Sustainable, Environmentally Clean Energy for Current and Future Generations

Author(s):  
Fred Catlow

The paper compares the choices available for electricity production. Different sources are examined from the prospective of effectiveness, controllability, availability, demand, safety, climate change, environmental, social factors, economics and sustainability. This is achieved using existing and projected data. A sample survey is undertaken of different countries, specific installations and their acceptance by their communities. The paper concludes by discussing some of the political arguments and the scientific and social implications and looking at the way ahead for the future.

Author(s):  
Fred Catlow

Engineers respond to the needs of society by providing effective technical solutions, based on scientific truths, to problems. Not all problems have clear cut answers and some have ‘fuzzy’ areas that can be the subject of interpretation and debate. Sometimes the solutions may create new problems which may not always be obvious to their proponents. Different solutions to the energy problem and their perceived effect on climate change are examined from various perspectives such as effectiveness, controllability, availability, demand, safety, environmental and social factors, economics and sustainability. This is achieved using existing and projected data. Also the situation in different countries is discussed, specific installations and their acceptance by their communities. The paper concludes by discussing some of the political, scientific and social implications and the implications for the future.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 363-379
Author(s):  
Julia Nordblad

This chapter examines how the relationship between present and future generations has been articulated and envisaged in four discussions on climate change and global environmental crises from the late 1980s onward. Nordblad exemplifies how the very concept of future generations harbours disparate and sometimes conflicting views over the extent future generations can be known, and the political, economic, and ethical complexities embedded in constructions of the relationship between present and future generations. She explores climate economics with its presumptions about substitutable and transgenerational values; Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, which describes future generations as a call for moral regeneration; the Brundtland Report, which emphasizes solidarity in the allocation of common resources; and the academic discussion on the non-identity problem, posing our relation to future generations as a moral and political enigma.


Author(s):  
Jose A. Puppim de Oliveira ◽  
Celio Andrade

This chapter examines the political economy aspects, particularly the influence of the Clean Development Mechanism, in clean energy and climate change policies in the states of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The different mechanisms for responding to climate change are financing opportunities in some of the ‘green’ industries, but the results show a gap between the initial objectives of global policies and their results. The research identified pitfalls and opportunities for new strategies and mechanisms for boosting clean energy in Brazil and the role that the Clean Development Mechanism and future international mechanisms can play in the political economy of clean energy transitions. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the lessons learned from experience of the Clean Development Mechanism and its implications for the future of the Paris Agreement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 102024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Ballew ◽  
Adam R. Pearson ◽  
Matthew H. Goldberg ◽  
Seth A. Rosenthal ◽  
Anthony Leiserowitz

2021 ◽  
pp. 108602662110316
Author(s):  
Tiziana Russo-Spena ◽  
Nadia Di Paola ◽  
Aidan O’Driscoll

An effective climate change action involves the critical role that companies must play in assuring the long-term human and social well-being of future generations. In our study, we offer a more holistic, inclusive, both–and approach to the challenge of environmental innovation (EI) that uses a novel methodology to identify relevant configurations for firms engaging in a superior EI strategy. A conceptual framework is proposed that identifies six sets of driving characteristics of EI and two sets of beneficial outcomes, all inherently tensional. Our analysis utilizes a complementary rather than an oppositional point of view. A data set of 65 companies in the ICT value chain is analyzed via fuzzy-set comparative analysis (fsQCA) and a post-QCA procedure. The results reveal that achieving a superior EI strategy is possible in several scenarios. Specifically, after close examination, two main configuration groups emerge, referred to as technological environmental innovators and organizational environmental innovators.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Elena Cima

Abstract In 2017, the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) began a modernization process aimed at updating, clarifying, and modernizing a number of provisions of the Treaty. Considering the scope of application of the Treaty—cooperation in energy trade, transit, and investment—there is hardly any doubt that the modernization kicked off in 2017 offers a springboard for constructive reform and a unique opportunity to bring the Treaty closer in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Although none of the items selected by the Energy Charter Conference and open for discussion and reform mention climate change or clean energy, a careful analysis of the relevant practice in both treaty drafting and adjudication can provide valuable insights as to how to steer the discussions on some of the existing items in a climate-friendly direction. The purpose of this article is to rely on this relevant practice to explore promising avenues to ‘retool’ the Treaty for climate change mitigation, in other words, to imagine a Treaty that would better reflect climate change concerns and clean energy transition goals.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4148
Author(s):  
Estrella Trincado ◽  
Antonio Sánchez-Bayón ◽  
José María Vindel

After the Great Recession of 2008, there was a strong commitment from several international institutions and forums to improve wellbeing economics, with a switch towards satisfaction and sustainability in people–planet–profit relations. The initiative of the European Union is the Green Deal, which is similar to the UN SGD agenda for Horizon 2030. It is the common political economy plan for the Multiannual Financial Framework, 2021–2027. This project intends, at the same time, to stop climate change and to promote the people’s wellness within healthy organizations and smart cities with access to cheap and clean energy. However, there is a risk for the success of this aim: the Jevons paradox. In this paper, we make a thorough revision of the literature on the Jevons Paradox, which implies that energy efficiency leads to higher levels of consumption of energy and to a bigger hazard of climate change and environmental degradation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Armin Rosencranz ◽  
Kanika Jamwal

This article argues that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s conception of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) was never effectively implemented through the Kyoto Protocol. The investments under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism suggest that CBDRRC has been used by developed countries to buy a “right to pollute”, i.e., maintaining or even increasing their greenhouse gas emissions, while investing in clean energy in developing nations, thus defeating the essence of CBDRRC as intended under the UNFCCC. Second, it points out that the Paris Agreement reflects a significant shift in the CBDRRC, both in terms of its textual understanding as well as its implementation. A qualifier, “in the light of national circumstances”, was added to the principle of CBDRRC in the Paris Agreement, allowing a form of voluntary self-differentiation. This qualifier diluted a top-down, objective analysis of States’ commitments. For several scholars, this shift has meant a softening of the principle, making the “differentiation” more dynamic and flexible. In the authors’ opinion, the qualifier is a fundamental modification of the principle to make it politically more palatable. It completely disregards the notion of historical responsibility for climate change, which was the cornerstone of CBDRRC as conceived under the UNFCCC. Therefore, rather than presenting a more flexible understanding of UNFCCC’s conception of CBDRRC, the Paris Agreement marks a total departure from it. Lacking an explicit redefinition of the principle of CBDRRC, it is misleading to contend that the Paris Agreement is still anchored in it.


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