Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Mariana Budjeryn writes: War never stops at the border, especially on a continent like Europe. The European Union absorbed millions of Ukrainian war refugees and poured billions of euros into Ukraine's defenses and economic survival. The war permanently reshaped Europe: its demographics, political economy, and energy architecture are shifting in ways that will have irreversible long-term consequences. All of this is because in a very real sense Ukraine already is inextricably woven into the fabric of Europe: Ukraine’s pain is Europe’s pain and Ukraine’s gain will inevitably be Europe's gain, too.

Michael Lipin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

How can electricity sector policymakers in developing countries ensure financial viability of utilities while also extending electricity access and minimizing the environmental impact of electricity supply? This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze synergies and trade-offs between policies for financial reform of utilities, extending electricity access, and solar PV deployment in the case of Uttar Pradesh in India.

How can China make good on its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060? In Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China, a team of experts from China and the United States explains how China's near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for a smoother and less costly national energy transformation.

No great breakthroughs or dramatic developments were expected at the Biden-Putin summit, and none was achieved. But the message was clear: There is a new sheriff in town. Putin noticed, describing Biden as very different from Trump—experienced, balanced, and professional.

This article examines both the premise and prescription of the argument to integrate renewable electricity in developing countries through elements of the standard model (such as a wholesale spot market, or an independent system operator for dispatch). This is done by highlighting the differences between power sector reform experiences in the developing and developed worlds, and the causal mechanisms underlying these differences.

In the authors' view, neither formal NATO membership nor nuclear weapons are fitting security options for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. To secure its borders and achieve sustainable peace and stability in Europe, Ukraine should forge a treaty-based strategic alliance directly with the United States.

Daniel Schrag argues that in order to reestablish the United States as a serious partner in addressing global climate change, the president must make good on the original standards of the Paris Agreement.

The authors argue that more determined efforts to globalize renewable energy transmission can confer significantly higher economic and environmental benefits from renewables on billions of people. This can be done by exploiting spatial differences between electricity loads and net renewable generation across time zones (temporal arbitrage) and latitude (seasonal arbitrage). Using very long distance, ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission infrastructure, temporal and spatial arbitrage can move low-cost clean electricity from areas with excess capacity to high demand zones in other countries and even continents.

In this paper, a quantitative Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework is used to stochastically analyze the feasibility of waste-to-energy systems in selected cities in Asia.