Environment & Climate Change

165 Items

Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong, China, in 2019.

EDF Energy via Wikimedia Commons

Book Chapter - Cambridge University Press

Enabling a Significant Nuclear Role in China’s Decarbonization

| Dec. 02, 2021

While China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country in the world, major constraints may limit nuclear energy’s ability to grow to the scale of hundreds of gigawatts that would be required for it to play a major part in decarbonizing China’s energy system. This chapter explores the major constraints on, and risks of, large-scale nuclear energy growth in China, and how both new policies and new technologies might address them. It focuses particularly on the two biggest constraints – economics and siting. Substantial government policies to support nuclear power and advanced reactor systems designed to address some of the key constraints are both likely to be needed for nuclear to have a chance of playing a major role in decarbonizing China’s energy system; nuclear energy’s role may be bigger in the second half of this century than in the first half.

Book - Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings

| 2019

Now in its seventh edition, Economics of the Environment serves as a valuable supplement to environmental economics text books and as a stand-alone reference book of key, up-to-date readings from the field. Edited by Robert N. Stavins, the book covers the core areas of environmental economics courses as taught around the world; and the included authors are the top scholars in the field. Overall, more than half of the chapters are new to this edition while the rest have remained seminal works.

The Politics of Shale Gas in Eastern Europe: Energy Security, Contested Technologies and the Social License to Frack

Cambridge University Press

Book - Cambridge University Press

The Politics of Shale Gas in Eastern Europe: Energy Security, Contested Technologies and the Social Licence to Frack

| May 2018

Fracking is a novel but contested energy technology – so what makes some countries embrace it whilst others reject it? This book argues that the reason for policy divergence lies in procedures and processes, stakeholder inclusion and whether a strong narrative underpins governmental policies. Based on a large set of primary data gathered in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, it explores shale gas policies in Central Eastern Europe (a region strongly dependent on Russian gas imports) to unveil the importance of policy regimes for creating a 'social license' for fracking. Its findings suggest that technology transfer does not happen in a vacuum but is subject to close mutual interaction with political, economic and social forces; and that national energy policy is not a matter of 'objective' policy imperatives, such as Russian import dependence, but a function of complex domestic dynamics pertaining to institutional procedures and processes, and winners and losers.

Solar panel field and wind turbines

PIXNIO / hpgruesen

Book - Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy and Natural Resources

| 2018

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

Book - Palgrave Macmillan

The Global Energy Challenge: Environment, Development and Security

| October 2015

The Global Energy Challenge provides a comprehensive overview of today’s three most topical energy challenges, or the “energy trilemma”: climate change, energy poverty and energy security. The book addresses the rise of energy geopolitics and the related concerns surrounding “energy weapons” and the “race for resources.”

Book - Cambridge University Press

Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation

How much should the U.S. government invest on energy R&D, and where should those investments be focused? How can the government work with the private sector to accelerate energy innovation? This book addresses these and other important questions to meet the energy challenge with new analytical methods and data.

Book - MIT Press

The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology: Lessons from China

| April 2014

The development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies have become globalized phenomena. Yet despite the fact that energy-related goods account for more than ten percent of international trade, policy makers, academics, and the business community perceive barriers to the global diffusion of these emerging technologies. Experts point to problems including intellectual property concerns, trade barriers, and developing countries' limited access to technology and funding. In this book, Kelly Gallagher uses analysis and case studies from China's solar photovoltaic, gas turbine, advanced battery, and coal gasification industries to examine both barriers and incentives in clean energy technology transfer.

Book - MIT Press

Carbon Coalitions: Business, Climate Politics, and the Rise of Emissions Trading

| October 2011

Over the past decade, carbon trading has emerged as the industrialized world's primary policy response to global climate change despite considerable controversy. With carbon markets worth $144 billion in 2009, carbon trading represents the largest manifestation of the trend toward market-based environmental governance. In Carbon Coalitions, Jonas Meckling presents the first comprehensive study on the rise of carbon trading and the role business played in making this policy instrument a central pillar of global climate governance.

Book - Cambridge University Press

Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement

| December 2009

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements has commissioned leading scholars to examine a uniquely wide range of core issues that must be addressed if the world is to reach an effective agreement on a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. The purpose of the project is not to become an advocate for any single policy but to present the best possible information and analysis on the full range of options concerning mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance. The detailed findings of the Harvard Project are reported in this volume, which contains twenty-seven specially commissioned chapters.

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Book - Cambridge University Press

Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers

| September 2009

This volume is a highly topical contribution to climate policy debates that offers options, based on cutting-edge social-science research, for an international climate change regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. It distils key findings from the Harvard Project into an easy reference for policymakers, journalists, and stakeholders.