Energy Islands

Energy Islands provides an urgent and nuanced portrait of collective action that resists racial capitalism, colonialism, and climate disruption. Weaving together historical and ethnographic research, this story challenges the master narratives of Puerto Rico as a tourist destination and site of "natural" disasters to demonstrate how fossil fuel economies are inextricably entwined with colonial practices and how local community groups in Puerto Rico have struggled against energy coloniality to mobilize and transform power from the ground up. Catalina M. de Onís documents how these groups work to decenter continental contexts and deconstruct damaging hierarchies that devalue and exploit rural coastal communities. She highlights and collaborates with individuals who refuse the cruel logics of empire by imagining and implementing energy justice and other interconnected radical power transformations. Diving deeply into energy, islands, and power, this book engages various metaphors for alternative world-making.

This book explains the challenges and barriers of island energy systems in the European Union. It reviews the research projects carried out to date, and proposes a new feasible scheme that could be advantageous to many isolated energy systems. The book contains a thorough literature review, to ensure the originality of its ideas. It provides a clear insight of the opportunities and difficulties facing EU island energy systems.

"Weaving together historical and ethnographic research, Catalina M. de Onâis challenges the master narratives of Puerto Rico as a tourist destination and site of 'natural' disasters. She demonstrates how fossil-fuel economies are inextricably entwined with colonial practices and policies and how local community groups in Puerto Rico have struggled against energy coloniality and energy privilege to mobilize and transform power from the ground up. This work decenters continental contexts and deconstructs damaging hierarchies that devalue and exploit disenfranchised rural, coastal communities"--

Making local energy futures, from marine energy to hydrogen fuel, at the edge of the world. The islands of Orkney, off the northern coast of Scotland, are closer to the Arctic Circle than to London. Surrounded by fierce seas and shrouded by clouds and mist, the islands seem to mark the edge of the known world. And yet they are a center for energy technology innovation, from marine energy to hydrogen fuel networks, attracting the interest of venture capitalists and local communities. In this book, Laura Watts tells a story of making energy futures at the edge of the world. Orkney, Watts tells us, has been making technology for six thousand years, from arrowheads and stone circles to wave and tide energy prototypes. Artifacts and traces of all the ages—Stone, Bronze, Iron, Viking, Silicon—are visible everywhere. The islanders turned to energy innovation when forced to contend with an energy infrastructure they had outgrown. Today, Orkney is home to the European Marine Energy Centre, established in 2003. There are about forty open-sea marine energy test facilities in the world, many of which draw on Orkney expertise. The islands generate more renewable energy than they use, are growing hydrogen fuel and electric car networks, and have hundreds of locally owned micro wind turbines and a decade-old smart grid. Mixing storytelling and ethnography, empiricism and lyricism, Watts tells an Orkney energy saga—an account of how the islands are creating their own low-carbon future in the face of the seemingly impossible. The Orkney Islands, Watts shows, are playing a long game, making energy futures for another six thousand years.

Many islands currently rely on heavy fuel oil as their primary energy source. As the issue of pollution and climate change became a reality, many countries, including island nations, began looking to reduce their carbon emissions by launching programs and policies designed to ease their transition from oil to alternative energy technologies that are more environmentally friendly. Transitioning Island Nations Into Sustainable Energy Hubs: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides the latest research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of establishing renewable energy source systems on islands. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as the vision of future energy networks and its role in creating the idea of energy hubs, this book is ideally designed for academicians, environmental professionals, researchers, policy makers, environmental engineers, and individuals seeking current research on renewable energy development.

Tells how the people of Danish island of Samso decided to use wind energy to power their lives and became the "Energy Island."

This book explores how cultural considerations can improve policymaking to achieve mainstream solar energy in small, tropical islands. Focusing on Trinidad, Barbados and Oʻahu, Kiron C. Neale looks at how culture can affect and be affected by the policies that support the household adoption of two key energy technologies: solar water heating and photovoltaics. Drawing on interviews with residents and energy officials, and an examination of the institutional, socio-economic and physical factors that affect energy systems such as governance structures and energy resource availability, the author explores themes including the impact of insularity on energy transitions and behavioural and cultural change. Overall, this book rebrands policies as instruments of cultural change and puts forward recommendations applicable to all small, tropical islands. Following the islands’ transition to renewable energy, this book will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, energy transitions, climate change, cultural studies and small states development, as well as industry professionals working on energy policy implementation.

This book identifies the challenges, solutions, and opportunities offered by smart energy grids (SEGs) with regard to the storage and regulation of diversified energy sources such as photovoltaic, wind, and ocean energy. It provides a detailed analysis of the stability and availability of renewable sources, and assesses relevant socioeconomic structures. The book also presents case studies to maximize readers’ understanding of energy grid management and optimization. Moreover, it offers guidelines on the design, implementation, and maintenance of the (SEG) for island countries.