This book includes an in-depth analysis of the environmental and energy security impacts of replacing the internal combustion engine vehicle with various forms of electric vehicles and replacing gasoline and diesel fuel with alternative fuels including electricity, hydrogen and biofuels. In addition to a detailed “well-to-wheels” analysis of local air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption for each alternative vehicle, the book estimates the market penetration potential of...

This book documents the advantages and limitations of various electricity generation methods. It illustrates how both electricity and motor fuel can be cost-effectively derived from coal, natural gas or other indigenous fuels, thereby eliminating our dependence on imported oil and the power of OPEC. It favours electricity generation systems powered exclusively by natural gas, coal, nuclear and renewables and motor vehicles powered by hydrogen (electricity from coal gasification with carbon...

This book outlines how Germans convinced their politicians to pass laws allowing citizens to make their own energy, even when it hurt utility companies to do so. It traces the origins of the Energiewende movement in Germany from the Power Rebels of Schönau to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s shutdown of eight nuclear power plants following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The authors explore how, by taking ownership of energy efficiency at a local level, community groups are key actor...

This book offers a deep insight into the genesis and development of the European Commission's energy and climate legislation, focusing on the interplay of politics and science. How does the Commission react when confronted with knowledge? According to the author, the Commission functions as catalyst transforming knowledge into politics.

The latest scientific knowledge on climate change indicates that higher greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere through unchecked emissions will provoke severe climate change and ocean acidification. Both impacts can fundamentally alter environmental structures on which humanity relies and have serious consequences for the food chain among others. Climate change therefore poses major socio-economic, technical and environmental challenges which will have serious impacts on countries...

This book is a comprehensive discussion and economic analysis of large-scale solar power systems, specifically referencing critical issues related to design construction and financing. The book provides practical design, installation, and financing guidelines for large-scale commercial and industrial solar power projects. Engineering design and construction methodologies as well as economic analysis provide a step-by-step walk-through of all aspects of solar power systems. Design methodolo...

The book explores the central question facing humanity today: how can we best survive the ten great existential challenges that are now coming together to confront us? Besides describing these challenges from the latest scientific perspectives, it also outlines and integrates the solutions, both at global and individual level and concludes optimistically. This book brings together in one easy-to-read work the principal issues facing humanity. It is written for the two next generations who ...

Given the rapid spread of ETSs in an increasing number of countries and the important role that they are likely to play for the success or failure of the environmental policy in the years to come, this book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the EU ETS from both the legal and economic perspectives comparing it with the other main ETSs existing worldwide, in order to assess whether the EU ETS has truly represented a prototype for the other ETSs established around the world and to inv...

The Energy Evolution, the final volume in the revolutionary Eco-Technology series, contains radical environmentalist Viktor Schauberger's groundbreaking writings on methods for energy generation that harness the enormous potential of Nature. Nature produces energy by slow, cool, implosive means – by a centripetal inward motion, while our present culture uses explosive centrifugal (outwards) movement, which is wasteful and many times less powerful and effective. It also uses up the Earth's ...

This book applies the multidisciplinary approaches of econometrics, statistics, finance and artificial intelligence for pricing and forecasting the carbon market in the context of managerial issues. It explores the related issues of pricing and forecasting the carbon market using theoretical models and empirical analyses, demonstrating how the carbon market, as a policy-based artificial market, is complex and influenced by both the market mechanisms and the external heterogeneous environme...

With rapidly declining costs and seemingly unlimited sunshine, the choice of solar in Australia seems obvious. Yet despite its many advantages, homes with solar remain completely dependent on the electricity grid for reliable supply, which in Australia implies mostly coal-fired generation. Indeed, even countries that have invested heavily in solar, such as Spain and Germany, have been unable to deflect the trajectory of fossil fuel dependence.The reasons for this apparent paradox a...

This book offers an interdisciplinary discussion of the fundamental issues concerning policies for sustainable transition to renewable energies from the perspectives of sociologists, physicists, engineers, economists, anthropologists, biologists, ecologists and policy analysts. Adopting a combined approach, these are analysed taking both complex systems and social practice theories into consideration to provide deeper insights into the evolution of energy systems.The book then draw...