Transition Scenarios

China’s rising status in the global economy alongside recent economic stagnation in Europe and the United States has led to considerable speculation that we are in the early stages of a transition in power relations. Commentators have tended to treat this transitional period as a novelty, but history is in fact replete with such systemic transitions—sometimes with perilous results. Can we predict the future by using the past? And, if so, what might history teach us? With Transition Scenarios, David P. Rapkin and William R. Thompson identify some predictors for power transitions and take readers through possible scenarios for future relations between China and the United States. Each scenario is embedded within a particular theoretical framework, inviting readers to consider the assumptions underlying it. Despite recent interest in the topic, the probability and timing of a power transition—and the processes that might bring it about—remain woefully unclear. Rapkin and Thompson’s use of the theoretical tools of international relations to crucial transitions in history helps clarify the current situation and also sheds light on possible future scenarios.

A detailed look at some of the more modern issues of hydrodynamic stability, including transient growth, eigenvalue spectra, secondary instability. It presents analytical results and numerical simulations, linear and selected nonlinear stability methods. By including classical results as well as recent developments in the field of hydrodynamic stability and transition, the book can be used as a textbook for an introductory, graduate-level course in stability theory or for a special-topics fluids course. It is equally of value as a reference for researchers in the field of hydrodynamic stability theory or with an interest in recent developments in fluid dynamics. Stability theory has seen a rapid development over the past decade, this book includes such new developments as direct numerical simulations of transition to turbulence and linear analysis based on the initial-value problem.

Recent events including the financial crisis and the gradual lessening of the planet’s natural resources have raised the fundamental question as to whether the capitalist market system can survive its own contradictions or whether we are witnessing the outset of a profound change in civilization. By deploying the tools of the science of complexity alongside those of historical research, Mauro Bonaiuti tackles this basic question, posed against a backcloth of declining marginal returns where growth in the complexity of industrial, military and bureaucratic-institutional apparatuses is thought to have led to progressive increases in economic, social and environmental costs. In this framework, the economic crisis we are traversing, grave as it is, could be interpreted not as a simple cyclical crisis, from which it is possible to escape by the traditional policies of supporting growth, but as the outcome of a ‘passage of civilization’ inscribed in the long-term evolutionary dynamics of capitalism. After the crisis that started in 2008, with millions of people unemployed, with the failure of the economy to pick up and with the ever-growing sense of precariousness and insecurity, we are beginning to suspect that we are facing something more than a cyclical crisis.

In the research project NEDS – Sustainable Energy Supply Lower Saxony, conceivable transition paths towards a power supply based on renewable energies in Lower Saxony by 2050 are developed and examined for their sustainability and feasibility. Both the different technical focal points and the joint development of methods and models represent important aspects of the project. A comprehensive method for the integrated development and evaluation of energy scenarios is developed and applied to Lower Saxony. As a basic framework, five future scenarios for the target year 2050 are developed. Based on the qualitative future scenarios and three chosen alternatives, quantitative assumptions are made for the simulation and evaluation. The simulation results of the system model form the basis for the system evaluation. Defined system states for the transition years are simulated and then compared using a multi-criteria decision analysis based on sustainability criteria. In dem Forschungsprojekt NEDS – Nachhaltige Energieversorgung Niedersachsen werden denkbare Transitionspfade hin zu einer auf erneuerbaren Energien basierenden Stromversorgung in Niedersachsen bis 2050 entwickelt und auf ihre Nachhaltigkeit und Umsetzbarkeit untersucht. Sowohl die unterschiedlichen fachlichen Schwerpunkte als auch die gemeinsame Entwicklung von Methodik und Modellen stellen wichtige Aspekte im Projekt dar. Es wird eine umfassende Methodik zur integrierten Entwicklung und Bewertung von Energieszenarien erarbeitet und auf Niedersachsen angewendet. Als Grundgerüst werden fünf Zukunftsszenarien für das Zieljahr 2050 entwickelt. Aus den qualitativen Zukunftsszenarien und drei ausgewählten Alternativen werden quantitative Annahmen für die Simulation und Bewertung erstellt. Die Ergebnisse der Simulationen des Systemmodells bilden die Grundlage für die Systembewertung. Definierte Systemzustände für die Transitionsjahre werden simuliert und anschließend mithilfe einer multikriteriellen Bewertungsmethode anhand von Nachhaltigkeitskriterien verglichen.

The Energy Transition, the inevitable shift away from cheap, centralized, largely fossil-based energy systems, is one of the core challenges of our time. This book provides a coherent and novel insight into the nature of this challenge and possible strategies to accelerate and guide such transitions. It brings together prominent European scholars and practitioners from the fields of energy transition research and governance to draw attention to the current complex dynamics in the energy domain, and offer elegant and provocative explanations for current crises and lock-ins. They identify multiple energy transition pathways that emerge and increasingly compete, and emphasize the need and possibilities for novel governance. By analysing the complexity of energy transition processes and the difficulties in shifting to sustainable pathways, this text questions the extent to which actually governing energy transitions is already reality, just an illusion, or a bare necessity.

Hydrogen could be a significant fuel of the future, with the potential to make a major contribution to the resolution of pressing social and environmental problems such as carbon emissions, energy security and local air pollution. This book, based on four years of detailed research, subjects the promise and potential of hydrogen to searching, in-depth socio-economic analysis. It discusses the different technologies for the production, distribution, storage and use of hydrogen, and analyses the economics of these technologies and their current market prospects. It also describes various experiences with aspects of a hydrogen economy in two parts of the world - the UK and Canada - and then assesses the nature of different hydrogen futures that might develop depending on how the technology, economics, social acceptance and policy frameworks play out in different contexts. The book ends by setting out the policy drivers and levers which could stimulate a virtuous circle of research and development, innovation and investment that might ultimately generate a sustainable hydrogen economy. This is essential reading for economists, engineers, business leaders, investors, policy makers, researchers and students who are interested in the future of the energy system and the part that hydrogen might play in it.