scholarly journals Earth, Wind, and Fire: Power Infrastructure in Alberta’s New Age

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Hughes ◽  
Caitlin Graham ◽  
Charles July ◽  
Adam Brown ◽  
Thomas Schubert ◽  
...  

In the wake of dramatic policy changes commencing in late 2015, including the Government of Alberta’s announcement of the Climate Leadership Plan, the Renewable Energy Program, and the decision to introduce a parallel capacity market into Alberta’s previous energy-only market, the future of Alberta’s electricity market is uncertain. However, regulatory intervention in an attempt to improve the function of electricity markets and encourage renewable generation is not a new concept.Other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and jurisdictions in the United States, have used regulatory intervention to address issues in energy markets and to drive renewable generation. Regulatory intervention in these jurisdictions has not always achieved the intended consequences. In some cases, regulatory intervention has exacerbated issues it intended to solve, or created new problems. In other cases, regulatory intervention has relatively improved the function of electricity markets and incited renewable generation. This paper considers the evolution of energy policy and competing policy drivers, including system reliability, use of sustainable fuels to generate electricity, and price surges. The paper will discuss the success and failure of regulatory intervention in select jurisdictions, and how these lessons might apply in the new age of Alberta’s electricity market.

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 602-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
NOBUHIRO HIWATARI

This article explains why the stagflation and neoliberal reforms that reinforced party polarization in the United Kingdom and the United States instead led to party convergence in Japan. In Japan, industry-centered adjustment and bureaucratic coordination distributed the costs of policy changes across societal groups and facilitated party convergence, whereas the lack of such societal and state institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States led to policy changes with polarizing consequences. Focusing on industry-centered adjustment brings the unions back into Japanese politics and provides an alternative to the pluralism-neocorporatism dichotomy of organizing societal interests. Bureaucratic coordination not only includes the opposition in the framework but also provides a more nuanced view than is assumed in the debate over whether the ruling party of the bureaucracy dominates the Japanese state. When combined, these conceptualizations of market and state go a long way toward explaining the dynamics of party competition.


2021 ◽  
pp. 318-344
Author(s):  
Ian Loveland

This chapter examines how the constitution has addressed the question of the geographical separation of government power in the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Wales, and discusses the Scotland Act 1998 and the Government of Wales Acts of 1998 and 2006. It argues that although the Scotland Act 1998 and Government of Wales Act 2006 fall short of creating a ‘federal’ UK constitution similar to how the notion is understood in the United States, the constitutional significance of the devolution legislation should not be underestimated. The chapter also discusses the conduct and outcome of the 2014 independence referendum in Scotland. Consideration is given to the leading Supreme Court judgments on the nature and extent of the Scots Parliament’s legislative powers, and to the contents and implications of the Scotland Act 2016.


Significance The government is aligning itself with the emerging international strategy against ISG in Syria. Its push to participate in airstrikes in part reflects a wish to reassert the United Kingdom's role as an international security partner, especially to the United States and France. Impacts The government envisages airstrikes as being needed for at least 12-18 months. The United Kingdom will be important but secondary in the anti-ISG coalition, with the United States continuing to conduct most operations. In the interests of its anti-ISG strategy, the government will temper its insistence on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stepping down. The risk of an Islamist terrorist attack in the United Kingdom will increase. If Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn comes to be seen as correct in his anti-airstrikes stance, it will further envenom relations on the left.


1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 1137-1147
Author(s):  
W. Hardy Wickwar

The United Kingdom has gone considerably farther than the United States in the acceptance of full employment as one of the prime aims of government policy. There is a widespread feeling that it may also have gone farther in devising governmental machinery for the realization of this aim. On both counts—the end and the means—the present trend in the United Kingdom merits attention in the United States and other countries.Official endorsement of full employment as a proper end for governmental policy dates back to 1944. The much-quoted white paper on Employment Policy was presented to Parliament by Lord Woolton, Minister of Reconstruction in the Churchill coalition, a few days before D-day. It began with the unequivocal statement: “The Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war.” Shortly afterwards, at the conclusion of a three-day debate, the House of Commons passed a resolution moved by Laborite Ernest Bevin, then Minister of Labor and National Service, and supported on the side of the Conservatives by Sir John Anderson as Chancellor of the Exchequer: “That this House … welcomes the declaration of His Majesty's Government….” At no time later has this basic commitment been placed in doubt.Acceptance of full employment in business circles might be illustrated by a number of authoritative pronouncements made in the middle of the war. These include a pamphlet entitled The Problem of Unemployment, issued by Lever Brothers and Unilever Limited at the beginning of 1943. Here it was clearly argued that irregularity of capital investment was the principal cause of unemployment; that the profit motive had proved an insufficient guide in the extension of productive capacity; and that it was the task of government to regularize the incentive to investment by the use of indirect controls.


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