Routledge Focus on Energy Studies – serie

This book forges a link between residential CO2 emissions and time use, focussing on China as a key case study. To provide a better understanding of the energy implications of the lifestyle differences between urban and rural China, Pui Ting Wong and Yuan Xu utilise time-use methodology as an alternative way to explore the links between individual lifestyle and residential electricity consumption. They begin by examining how Chinese citizens divide their time between daily activities, highlighting patterns around indicators including age, gender, education, and economic status. They go on to quantify CO2 intensities of these time-use activities. Through this linkage, this book presents an alternative strategy for climate-friendly living, highlighting the ways in which urban planning can be deployed to help individuals adapt their time-use patterns for CO2 mitigation. Providing a novel contribution to the growing literature on residential electricity consumption, Residential Electricity Consumption in Urbanizing China will be of great interest to scholars of climate policy, energy studies, time use, and urban planning.

This book investigates and evaluates the opportunities and limitations of network governance in building local capacity for energy infrastructure governance. Presenting a comparative analysis of three city cases from across Europe- Birmingham, Frankfurt and Budapest- this book demonstrates how local factors shape the prospect of network governance to support low-carbon energy transitions. It maps out existing governance networks, highlighting the actors involved and their interactions with one another, and also discusses the role and embeddedness of networks in the urban governance of low-carbon energy. Drawing on case study evidence, Nochta develops a comparative analysis which discusses the intricate connections between network characteristics, context and impact. It highlights that organisational fragmentation; the complexity of the low-carbon energy problem and historical developments all influence network characteristics in terms of degree of integration and vertical (hierarchical) power relationships among network actors. Overall, the book concludes that understanding such links between context and networks is crucial when designing and implementing new governance models aimed at facilitating and governing low-carbon urban development. Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in European Cities will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, urban governance and sustainability transitions.

This book investigates and evaluates the opportunities and limitations of network governance in building local capacity for energy infrastructure governance. Presenting a comparative analysis of three city cases from across Europe- Birmingham, Frankfurt and Budapest- this book demonstrates how local factors shape the prospect of network governance to support low-carbon energy transitions. It maps out existing governance networks, highlighting the actors involved and their interactions with one another, and also discusses the role and embeddedness of networks in the urban governance of low-carbon energy. Drawing on case study evidence, Nochta develops a comparative analysis which discusses the intricate connections between network characteristics, context and impact. It highlights that organisational fragmentation; the complexity of the low-carbon energy problem and historical developments all influence network characteristics in terms of degree of integration and vertical (hierarchical) power relationships among network actors. Overall, the book concludes that understanding such links between context and networks is crucial when designing and implementing new governance models aimed at facilitating and governing low-carbon urban development. Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in European Cities will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, urban governance and sustainability transitions.

This volume focuses on the social, cultural, and ecological consequences of a political economy of energy.A political economy of energy holds that an enduring hallmark of the current context is a reorganization of human society toward energy extraction and production. Limits to Terrestrial Extraction looks at the construction of society itself as an energy-harvesting “megamachine,” the ecomodernist project of the latter half of the twentieth century and its disastrous environmental record, and mining Near Earth Objects to extract extraterrestrial resources. Each chapter explores a limit to terrestrial extraction – spatially, economically, or socially – finding that business as usual cannot yield a different world. The authors eschew easy answers of natural resource management or discourses of wise use, instead offering critiques of market society and its constitutive drive to produce and waste energy. Overall, this volume establishes the existential stakes and scope of change that will be required to build a better world.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental political theory, as well as social scientists and humanities scholars who study the intersection of energy and society.

This volume focuses on the social, cultural, and ecological consequences of a political economy of energy.A political economy of energy holds that an enduring hallmark of the current context is a reorganization of human society toward energy extraction and production. Limits to Terrestrial Extraction looks at the construction of society itself as an energy-harvesting “megamachine,” the ecomodernist project of the latter half of the twentieth century and its disastrous environmental record, and mining Near Earth Objects to extract extraterrestrial resources. Each chapter explores a limit to terrestrial extraction – spatially, economically, or socially – finding that business as usual cannot yield a different world. The authors eschew easy answers of natural resource management or discourses of wise use, instead offering critiques of market society and its constitutive drive to produce and waste energy. Overall, this volume establishes the existential stakes and scope of change that will be required to build a better world.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental political theory, as well as social scientists and humanities scholars who study the intersection of energy and society.

This book forges a link between residential CO2 emissions and time use, focussing on China as a key case study. To provide a better understanding of the energy implications of the lifestyle differences between urban and rural China, Pui Ting Wong and Yuan Xu utilise time-use methodology as an alternative way to explore the links between individual lifestyle and residential electricity consumption. They begin by examining how Chinese citizens divide their time between daily activities, highlighting patterns around indicators including age, gender, education, and economic status. They go on to quantify CO2 intensities of these time-use activities. Through this linkage, this book presents an alternative strategy for climate-friendly living, highlighting the ways in which urban planning can be deployed to help individuals adapt their time-use patterns for CO2 mitigation. Providing a novel contribution to the growing literature on residential electricity consumption, Residential Electricity Consumption in Urbanizing China will be of great interest to scholars of climate policy, energy studies, time use, and urban planning.

This book is a concise but comprehensive guide to the history, present and possible futures of carbon capture and storage policy and action in the United Kingdom (UK).There have been multiple failed starts, promises and “last chances” for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe, North America, China and Australia, but thus far it has repeatedly collided with the political and economic realities that the technology is too expensive and complicated to gain and keep policymakers’ support. However, in the UK that might be changing, with explicit government support for CCS to help decarbonise industry. Set within the broader context of global interest in CCS, this book first outlines the technologies involved in the types of capture technology, transport options and storage options in the UK. It then briefly introduces an overarching policy analysis framework (John Kingdon’s multiple streams approach) and uses it to give an account of the long history of CCS interest and efforts in three chapters covering the 1970s to 2002, 2003 to 2015 and 2016 to the present day. Marc Hudson focusses on the various arguments made for the introduction of CCS, and the slowly shifting coalitions of actors who make those arguments, while contrasting these with the perspectives of those opposed to CCS.This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers researching and working in the field, as well as the related areas of energy policy, energy transitions and climate change.

This book is a concise but comprehensive guide to the history, present and possible futures of carbon capture and storage policy and action in the United Kingdom (UK).There have been multiple failed starts, promises and “last chances” for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe, North America, China and Australia, but thus far it has repeatedly collided with the political and economic realities that the technology is too expensive and complicated to gain and keep policymakers’ support. However, in the UK that might be changing, with explicit government support for CCS to help decarbonise industry. Set within the broader context of global interest in CCS, this book first outlines the technologies involved in the types of capture technology, transport options and storage options in the UK. It then briefly introduces an overarching policy analysis framework (John Kingdon’s multiple streams approach) and uses it to give an account of the long history of CCS interest and efforts in three chapters covering the 1970s to 2002, 2003 to 2015 and 2016 to the present day. Marc Hudson focusses on the various arguments made for the introduction of CCS, and the slowly shifting coalitions of actors who make those arguments, while contrasting these with the perspectives of those opposed to CCS.This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers researching and working in the field, as well as the related areas of energy policy, energy transitions and climate change.