Backcasting a Future of Sustainable Energy: a Public Policy Perspective

Author name used in this publication: Artie W. Ngpublished_fina

Balancing Health, Economy and Climate Risk in a Multi-Crisis

In the presence of a global pandemic (COVID-19), the relentless pressure on global decision-makers is to ensure a balancing of health (reduce mortality impacts), economic goals (income for livelihood sustenance), and environmental sustainability (stabilize GHG emissions long term). The global energy supply system is a dominant contributor to the GHG burden and deeply embedded in the economy with its current share of 85%, use of fossil fuels has remained unchanged over 3 decades. A unique approach is presented to harmonizing the goals of human safety, economic development, and climate risk, respectively, through an operational tool that provides clear guidance to decision-makers in support of policy interventions for decarbonization. Improving climate change performance as an integral part of meeting human development goals allows the achievement of a country’s environmental, social, and economic well-being to be tracked and monitored. A primary contribution of this paper is to allow a transparent accounting of national performance highlighting the goals of enhancing human safety in concert with mitigation of climate risks. A measure of a country’s overall performance, combined as the Development and Climate Change Performance Index (DCI), is derived from two standardized indexes, the development index H and the Climate Change Performance Index CCPI. Data are analyzed for 55 countries comprising 65 percent of the world’s population. Through active management and monitoring, the proposed DCI can illustrate national performance to highlight a country’s current standing, rates of improvement over time, and a historical profile of progress of nations by bringing climate risk mitigation and economic well-being into better alignment

Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Procedural Steps that Underpin Conflict Identification: Reference to Renewable Energy Resource Development in Kenya

Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) is a tool for an integrated assessment of multifaceted impacts of a proposed project. ESIA can identify areas of potential conflicts and prevent conflicts from occurring early through appropriate mitigation measures. This notwithstanding, conflicts and public opposition arising from implementation of proposed projects which have been subjected to ESIA have been observed in various sectors in different countries and jurisdictions. Kenya is one of the African countries endowed with substantial renewable energy resources including geothermal, wind and solar energy resources. The country is now scaling up the development and utilization of these resources to meet growing energy demand. However, implementation of environmental procedures mainstreamed in the development of renewable energy resources, if inappropriately applied, has the potential to slow down development and exploitation trajectory of these resources. While all proposed renewable energy projects are subjected to the ESIA process, in some instances challenges have emerged at implementation resulting in conflicts that could be avoided. There is a clear need to understand, empirically, which of the ESIA procedural steps is critical in underpinning conflict identification for appropriate application. To determine how each of the ESIA procedural steps is likely to influence conflict identification, a statistical analysis was carried out for ESIA procedures based on questionnaire survey responses from sampled ESIA practitioners in Kenya. This article presents findings on the effect of ESIA procedural steps in conflict identification using cumulative odds ordinal logistic regression with proportional odds. Results show that the overall effect (on the dependent variable conflict identification) of the variables, public participation and monitoring is statically significant, Χ2(2) = 9.12, p = 0.01 and Χ2(2) = 6.29, p = 0.04, respectively. Further, the exponential of the log odds of the slope coefficients indicate that the independent variables public participation, decision making, project implementation and monitoring are statistically significant [Χ2(1) = 9.12, p = 0.00; Χ2(1) = 4.04, p = 0.04; Χ2(1) = 3.64, p = 0.05 and Χ2(1) = 3.31, p = 0.00, respectively]. That is to say these independent variables have a statistically significant effect on the dependent variable conflict identification

Sustainable energy policy for Asia: Mitigating systemic hurdles in a highly dense city

Greenhouse gas emission (GHG) has been increasingly a sensitive issue that is across border and impacting global public interests. While the use of renewable energy technology is perceived as a means to enable delivery of emission-free solutions, its penetration into the energy market has not been timely and significant enough as projected in prior studies. This article aims to illustrate some of the critical hurdles as the policy makers start formulating environmentally friendly energy consumption means for the public in Asian economies. In particular, through analyzing the characteristics in the case of Hong Kong, the authors unveil the challenges for this highly dense city to reach a landscape of alternative energy resources for its transition into a sustainable economy. Education and engagement with the public about a sustainable future, alignment of stakeholders' economic interests and absorption capacity of emerging technologies are argued as the three main challenges and initiatives in mitigating the underlying systemic hurdles that remain to be overcome. Observing the current responses to the externalities by the policy makers in Hong Kong, this study articulates the critical challenges to mitigate these specific systemic hurdles embedded in the existing infrastructure of a highly dense city. Possible mitigating measures to enable deployment of integrative sustainable energy solutions in dealing with climate change are discussed.Renewable energy Sustainability Public policy Asia Hong Kong Absorption capacity

A "cap and invest" strategy for managing the intergenerational burden of financing energy transitions

The investment in sustainable energy required to meet the climate change commitments made by 190 countries signatory to the 2015 Paris Accord is in the order of $100 trillion over the next 2 decades. Reducing carbon emissions requires a financing strategy for managing risk that is an intergenerational burden. This paper proposes a "cap and invest" strategy for building up the necessary infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions consistent with national commitments. "Cap and invest" is in sharp contrast to "cap and trade." An economy-wide general environmental tax (GET) on consumption is the basis for financing the energy transition. The GET creates a large "pool of capital" to de-risk investment in emerging low-carbon solutions in support of an energy infrastructure resilient to the threat of climate change. Innovation in governance is an integral part of the policy to leverage the capital markets through public-private partnership in green financing

A Novel Analysis of Energy Density Considerations and Its Impacts on the Cost of Electrical Energy Storage (EES) Plants

Geological restrictions and the low energy density of compressed air energy storage (CAES) plants constitute a technical and economic barrier to the enablement of variable and intermittent sustainable sources of energy production. Liquid air energy storage (LAES) and pumped thermal energy storage (PTES) systems offer a promising pathway for increasing the share of renewable energy in the supply mix. PTES remains under development while LAES suffers from low liquefaction unit efficiency, although it is at a higher technology readiness level (TRL) than PTES. The most significant element of large-scale EES is related to the discharge features of the power plants, especially the energy storage unit. Here, a novel multi-aspect equation, based on established codes and thermodynamic principles, is developed to quantify the required storage capacity to meet demand consistent with the design parameters and operational limitations of the system. An important conclusion of the application of the multi-aspect equation shows that liquid air storage systems instead of compressed air would reduce the space required for storage by 35 times. Finally, a cost equation was introduced as a function of the required storage volume. Calculations have demonstrated that the use of the novel cost equation, in lieu of the old one-aspect cost equation, for an LAES power plant with a production capacity of about 50 MW makes the costs of installing liquid air storage tanks against the total expenditure of the power plant about six times higher than what was reported in earlier research

Visualization of International Energy Policy Research

The complexity of policy decision making is well recognized. It is not clear, however, what role academic policy research has played in influencing the directions of policy outcomes and how the research has intertwined with notable issues globally. Given the importance of energy choices on sustainable development, we have developed a comprehensive and powerful visualization of the research trends worldwide in energy policy studies over the past five decades using the literature metrology theory and its techniques. The analytical framework provides a visual tracking of research activity, directional flow and a robust basis for judging progress. The emergent findings are an aid to decision makers drawing insights from specific policy studies within a fully transparent view of the historical context on a global scale