Statehouse and Greenhouse
Statehouse and Greenhouse

Author: Barry G. Rabe

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2004-02-17

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0815796358

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

No environmental issue triggers such feelings of hopelessness as global climate change. Many areas of the world, including regions of the United States, have experienced a wide range of unusually dramatic weather events recently. Much climate change analysis forecasts horrors of biblical proportions, such as massive floods, habitat loss, species loss, and epidemics related to warmer weather. Such accounts of impending disaster have helped trigger extreme reactions, wherein some observers simply dismiss global climate change as, at the very worst, a minor inconvenience requiring modest adaptation. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that an American federal government known for institutional gridlock has accomplished virtually nothing in this area in the last decade. Policy inertia is not the story of this book, however. Statehouse and Greenhouse examines the surprising evolution of state-level government policies on global climate change. Environmental policy analyst Barry Rabe details a diverse set of innovative cases, offering detailed analysis of state-level policies designed to combat global warming. The book explains why state innovation in global climate change has been relatively vigorous and why it has drawn so little attention thus far. Rabe draws larger potential lessons from this recent flurry of American experience. Statehouse and Greenhouse helps to move debate over global climate change from bombast to the realm of what is politically and technically feasible.

The Power of Renewables
The Power of Renewables

Author: Chinese Academy of Engineering

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2011-01-29

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0309160006

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The United States and China are the world's top two energy consumers and, as of 2010, the two largest economies. Consequently, they have a decisive role to play in the world's clean energy future. Both countries are also motivated by related goals, namely diversified energy portfolios, job creation, energy security, and pollution reduction, making renewable energy development an important strategy with wide-ranging implications. Given the size of their energy markets, any substantial progress the two countries make in advancing use of renewable energy will provide global benefits, in terms of enhanced technological understanding, reduced costs through expanded deployment, and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to conventional generation from fossil fuels. Within this context, the U.S. National Academies, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), reviewed renewable energy development and deployment in the two countries, to highlight prospects for collaboration across the research to deployment chain and to suggest strategies which would promote more rapid and economical attainment of renewable energy goals. Main findings and concerning renewable resource assessments, technology development, environmental impacts, market infrastructure, among others, are presented. Specific recommendations have been limited to those judged to be most likely to accelerate the pace of deployment, increase cost-competitiveness, or shape the future market for renewable energy. The recommendations presented here are also pragmatic and achievable.

Electricity from Renewable Resources
Electricity from Renewable Resources

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2010-04-05

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 030913708X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A component in the America's Energy Future study, Electricity from Renewable Resources examines the technical potential for electric power generation with alternative sources such as wind, solar-photovoltaic, geothermal, solar-thermal, hydroelectric, and other renewable sources. The book focuses on those renewable sources that show the most promise for initial commercial deployment within 10 years and will lead to a substantial impact on the U.S. energy system. A quantitative characterization of technologies, this book lays out expectations of costs, performance, and impacts, as well as barriers and research and development needs. In addition to a principal focus on renewable energy technologies for power generation, the book addresses the challenges of incorporating such technologies into the power grid, as well as potential improvements in the national electricity grid that could enable better and more extensive utilization of wind, solar-thermal, solar photovoltaics, and other renewable technologies.

Short Circuiting Policy
Short Circuiting Policy

Author: Leah Cardamore Stokes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-03-18

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0190074280

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1999, Texas passed a landmark clean energy law, beginning a groundswell of new policies that promised to make the US a world leader in renewable energy. As Leah Stokes shows in Short Circuiting Policy, however, that policy did not lead to momentum in Texas, which failed to implement its solar laws or clean up its electricity system. Examining clean energy laws in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio over a thirty-year time frame, Stokes argues that organized combat between advocate and opponent interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis. She tells the political history of our energy institutions, explaining how fossil fuel companies and electric utilities have promoted climate denial and delay. Stokes further explains the limits of policy feedback theory, showing the ways that interest groups drive retrenchment through lobbying, public opinion, political parties and the courts. More than a history of renewable energy policy in modern America, Short Circuiting Policy offers a bold new argument about how the policy process works, and why seeming victories can turn into losses when the opposition has enough resources to roll back laws.

