Policies And Financing Strategies For Low Carbon Energy Transition

With the effects of climate change already upon us, the need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions is nothing less than urgent. It’s a daunting challenge, but the technologies and strategies to meet it exist today. A small set of energy policies, designed and implemented well, can put us on the path to a low carbon future. Energy systems are large and complex, so energy policy must be focused and cost-effective. One-size-fits-all approaches simply won’t get the job done. Policymakers need a clear, comprehensive resource that outlines the energy policies that will have the biggest impact on our climate future, and describes how to design these policies well. Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy is the first such guide, bringing together the latest research and analysis around low carbon energy solutions. Written by Hal Harvey, CEO of the policy firm Energy Innovation, with Robbie Orvis and Jeffrey Rissman of Energy Innovation, Designing Climate Solutions is an accessible resource on lowering carbon emissions for policymakers, activists, philanthropists, and others in the climate and energy community. In Part I, the authors deliver a roadmap for understanding which countries, sectors, and sources produce the greatest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and give readers the tools to select and design efficient policies for each of these sectors. In Part II, they break down each type of policy, from renewable portfolio standards to carbon pricing, offering key design principles and case studies where each policy has been implemented successfully. We don’t need to wait for new technologies or strategies to create a low carbon future—and we can’t afford to. Designing Climate Solutions gives professionals the tools they need to select, design, and implement the policies that can put us on the path to a livable climate future.

At a time when climate-change deniers hold the reins of power in the United States and international greenhouse gas negotiations continue at a slow crawl, what options are available to cities, companies, and consumers around the world who seek a cleaner future? Scott Victor Valentine, Marilyn A. Brown, and Benjamin K. Sovacool explore developments and strategies that will help fast-track the transition to renewable energy. They provide an expert analysis of the achievable steps that citizens, organizational leaders, and policy makers can take to put their commitments to sustainability into practice. Empowering the Great Energy Transition examines trends that suggest a transition away from carbon-intensive energy sources is inevitable—there are too many forces for change at work to stop a shift to clean energy. Yet under the status quo, change will be too slow to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Humanity is on a path to incur avoidable social, environmental, and economic costs. Valentine, Brown, and Sovacool argue that new policies and business models are needed to surmount the hurdles separating the current consumption model from a sustainable energy future. Empowering the Great Energy Transition shows that with well-placed efforts, we can set humanity on a course that supports entrepreneurs and communities in mitigating the environmental harm caused by technologies whose time has come and gone.

Given the industrialized world’s historical dependence on fossil fuel-based energy resources and the now-realized perils of moving beyond the earth’s carbon budget, this book explores the myriad challenges of climate change and in reaching a low-carbon economy. Reconciling the medium-term competing, yet frequently complementary, needs for transition policies, the book provides guidelines for complex and often conflicting climate policy tasks. The book presents empirical trends in the use of carbon-emitting resources and evaluates market-driven short-termism and its adverse impact on resource use and the environment; it emphasizes a medium-term macroeconomic perspective for the transition. The authors attempt a paradigm shift towards a framework of sustainable macroeconomics. They survey relevant historical models, conduct empirical and numerical analyses of the climate change-relevant dynamic models, provide empirical illustrations, and evaluate diverse policy options and implementations together with their historical evolution. New analytical issues are also considered, e.g., strategic behavior in the energy and resource sectors, energy competition and the dynamics of market shares in new energy technology, and supporting policies for dealing with the tipping points encountered in climate change. The authors suggest a multitude of market-based strategies and public fiscal, monetary, and financial policies, and longer-run planning for resource extraction -all suitable for driving sustainable growth and a transformation of the energy sector. The book also examines the multiple delaying forces slowing the transition to a low-carbon economy; these typically arise from short-termism, lock-ins, irreversibility, leakages, non-cooperative games, and other political strategies. Thus, they explain the snail’s pace evolution of current national and global climate policies. The book will appeal to scholars and students of economics and environmental science. It is also relevant for policymakers and practitioners in multilateral institutions, research institutions as well as governments and ministries of countries interested in alternative energy sources, climate economists, and those who study the implementation of sustainable and low carbon-based policies.

Foreword by Lord Browne of MadingleyReviews of the First Edition:'The entire text is quite readable and can be moved through with relative ease. This reviewer heartily recommends that, regardless of your background, you read this book to really get a grasp of the cutting-edge of climate finance.'LSE Review of BooksRenewable Energy Finance (Second Edition) describes in rich detail current best practices and evolving trends in clean energy investing. With contributions by some of the world's leading experts in energy finance, the book documents how investors are spending over $300 billion each year on financing renewable energy and positioning themselves in a growing global investment market. This second edition documents, with practical examples, the ways in which investors have funded over $2.6 trillion in solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects over the past decade. The book will be a go-to reference manual for understanding the factors that shape risk and return in renewable energy, the world's fastest growing industrial sector. The book is suitable for executives new to the field, as well as advanced business students.Edited by Dr Charles Donovan, Principal Teaching Fellow at Imperial College Business School and formerly Head of Structuring and Valuation for Global Power at BP, the book will give readers a unique insiders' perspective on how renewable energy deals actually get done.

How can fossil fuel producers and mineral-rich developing countries design realistic, just and cost-effective low-carbon transition pathways? Taking into account the heterogeneity of low-carbon trajectories, Equitable Framework and Finance for Extractive-based Countries in Transition (EFFECT) provides options for policy makers, industry and finance institutions in search of the answers.

The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries. This open access book, written by leading energy scholars, examines the economic and geopolitical implications of the global energy transition, from both regional and thematic perspectives. The first part of the book addresses the geopolitical implications in the world’s main energy-producing and energy-consuming regions, while the second presents in-depth case studies on selected issues, ranging from the geopolitics of renewable energy, to the mineral foundations of the global energy transformation, to governance issues in connection with the changing global energy order. Given its scope, the book will appeal to researchers in energy, climate change and international relations, as well as to professionals working in the energy industry.

The Palgrave Handbook of Natural Gas and Global Energy Transitions provides an in-depth and authoritative examination of the transformative implications of the ongoing global energy transitions for natural gas markets across the world. With case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, South America, Australia, and the Middle East, the volume introduces readers to the latest legal, policy, technological, and fiscal innovations in natural gas markets in response to ongoing global energy transitions. It outlines the risk mitigation strategies and contractual techniques — focusing on resilience planning, low-carbon business models, green procurement, climate-smart infrastructure development, accountability, gender justice, and other sustainability safeguards — that are required to maximize the full value of natural gas as a catalyst for a just and equitable energy transition and for energy security across the world. Written in an accessible style, this book outlines the guiding principles for a responsible and low-carbon approach to the design, financing, and implementation of natural gas development and commercialization. It is an indispensable text and reference work for students, scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders in natural gas, energy, infrastructure, and environmental investments and projects.