2,872 research outputs found

    Energy End-Use Technologies for the 21st Century. A Report of the World Energy Council

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    This report makes clear the opportunities and places technology development firmly centre stage in meeting and overcoming the challenges confronting the energy industry and policy makers. Energy End-Use Technologies for the 21st Century makes it crystal clear that technologies deployed in 20 to 50 years will be the result of policy and funding decisions taken now and that we cannot afford to duck these decisions if we are to meet the World Energy Council’s goals of energy availability, accessibility and acceptability

    Learning or Lock-in: Optimal Technology Policies to Support Mitigation

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    We investigate conditions that aggravate market failures in energy innovations, and suggest optimal policy instruments to address them. Using an intertemporal general equilibrium model we show that “small” market imperfections may trigger a several decades lasting dominance of an incumbent energy technology over a dynamically more efficient competitor, given that the technologies are very good substitutes. Such a “lock-in” into an inferior technology causes significantly higher welfare losses than market failure alone, notably under ambitious mitigation targets. More than other innovative industries, energy markets are prone to these lock-ins because electricity from different technologies is an almost perfect substitute. To guide government intervention, we compare welfare-maximizing technology policies in addition to carbon pricing with regard to their efficiency, effectivity, and robustness. Technology quotas and feed-in-tariffs turn out to be only insignificantly less efficient than first-best subsidies and seem to be more robust against small perturbations.renewable energy subsidy, renewable portfolio standard, feed-in-tariffs, carbon pricing

    Development of Fiber Laser

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    In recent years, fiber lasers have been focused as research topic in the field of laser. It is widely applicable in the field of modern optical communication, optical sensing, materials technology, life sciences and precision mechanics, national defence science ,etc. Fiber laser is typical representative of the third generation lasers. Fiber lasers have great ad-vantages compare to any other lasers, such as long lifetime, small size, high efficiency, compact structure, etc. This report begins by introducing the basic knowledge of lasers. Then the overview the is given on operating principle and research status of fiber laser, some typical fiber lasers. In the end the application and future prospects of fiber lasers are introduced

    Low-carbon energy: a roadmap

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    Technologies available today, and those expected to become competitive over the next decade, will permit a rapid decarbonization of the global energy economy. New renewable energy technologies, combined with a broad suite of energy-efficiency advances, will allow global energy needs to be met without fossil fuels and by adding only minimally to the cost of energy services The world is now in the early stages of an energy revolution that over the next few decades could be as momentous as the emergence of oiland electricity-based economies a century ago. Double-digit market growth, annual capital flows of more than $100 billion, sharp declines in technology costs, and rapid progress in the sophistication and effectiveness of government policies all herald a promising new energy era. Advanced automotive, electronics, and buildings systems will allow a substantial reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, at negative costs once the savings in energy bills is accounted for. The savings from these measures can effectively pay for a significant portion of the additional cost of advanced renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuels, including wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy. Resource estimates indicate that renewable energy is more abundant than all of the fossil fuels combined, and that well before mid-century it will be possible to run most national electricity systems with minimal fossil fuels and only 10 percent of the carbon emissions they produce today. The development of smart electricity grids, the integration of plug-in electric vehicles, and the addition of limited storage capacity will allow power to be provided without the baseload plants that are the foundation of today's electricity systems. Recent climate simulations conclude that CO2 emissions will need to peak within the next decade and decline by at least 50 to 80 percent by 2050. This challenge will be greatly complicated by the fact that China, India, and other developing countries are now rapidly developing modern energy systems. The only chance of slowing the buildup of CO2 concentrations soon enough to avoid catastrophic climate change that could take centuries to reverse is to transform the energy economies of industrial and developing countries almost simultaneously. This would have seemed nearly impossible a few years ago, but since then, the energy policies and markets of China and India have begun to change rapidly -- more rapidly than those in many industrial countries. Renewable and efficiency technologies will allow developing countries to increase their reliance on indigenous resources and reduce their dependence on expensive and unstable imported fuelsAround the world, new energy systems could become a huge engine of industrial development and job creation, opening vast new economic opportunities. Developing countries have the potential to "leapfrog" the carbon-intensive development path of the 20th century and go straight to the advanced energy systems that are possible today. Improved technology and high energy prices have created an extraordinarily favorable market for new energy systems over the past few years. But reaching a true economic tipping point will require innovative public policies and strong political leadership

    Close to the metal: Towards a material political economy of the epistemology of computation

