In 2015, leading up to the Paris Climate Conference, India faced intense scrutiny over its role in either securing or scuttling a global climate deal. On the first day of the climate talks India and France jointly announced the International Solar Alliance (ISA), and two weeks of hectic negotiations culminated in the adoption of the Paris Agreement. In less than two years, even as multilateral climate negotiations were weakening with the United States announcing its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the ISA - led by India and backed primarily by developing countries-became a legal entity. Vyoma Jha presents a case study of the creation of the ISA as a treaty-based international organization. Drawing on the political economy approach in the study of international law, this book identifies the politics, players, and process behind the making of the ISA. It uses mixed methods to analyse the politico-legal issues involved in the need for a new treaty-based international organization and finds that the changing political leadership in India marked a shift in domestic climate politics, particularly around solar energy. Against the backdrop of multilateral climate negotiations, the political leadership empowered India's new international rulemaking stance. Jha offers an in-depth account of the treaty-making process to argue that it marks an innovation in the structure of international organizations. The ISA is best described as 'soft law in a hard shell' because it uses the legal infrastructure of a treaty while relying on the social structure of participating actors for its future implementation. Empirical evidence suggests that three factors explain the treaty structure of the ISA: India's leadership role in the treaty-making process, the early involvement of non-state actors, and the preference of developing countries for legal form. Ultimately, the book illustrates a new kind of Indian economic diplomacy, making the ISA the first deliberate instrument of India's foreign policy on climate change and energy.

In this book the authors make the case for renewable energy and renewable energy policy. Each chapter begins with an inspiring story by someone working in renewable energy or a related field.

Photosynthesis has been an important field of research for more than a century, but the present concerns about energy, environment and climate have greatly intensified interest in and research on this topic. Research has progressed rapidly in recent years, and this book is an interesting read for an audience who is concerned with various ways of harnessing solar energy.Our understanding of photosynthesis can now be said to have reached encyclopedic dimensions. There have been, in the past, many good books at various levels. Our book is expected to fulfill the needs of advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in branches of biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and bioengineering because photosynthesis is the basis of future advances in producing more food, more biomass, more fuel, and new chemicals for our expanding global human population. Further, the basics of photosynthesis are and will be used not only for the above, but in artificial photosynthesis, an important emerging field where chemists, researchers and engineers of solar energy systems will play a major role.

The near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists is that the massive burning of gas, oil, and coal is having cataclysmic impacts on our atmosphere and climate. These climate and environmental impacts are particularly magnified and debilitating for low-income communities and communities of color. Energy democracy tenders a response and joins the environmental and climate movement with broader movements for social and economic change in this country and around the world. Energy Democracy brings together racial, cultural, and generational perspectives to show what an alternative, democratized energy future can look like. The book will inspire others to take up the struggle to build the energy democracy movement.

This study presents options to fully unlock the world’s vast solar PV potential over the period until 2050. It builds on IRENA’s global roadmap to scale up renewables and meet climate goals.