Small and beautiful? The programme of activities and the least developed countries

Most carbon abatement projects under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have been implemented in rapidly industrializing countries, notably China and India. To support small carbon abatement projects and to promote decarbonization in the least developed countries, the Programme of Activities (PoA) modality was introduced. Are the determinants of project implementation different under the PoA from those of conventional CDM projects? To answer this question, we conduct a statistical analysis of the global distribution of CDM projects and PoAs during the years 2007–2012. In regard to country size, large countries clearly dominate both the CDM and PoA, suggesting that the PoA may do only little to facilitate project implementation in small countries. However, the number of PoAs has a strong negative association with a country's corruption level, while the importance of corruption for the CDM is much smaller. Moreover, per capita income has no effect on PoA implementation, while high wealth levels have a weak positive effect on CDM projects. Thus, the PoA modality seems to promote sustainable development in poor countries that have exceeded a certain threshold of good governance. In this regard, PoAs are directing carbon credits to new areas, as many had initially hoped

Finnish Energy Policy in Transition

This open access book examines the role of citizens in sustainable energy transitions across Europe. It explores energy problem framing, policy approaches and practical responses to the challenge of securing clean, affordable and sustainable energy for all citizens, focusing on households as the main unit of analysis. The book revolves around ten contributions that each summarise national trends, socio-material characteristics, and policy responses to contemporary energy issues affecting householders in different countries, and provides good practice examples for designing and implementing sustainable energy initiatives. Prominent concerns include reducing carbon emissions, energy poverty, sustainable consumption, governance, practices, innovations and sustainable lifestyles. The opening and closing contributions consider European level energy policy, dominant and alternative problem framings and similarities and differences between European countries in relation to reducing household energy use. Overall, the book is a valuable resource for researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and others interested in sustainable energy perspectives. In Finland, energy policy is in transition towards integrating energy projects in broader sustainability, liveability and innovation contexts. While energy saving has been pursued for decades, it is now part of a broader tendency in urban planning to promote sustainable lifestyles. Transition manifests in local actors’ redistribution of power, challenging conventional ways of infrastructure development, forging new networks, and seeking novel solutions. The experimental case presented in the chapter, Smart Kalasatama, shows that local governments are close to citizens and, therefore, can infuence the conditions for sustainable consumption and quality of life. Although they have an important role in energy policy, they still might lack the resources, expertise and the power to innovate, to evaluate projects, and in particular, to scale up innovative practices.Non peer reviewe

Too big to succeed? Institutional inertia in low-carbon district heating experiment

Highlights • Experimenting with district heating network spotlights the multi-regime dynamics in transitions. • Inertia from different sources of socio-technical system hinders the experimentation. • Ambiguous technology visions can water down the more transformative expectations. • Social aspects of low-carbon transitions in district heat require further attention. Abstract The energy transitions are in an acceleration phase, where less carbon intensive technologies emerge, but their applicability is uncertain creating a need for real-life experimentation. Cities have become a focal context, where novel constellations of technologies and practices are introduced to reconfigure patterns of production and consumption. One area of urban energy governance gaining increasing attention especially in a Northern context is the low carbon transition in district heating systems that provide the majority of heating in the residential sector and has been primarily built around combustion technologies relying on fossil energy reserves. This article analyses a bidirectional low heat experiment in district heat in Finland by examining what are the dimensions of institutional inertia and how it impacts the reconfiguration of an urban energy system. Institutional inertia emerges from the technical innovation itself, land-use planning practices, the absence of formal regulations and via organisational inertia in the implementation of the experiment. We find that visions about the innovation can become constraints of the experiment, which limit learning and reshaping of innovation, thus preventing radical transformation of the district heating system and watering down the initial target of the experiment. We contribute to the conceptualisation of institutional inertia within the energy transition

Resistance of Holstein-Friesian cows to infestation by the cattle tick (Boophilus microplus)

In two experiments, the milk production of 59 Holstein–Friesian cows in mid lactation was measured over 1 week before artificial infestation with 2,500 or 5,000 Boophilus microplus larvae. Host resistance, the proportion of female ticks applied but not engorging was estimated from weekly counts of engorging female ticks of 4.5–8.0 mm long. Mean host resistance was 79 and 67% in two experiments. Host resistance was not significantly related to milk yield before infestation, to early pregnancy, or to parity. Culling the 10% of cattle with the least resistance to ticks would result in removal of 19–21% of ticks in a herd. The results suggest that selection to improve the existing low levels of resistance to B. microplus might be undertaken without compromising milk production. However, low levels of resistance among the cattle studied and difficulties in assessment of resistance are likely to limit the usefulness of selection within the Holstein–Friesian breed

Evaluation of TickGARD(PLUS), a novel vaccine against Boophilus microplus, in lactating Holstein-Friesian cows

The effects of vaccination with the Bm 86 vaccine TickGARDPLUS against infestation with cattle tick (Boophilus microplus) and of holding cattle on a feedpad until 09:00 hours after the morning milking was tested on 40 mid lactation Holstein cattle using a factorial design. Vaccination resulted in a 56% reduction in tick numbers in the field over one generation, and a 72% reduction in laboratory measures of the reproductive efficiency of ticks. The liveweight gain of vaccinated cattle over 27 weeks was 18.6 kg higher than that of controls, and vaccinated cattle tended to have lower somatic cell count in milk (SCC). There were no other significant differences in measures of production. Cattle kept on the feedpad after the morning milking carried 26% more ticks than those returned immediately to their paddocks

Market intermediation and its embeddeness : Lessons from the Finnish energy transition

Energy transitions are in many respects past the early exploration stages and moving towards the urgently needed mass market take-up. We examine the Finnish energy transition regarding how solutions – heat-pumps, deep retrofits and new district-wide solutions – that have demonstrated economic benefits and reasonable payback times have faced slow uptake and slow market development. We focus on the difficulties that suppliers and adopters face in establishing the value and singularization of goods when adopters need to act as calculative agents in the market. When the intermediation processes needed for market development do not cover the all the needed aspects, these market difficulties can persist until late in the transition process. We further elaborate how the intermediation takes place in ecologies of actors that become complex once the complexity of goods grows and the intermediation becomes tied to formalized arenas such as those found in urban development. Periodic assessment of the effectiveness of markets and ecologies of intermediation can inform policy interventions on market development. Highlights • Market formation in the energy transition may take longer than assumed • Intermediation is important in market formation prior to mainstream markets • Intermediation is not functional but happens in partial and shifting ways • Ecologies of intermediation and socio-material arenas pattern intermediation • The embedding of markets into complex patterns of intermediation slows market developmen