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    This paper investigates the role of the materiality of computation in two domains: blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). Although historically designed as parallel computing accelerators for image rendering and videogames, graphics processing units (GPUs) have been instrumental in the explosion of both cryptoasset mining and machine learning models. The political economy associated with video games and Bitcoin and Ethereum mining provided a staggering growth in performance and energy efficiency and this, in turn, fostered a change in the epistemological understanding of AI: from rules-based or symbolic AI towards the matrix multiplications underpinning connectionism, machine learning and neural nets. Combining a material political economy of markets with a material epistemology of science, the article shows that there is no clear-cut division between software and hardware, between instructions and tools, and between frameworks of thought and the material and economic conditions of possibility of thought itself. As the microchip shortage and the growing geopolitical relevance of the hardware and semiconductor supply chain come to the fore, the paper invites social scientists to engage more closely with the materialities and hardware architectures of ‘virtual’ algorithms and software

    Towards a Green Global Golden Age? : ICT enabled cornucopian sustainability and a suggestion for its reform

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    This conceptual thesis analyses Carlota PĂ©rez vision of a ‘Green Global Golden Age’ that is supposed to reconcile the tension between economic growth and sustainability (PĂ©rez, 2016b). Aiming to address the pressing issue of continued unsustainability, PĂ©rez’ proposed solution is based on the assumption that technological innovation in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can successfully decouple economic growth from unsustainable levels of raw material consumption and environmental pollution. This shall be achieved by a combination of circular economy principles and dematerialized consumption patterns. The feasibility of PĂ©rez’ proposal is analysed from a sustainability science perspective. This is done via applying a systems perspective on the implications of PĂ©rez’ assumptions regarding ICT with a particular focus on sustainability. The analysis of PĂ©rez’ proposal, its discussion and the later normative extension is structured with the help of the reinterpreted three-dimensional research matrix by Jerneck et al. (2011) that has been appropriated for this thesis. Based on a literary review, PĂ©rez’ proposal is found to present significant trade-offs between the objectives of economic growth and sustainability. With the aim to contribute both, a critical analysis of the sustainability implications of PĂ©rez’ ‘Green Global Golden Age’ and a normative discussion of its potential reform, the second part of this thesis is focusing on the identification of PĂ©rez’ overarching objective and alternative strategies to achieve them. In this analysis, Human wellbeing is identified to be this underlying objective. In contrast to the mainstream operationalization of wellbeing as the number of goods and services an individual enjoys, Amartya Sen’s work on ‘Development as Freedom’ (1999) is introduced as an alternative operationalization of human wellbeing. Following the objective to provide an alternative economic paradigm that unites environmental concerns with human wellbeing in the sense of Sen, Kate Raworth’s (2012) idea of doughnut economics is introduced. Linking back to the review of ICT and its effects on sustainability, the last part is concerned with the critical discussion of PĂ©rez’ Cornucopian perspective on technology. As a result of this discussion, it is made clear that technology plays an important role in the transition towards a sustainable future, but only if its limitations are acknowledged. The thesis concludes with a short summary of the different chapters, and two possible directions for future research

    A Review on Anticipated Breakthrough Technologies of 21st Century

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    This review discuss strategic management of thirteen most anticipated possible technology breakthroughs of 21st century which are substantially affect the life style of living beings in the world like (1) Nanotechnology based human life comfort, (2) High speed computation through optical computers, (3) Embedded Intelligence, (4) HIV Antivirus, (5) Pseudo Senses - Sensation of existence through virtual reality and through artificial environment, (6) Off Planet Production in micro-gravity, (7) Protein Maps to know how many active genes are coding for proteins in living being, (8) Customized Kids which are used for Customization of physical and mental ability of children, (9) Development of Chameleon Chips which are reconfigurable photonic circuits using the idea of optical solitons, (10) Flying cars through manipulation of gravitational force, (11) Immortality through nano-bio-technology & stem cell research, (12) Fractal Models for fragmented geometry shapes, and (13) Space travel for everybody. The paper also discuss the effect of these technology breakthroughs and possible changes in lifestyle of people in the society and its contribution in solving many basic problems of human beings on the earth by means of systematic management such breakthrough technologie

    A Review on Anticipated Breakthrough Technologies of 21st Century

    Get PDF
    This review discuss strategic management of thirteen most anticipated possible technology breakthroughs of 21st century which are substantially affect the life style of living beings in the world like (1) Nanotechnology based human life comfort, (2) High speed computation through optical computers, (3) Embedded Intelligence, (4) HIV Antivirus, (5) Pseudo Senses - Sensation of existence through virtual reality and through artificial environment, (6) Off Planet Production in micro-gravity, (7) Protein Maps to know how many active genes are coding for proteins in living being, (8) Customized Kids which are used for Customization of physical and mental ability of children, (9) Development of Chameleon Chips which are reconfigurable photonic circuits using the idea of optical solitons, (10) Flying cars through manipulation of gravitational force, (11) Immortality through nano-bio-technology & stem cell research, (12) Fractal Models for fragmented geometry shapes, and (13) Space travel for everybody. The paper also discuss the effect of these technology breakthroughs and possible changes in lifestyle of people in the society and its contribution in solving many basic problems of human beings on the earth by means of systematic management such breakthrough technologie
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