Sustainability is a new, important discourse aimed at promoting a new strategy in the development of energy, water and environmental (EWE) systems — the key components that affect the quality of life on our planet. It is becoming increasingly clear that the quest for sustainable development requires integrating economic, social, cultural, political and ecological factors. The behavior and properties of an EWE system arise not merely from the properties of its component elements, but also to a large degree also from the nature and intensity of their dynamic interlinkages. This volume helps clarify the complexity of these problems by providing a deeper understanding of the implications of the different aspects of sustainability.This work contains a collection of selected, peer-reviewed and state-of-the-art reflecting papers that were presented at the Third Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems that was held in June 5-10, 2005 in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

A comprehensive and unified introduction to the science of energy sources, uses, and systems for students, scientists, engineers, and professionals.

This book offers an edited volume for all readers who wish to gain an in-depth grasp of the economic analysis of recent developments in energy law and policy in Europe and the United States. In response to waning resources and heightened environmental awareness, many countries are now seeking to redefine their energy mix. Several energy sources are available: coal and oil, natural gas, and a variety of renewables. Yet which of them are capable of addressing core energy-related concerns? Reliability, security, affordability, fairness, and sustainability all have to be taken into account. Further, once a target mix has been identified, two challenges remain for legal scholars: what role does the law play in achieving a specified energy mix, and, how can the law best fulfill that role? The essential energy concerns are just as important in defining the way we shape our energy mix as they are in defining the mix itself. An example of current challenges in energy law and policy can be seen in the pursuit by the German and Swiss governments of the so-called “Energiewende” (energy transition). These policies are intended to enable the transition from a non-sustainable use of fossil and nuclear energy to a more sustainable approach based on renewable energies. On the one hand, the goal is to achieve a decarbonization of the energy economy by reducing the use of fossil energy sources such as petroleum, carbon and natural gas. On the other, and in response to the Fukushima nuclear accident, a phase out is intended to eliminate the dangers of nuclear technologies. Achieving these goals poses tremendous challenges for the two countries’ energy policies – partly because the energy transition will not only affect energy production, but also energy consumption. From a Law and Economics perspective, a number of questions arise: to what extent is it justifiable to rely on markets and continued technological innovation, especially with regard to the present exploitation of scarce resources? To what extent is it necessary for states to intervene in energy markets? Regulatory instruments are available to create and maintain more sustainable societies: command and control regulations, restraints, Pigovian taxes, emission certificates, nudging policies, and more. If regulation in a certain legal field is necessary, which policies and methods will most effectively spur the sustainable consumption and production of energy in order to protect the environment while mitigating any potential negative impacts on economic development? Do neoclassical and behavioural economics provide us with a suitable framework for predicting the market’s complex reactions to a changing energy policy? This book provides theoretical insights as well as empirical findings in order to answer these vital questions.

A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

This addition to the ISOR series introduces complementarity models in a straightforward and approachable manner and uses them to carry out an in-depth analysis of energy markets, including formulation issues and solution techniques. In a nutshell, complementarity models generalize: a. optimization problems via their Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions b. on-cooperative games in which each player may be solving a separate but related optimization problem with potentially overall system constraints (e.g., market-clearing conditions) c. conomic and engineering problems that aren’t specifically derived from optimization problems (e.g., spatial price equilibria) d. roblems in which both primal and dual variables (prices) appear in the original formulation (e.g., The National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) or its precursor, PIES). As such, complementarity models are a very general and flexible modeling format. A natural question is why concentrate on energy markets for this complementarity approach? s it turns out, energy or other markets that have game theoretic aspects are best modeled by complementarity problems. The reason is that the traditional perfect competition approach no longer applies due to deregulation and restructuring of these markets and thus the corresponding optimization problems may no longer hold. Also, in some instances it is important in the original model formulation to involve both primal variables (e.g., production) as well as dual variables (e.g., market prices) for public and private sector energy planning. Traditional optimization problems can not directly handle this mixing of primal and dual variables but complementarity models can and this makes them all that more effective for decision-makers.