This concise guide provides the first complete overview of renewable energy technologies in Cuba and their current capabilities and prospects. Coverage includes generation and storage systems, renewable energy installations (hydropower, solar PV, wind, biomass, ocean, and solar thermal), electrical grid history and characteristics, and an analysis of Cuba’s electrical energy resiliency.

This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SRREN) assesses the potential role of renewable energy in the mitigation of climate change. It covers the six most important renewable energy sources - bioenergy, solar, geothermal, hydropower, ocean and wind energy - as well as their integration into present and future energy systems. It considers the environmental and social consequences associated with the deployment of these technologies, and presents strategies to overcome technical as well as non-technical obstacles to their application and diffusion. SRREN brings a broad spectrum of technology-specific experts together with scientists studying energy systems as a whole. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, it presents an impartial assessment of the current state of knowledge: it is policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. SRREN is an invaluable assessment of the potential role of renewable energy for the mitigation of climate change for policymakers, the private sector, and academic researchers.

Renewable energy in the twenty-first century -- Energy transitions : fire to electricity -- The rise of renewables -- Renewable wind energy -- Renewable solar energy -- Financing renewable energy -- Energy transitions : oats to oil -- The rise of electric vehicles -- Parity -- Convergence -- Consequences -- No time to lose

The extraordinary account of the Cuban people’s struggle for survival in a post-Soviet world In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing developments that took place during and beyond this period. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Cuban leaders, thinkers, and activists, this book tells for the first time the remarkable story of how Cuba survived while the rest of the Soviet bloc crumbled. Yaffe shows how Cuba has been gradually introducing select market reforms. While the government claims that these are necessary to sustain its socialist system, many others believe they herald a return to capitalism. Examining key domestic initiatives including the creation of one of the world’s leading biotechnological industries, its energy revolution, and medical internationalism alongside recent economic reforms, Yaffe shows why the revolution will continue post-Castro. This is a fresh, compelling account of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the challenges it faces today.

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed—but it can be wasted. The United States wastes two-thirds of its energy, including 80 percent of the energy used in transportation. So the nation has a tremendous opportunity to develop a sensible energy policy based on benefits and costs. But to do that we need facts—not hyperbole, not wishful thinking. Mara Prentiss presents and interprets political and technical information from government reports and press releases, as well as fundamental scientific laws, to advance a bold claim: wind and solar power could generate 100 percent of the United States’ average total energy demand for the foreseeable future, even without waste reduction. To meet the actual rather than the average demand, significant technological and political hurdles must be overcome. Still, a U.S. energy economy based entirely on wind, solar, hydroelectricity, and biofuels is within reach. The transition to renewables will benefit from new technologies that decrease energy consumption without lifestyle sacrifices, including energy optimization from interconnected smart devices and waste reduction from use of LED lights, regenerative brakes, and electric cars. Many countries cannot obtain sufficient renewable energy within their borders, Prentiss notes, but U.S. conversion to a 100 percent renewable energy economy would, by itself, significantly reduce the global impact of fossil fuel consumption. Enhanced by full-color visualizations of key concepts and data, Energy Revolution answers one of the century’s most crucial questions: How can we get smarter about producing and distributing, using and conserving, energy?

Energy is one of the main determinants of economic growth, but the high dependence of electricity production by fossil fuels could be a brake for the development of countries which do not have a sufficient level of richness and/or which possess a high level of environmental sensitivity. Countries tend to contrast these limits to growth using a higher percentage of renewable sources for electricity generation, though the technological limits still suffer. Renewable energy sources are appreciated worldwide for their ability to limit significantly the impact of anthropic activities on energy production and counter the gradual appreciation of the raw materials used in the process of traditional generation based on gas and/or oil power plants. Moreover, renewable generation can encourage off-grid generation in the underdeveloped countries. The attention to environmental issues has led several countries to ratify international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, Durban Protocol and, more recently, the Paris Agreement; these mandates pledge to reduce emissions of pollutants and to increase the share of energy produced through the use of renewable sources, but the results obtained so far are not encouraging. The relevance of the renewable energy generation and the increase in the investments in a newly installed capacity lead many scholars to investigate the relationship between economic growth and the key factors of the investments in RES. With this volume, the authors want to explore and analyze the causes and consequences of fragmentation and discussing policy responses on promoting renewable energy generation by shedding light on the policies proposed to promote the renewable generation and enhance energy efficiency, their effectiveness in reducing environmental degradation and the promotion of decarbonization, and discussing how developing countries do and should continue to invest in green generation.

Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.