Renewable energy jobs grew 5.3% in 2017, with the total surpassing 10 million worldwide. IRENA's annual review presents the status of employment by technology and in selected countries.
The book discusses contemporary issues such as global financial architecture and regulatory practices, trade, investment and the multilateral process, the future of work, the role of technology for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and financing infrastructure for sustainable development. With increasing global connectivity, events in one part of the world immediately affect or spread to the other parts. In this context, G20 has proved to be an effective forum, particularly after the Asian financial crises. Furthermore, over recent decades, G20 has been instrumental in managing financial crises and international conflicts by deploying global cooperation as a functional tool. As a body responding to crises, the G20 has played a central role in providing the political momentum for the strong international cooperation that ensured greater policy coherence and helped ease situations that could otherwise have been decidedly worse. The G20’s agendas have encompassed short-term but critical issues of economic recovery, the sovereign crisis of Europe, high unemployment and financial sector regulation. But since moderate stabilization in the global economic environment, the focus of the group has also embraced long-term areas of governance and development. For emerging economies, such as India, the G20 has been an important platform framework to promote an inclusive global economic architecture that seeks to achieve equitable outcomes. This book reviews the past 20 years of the G20, since it was conceptualized as a replacement for the G-7. While issues such as global financial order have been a constant area of discussion, one of the failures has been not recognizing and acknowledging the importance of issues like trade, climate change and future of work. Featuring academic papers by experts in the area, this book provides a platform for the necessary discourse on these issues.
"In an era of rapid international economic integration, how do countries interact, innovate, and compete in industries, like energy, that are fundamental to national interests? Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy examines the development of wind and solar industries, two sectors of historic importance that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. As wind and solar grew from cottage industries into $300 billion global sectors, China, Germany, and the United States each developed distinct constellations of firms with starkly different technical capabilities. The book shows that globalization itself has reinforced such distinct national patterns of industrial specialization. Economically, globalization has created opportunities for firms to specialize through collaboration with others. Politically, new possibilities for specialization have allowed firms to repurpose existing domestic institutions for application in new industries. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition, highlighting instead the central role of collaboration in in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis"--
Originating from the 8th edition of the Energy and Sustainability conference, the research included in this volume contribute to the increasing amount of interest in renewable energy resources and the search for maintainable energy policies. Energy production and distribution need to respond to the modern world’s dependency on conventional fuels.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of global goals that meet some of the most pressing challenges facing our world today. Goal 10 concerns reducing global inequalities. Inequality is currently seen in the social, political, and economic structures of communities at both the national and international level. The United Nation’s approach to sustainable development is to create a set of goals and targets try to minimize the accelerating gaps of inequality. The book presents new insights for evaluating the progress on SDGs (especially goal 10), it also boldly sets new economic, social and environmental targets for reducing inequality. Using case studies, this book encourages readers to view economic development through the lens of growing inequalities and disparities. Such inequalities are clearly becoming more obvious as the world is better connected, and information is quickly shared. The books main aim is therefore to direct the efforts of scholars, practitioners and policymakers to swiftly find the balance between the three pillars of sustainable development. The main challenges and focus of each chapter are different and collectively they give an integrated understanding of the phenomenon of sustainable development and its diverse aspects. This book will be useful for policymakers, social and environmental activists, agencies, educators and practitioners in the sphere of social or environmental economics. The methodology of the research can be replicated and taken forward by future researchers in the field.
This book explores the mobilisation of China’s wind and solar industries and examines the implications of this development to energy generation and distribution, innovation and governance. Unlike other publications that focus mainly on the formal policy landscape and statistics of industry development, this book delves deeper into the ways in which the wind and solar industries have evolved through negotiations made by the involved stakeholders, and how these industries play into larger Chinese development and policymaking interests. Overall, it sheds new light on the strategic development of China’s renewable energy industry, the flexible governance methods employed and the internal struggles which Chinese local, regional and central policymakers, and state-owned and private enterprises have faced. This book will be of great relevance to students and scholars of renewable energy technologies, energy policy and sustainability transitions, as well as policymakers with a specific interest in China.
The Asia-Pacific region has been experiencing rapid development in the past 30 years, and issues relating to sustainable development will become increasingly important in the coming decades. This comprehensive overview presents sustainable development from the perspectives of Asia and the Pacific, with contributions from more than 70 leading international experts. The first part focuses on the theories and practices of sustainable development, including national and regional perspectives, as well as international policies and law concerning climate change. The second part highlights the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and poverty reduction amid the changing ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political environment in this region. These include issues such as the importance of science for sustainable development and related areas, including sustainable energy, stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, land-use change, biodiversity, and disaster risk reduction. The volume is an invaluable reference for all researchers and policy makers with an interest in sustainable development.
The Global Innovation Index 2018 provides detailed metrics about the innovation performance of 126 countries and economies around the world. Its 80 indicators explore a broad vision of innovation, including political environment, education, infrastructure and business sophistication. The GII 2018 analyses the energy innovation landscape of the next decade and identifies possible breakthroughs in fields such as energy production, storage, distribution, and consumption. It also looks at how breakthrough innovation occurs at the grassroots level and describes how small-scale renewable systems are on the rise.