisms to prevent major fiscal losses from future catastrophic floods and avoid fiscal disruptions when these occur. The instruments proposed can be market tested and supplemented with exacting studies on hydrology and topography used to fine tune the loss estimations per event and where property and infrastructure are exposed.|Kill the Messenger is perhaps the most thorough and authoritative work in defense of educational testing ever written. Phelps points out that much research conducted by education insiders on the topic is based on ideological preference or profound self-interest. It is not surprising that they arrive at emphatically anti-testing conclusions. Much, if not most, of this hostile research is passed on to the public by journalists as if it were neutral, objective, and independent. This volume explains and refutes many of the common criticisms of testing; describes testing opponents strategies, through case studies of Texas and the SAT; illustrates the profound media bias against testing; acknowledges testings limitations, and suggests how it can be improved; and finally, outlines the consequences of losing the war on standardized testing.

At present, different concentrating solar thermal technologies (CST) have reached varying degrees of commercial availability. This emerging nature of CST means that there are market and technical impediments to accelerating its acceptance, including cost competitiveness, an understanding of technology capability and limitations, intermittency, and benefits of electricity storage. Many developed and some developing countries are currently working to address these barriers in order to scale up CST-based power generation. Given the considerable growth of CST development in several World Bank Group partner countries, there is a need to assess the recent experience of developed countries in designing and implementing regulatory frameworks and draw lesson that could facilitate the deployment of CST technologies in developing countries. Merely replicating developed countries' schemes in the context of a developing country may not generate the desired outcomes. Against this background, this report (a) analyzes and draws lessons from the efforts of some developed countries and adapts them to the characteristics of developing economies; (b) assesses the cost reduction potential and economic and financial affordability of various CST technologies in emerging markets; (c) evaluates the potential for cost reduction and associated economic benefits derived from local manufacturing; and (d) suggests ways to tailor bidding models and practices, bid selection criteria, and structures for power purchase agreements (PPAs) for CST projects in developing market conditions.|Security sector reform (SSR) is widely recognized as key to conflict prevention, peace-building, sustainable development, and democratization. SSR has gained most practical relevance in the context of post-conflict reconstruction of so-called ""failed states'"" and states emerging from violent internal or inter-state conflict. As this volume shows, almost all states need to reform their security sectors to a greater or lesser extent, according to the specific security, political and socio-economic contexts, as well as in response to the new security challenges resulting from globalization and post-9/11 developments. Alan Bryden is a researcher at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Heiner Hnggi is assistant director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology could provide a technological bridge for achieving near to midterm GHG emission reduction goals. Integrated CCS technology is still under development and has noteworthy challenges, which would be possible to overcome through the implementation of large-scale demonstration projects. In order to assist developing countries to better understand issues related to potential technology deployment, there is a need to start analyzing various numerous challenges facing CCS within the economic and legal context of developing countries and countries in transition. This report is the first effort of the World Bank Group to contribute to a deeper understanding of (a) the integration of power generation with CCS technologies, as well as their costs; (b) regulatory barriers to the deployment of CCS; and (c) global financing requirements for CCS and applicable project finance structures involving instruments of multilateral development institutions. This report does not provide prescriptive solutions to overcome these barriers, since action must be taken on a country-by-country basis, taking account of different circumstances and national policies. Individual governments should decide their priorities on climate change mitigation and adopt appropriate measures accordingly. The analyses presented in this report may take on added relevance, depending on the future direction of international climate negotiations and domestic legal and policy measures in both developed and developing countries, and how they serve to encourage carbon sequestration. We expect that this report will provide insights for policy makers, stakeholders, private financiers, and donors in meeting the challenges of the deployment of climate change mitigation technologies and CCS in particular.|Bodies move, and they express. There is a body language, and there is a language employed to refer to the body, its parts, and the states of its being. Consciously and unconsciously people judge each other according to body and clothing behavior. What one thinks one expresses is not necessarily how one is seen and judged, and the variety of observations made of the body is diverse. Bodily behavior and interpretations of this behavior face change at frontiers of culture areas, or when cultures meet each other as a result of migration. This book addresses and expands upon these issues. Soheila Shahshahani teaches at the Shahid Beheshti University, Teheran, Iran.

The UK has pioneered the introduction of competition into previously monopolistic utility industries. Competition has been introduced progressively, starting with BT, and continuing with the gas and electricity industries, where it is to be completed during 1998. In water, competition has so far been restricted to new developments, and it is said that it will be phased in once the initial franchises expire. These radical policy innovations have been controversial, and raise significant generic problems concerned with market design, regulation, corporate strategy and income distribution. The lessons from the UK provide an essential input into liberalization throughout the world, as well as helping to shape the transitional arrangements already in place in the UK. This volume brings together independent experts with the specialist regulators to provide a comprehensive analysis of the issues. The common themes are drawn together in the introduction. The volume will be essential reading for utility companies, regulators, politicians and policy advisors.

After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain—went from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf’s rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world’s last absolute monarchies? In Energy Kingdoms, Jim Krane takes readers inside these monarchies to consider their conundrum. He traces the history of the Gulf states’ energy use and policies, looking in particular at how energy subsidies have distorted demand. Oil exports are the lifeblood of their political-economic systems—and the basis of their strategic importance—but domestic consumption has begun eating into exports while climate change threatens to render their desert region uninhabitable. At risk are the sheikhdoms’ way of life, their relations with their Western protectors, and their political stability in a chaotic region. Backed by rich fieldwork and deep knowledge of the region, Krane expertly lays out the hard choices that Gulf leaders face to keep their states viable.

Following the liberalization of EU energy markets, more than three hundred gas and electricity companies entered the market to substitute state-run monopolies. A sizeable shift has taken place within the European energy sector, one that remains only partially understood at best. Focusing on the financial performance of retail energy firms between 2008 and 2017, and taking the Italian market as its exemplar-a market that has arguably undergone the most significant transformation in Europe-Changes in European Energy Markets provides a critical and up-to-date analysis of this major development. Based on a comprehensive literature review and a wealth of data, the authors provide a compelling and much-needed account of the intensity and pace of change in the sector, which has been far from uniform. Changes in European Energy Markets is a must-read for students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the seismic changes that have occurred within EU energy markets over the past decade.