Storage and Hybridization of Nuclear Energy
Storage and Hybridization of Nuclear Energy

Author: Hitesh Bindra

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2018-11-22

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0128139765

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Storage and Hybridization of Nuclear Energy: Techno-economic Integration of Renewable and Nuclear Energy provides a unique analysis of the storage and hybridization of nuclear and renewable energy. Editor Bindra and his team of expert contributors present various global methodologies to obtain the techno-economic feasibility of the integration of storage or hybrid cycles in nuclear power plants. Aimed at those studying, researching and working in the nuclear engineering field, this book offers nuclear reactor technology vendors, nuclear utilities workers and regulatory commissioners a very unique resource on how to access reliable, flexible and clean energy from variable-generation. - Presents a unique view on the technologies and systems available to integrate renewables and nuclear energy - Provides insights into the different methodologies and technologies currently available for the storage of energy - Includes case studies from well-known experts working on specific integration concepts around the world

Renewable Energy Finance
Renewable Energy Finance

Author: Santosh Raikar

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2024-09-20

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0443159548

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Renewable Energy Finance: Theory and Practice, Second Edition integrates the special characteristics of renewable energy with key elements of project finance. Through a mixture of fundamental analysis and real-life examples, readers learn how renewable energy project finance deals mix finance, public policy, legal, engineering and environmental issues. This book investigates the economics of large-scale green power production and incentive mechanisms and how they fit into the global energy industries. It also examines how distributed energy resources such as residential solar and batteries can be financed at the scale needed to play a significant role in the future energy mix. The authors examine how renewable energy projects get financed and built using modern non-recourse project finance structures. It also highlights recent innovations such as Green Bonds and Sustainability Linked Loans that have emerged in the context of ESG investments. The scope of the book is global, and it illustrates how renewable energy project finance has evolved in various places (such as the tax-equity structures used in the United States, due to the corporate tax incentives used there) to cope with local regulatory and policy environments. - Supports efforts to achieve environmental sustainability through renewable financing projects and cleaner production techniques - Provides some real-life case studies to help readers to understand how a project gets financed and built, including the critical interplays between the different financing elements based on how real deals are done - Offers project finance models on a companion website—for wind and solar projects, for example—based on real investment banking experience that can form the basis for student projects and independent study - New to this edition: two new chapters on Addressing Technology Risks for Successful Clean Energy Transition and Financing Green Hydrogen Projects bring the text up to date

Polarized America
Polarized America

Author: Nolan McCarty

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-06-16

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0262134640

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An analysis of how the increasing polarization of American politics has been accompanied and accelerated by greater income inequality, rising immigration, and other social and economic changes.

Guide to Purchasing Green Power
Guide to Purchasing Green Power

Author:

Publisher: Environmental Protection Agency

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This guide can be downloaded from: www.eere.energy.gov/femp/technologies/renewable%5Fpurchasepower.cfm, www.epa.gov/greenpower/buygreenpower.htm, www.thegreenpowergroup.org/publications.html, www.resource-solutions.org."--Verso. t.p.

Urban Energy Transition
Urban Energy Transition

Author: Peter Droege

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 0080560466

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This compendium of 29 chapters from 18 countries contains both fundamental and advanced insight into the inevitable shift from cities dominated by the fossil-fuel systems of the industrial age to a renewable-energy based urban development framework. The cross-disciplinary handbook covers a range of diverse yet relevant topics, including: carbon emissions policy and practice; the role of embodied energy; urban thermal performance planning; building efficiency services; energy poverty alleviation efforts; renewable community support networks; aspects of household level bio-fuel markets; urban renewable energy legislation, programs and incentives; innovations in individual transport systems; global urban mobility trends; implications of intelligent energy networks and distributed energy supply and storage; and the case for new regional monetary systems and lifestyles. Presented are practical and principled aspects of technology, economics, design, culture and society, presenting perspectives that are both local and international in scope and relevance.

Renewable Power Pathways
Renewable Power Pathways

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2000-04-24

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 030917192X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Renewable Power Pathways is the result of a study by the National Research Council (NRC) Committee for the Programmatic Review of the Office of Power Technologies (OPT) review of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Power Technologies and its research and development (R&D) programs. The OPT, which is part of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, conducts R&D programs for the production of electricity from renewable energy sources. Some of these programs are focused on photovoltaic, wind, solar, thermal, geothermal, biopower, and hydroelectric energy technologies; others are focused on energy storage, electric transmission (including superconductivity), and hydrogen technologies. A recent modest initiative is focused on distributed power-generation technologies. This report reviews the activities of each of OPT's programs and makes recommendations for OPT as a whole and major recommendations for individual OPT programs.