The Green Developmental State?


Book Description

One of the greatest challenges facing states in the 21st century is the development of an environmentally sustainable techno-industrial paradigm. In recent years, governments across East Asia have begun to respond to this challenge through technology-based climate change mitigation strategies. Of these states, Taiwan's efforts in the promotion of renewable energy technologies, particularly solar photovoltaic technology has been the subject of increasing scrutiny. The puzzle this study seeks to address is the divergence between Taiwan's promotion of renewable energy as a strategically important emerging industry, and its slow domestic deployment of renewable energy technology in recent years. I suggest that Taiwan's 'green' industry policy is the result of institutional recombination within a polarised political environment, which has supported the development of new strategic growth industries but limited certain state capacities in domestic market formation. I explore the development of cooperative institutional linkages between public R&D institutions, industry associations and private business in Taiwan's solar energy and smart grid sector. I also examine how polarisation in Taiwan's political environment has limited the state's capacity to pursue domestic energy system transformation. These findings have implications for debates on developmental states confronting the challenge of innovation-based economic growth, and processes of institutional change. Taiwan demonstrates the importance of domestic political factors in determining a state's capacity to transform its economy to a low-carbon techno-industrial paradigm.




A Cleaner Home and a Better Image Abroad


Book Description




Taiwan's Environmental Struggle


Book Description

This book examines the causes of Taiwan's environmental predicament, engaging in Taiwan's unique geological, geographical, demographical, political, industrial, historical and economic circumstances with a view to what can be done to improve Taiwan's environmental future.




Climate Change, Energy, Sustainability and Pavements


Book Description

Climate change, energy production and consumption, and the need to improve the sustainability of all aspects of human activity are key inter-related issues for which solutions must be found and implemented quickly and efficiently. To be successfully implemented, solutions must recognize the rapidly changing socio-techno-political environment and multi-dimensional constraints presented by today’s interconnected world. As part of this global effort, considerations of climate change impacts, energy demands, and incorporation of sustainability concepts have increasing importance in the design, construction, and maintenance of highway and airport pavement systems. To prepare the human capacity to develop and implement these solutions, many educators, policy-makers and practitioners have stressed the paramount importance of formally incorporating sustainability concepts in the civil engineering curriculum to educate and train future civil engineers well-equipped to address our current and future sustainability challenges. This book will prove a valuable resource in the hands of researchers, educators and future engineering leaders, most of whom will be working in multidisciplinary environments to address a host of next-generation sustainable transportation infrastructure challenges. "This book proposes a broad detailed overview of the actual scientific knowledge about pavements linked to climate change, energy and sustainability at the international level in an original multidimensional/multi-effects way. By the end, the reader will be aware of the whole global issues to care about for various pavement technical features around the world, among which the implications of modelling including data collection, challenging resources saving and infrastructures services optimisation. This is a complete and varied work, rare in the domain." Dr. Agnes Jullien Research Director Director of Environmental, Development, Safety and Eco-Design Laboratory (EASE) Department of Development, Mobility and Environment Ifsttar Centre de Nantes Cedex- France “An excellent compilation of latest developments in the field of sustainable pavements. The chapter topics have been carefully chosen and are very well-organized with the intention of equipping the reader with the state-of-the-art knowledge on all aspects of pavement sustainability. Topics covered include pavement Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), pervious pavements, cool pavements, photocatalytic pavements, energy harvesting pavements, etc. which will all be of significant interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of pavement engineering. This book will no doubt serve as an excellent reference on the topic of sustainable pavements.” Dr. Wei-Hsing Huang Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology (IJPRT) and Professor of Civil Engineering National Central University Taiwan




Social Innovation and Business in Taiwan


Book Description

Globalization and technological innovation have greatly enhanced the free mobility of currencies, commodities, services, information, jobs and people; yet this can also cause gaps in regional development and create uneven wealth in minority economies. Social Innovation and Business in Taiwan links the ultimate goal of the common good by connecting people not just through technology, but through new forms of organization. Based on five major research cases observed in Taiwan, this book introduces the core concept of a social innovation system to show how the common good can be established, adapted and diffused across communities, societies and national boundaries. By identifying effective and sustainable ways to create social value, this innovation system shows a universally true way to lead to a more humane global society.







Innovation, Catch-up and Sustainable Development


Book Description

This volume presents selected contributions from the 2018 conference of the International Schumpeter Society (ISS). The selected chapters in this volume reflect the state-of-the-art of Schumpeterian economics dedicated to the three conference topics innovation, catch-up, and sustainability. Innovation is driving catch-up processes and is the condition for a transformation towards higher degrees of sustainability. Therefore, Schumpeterian economics has to play a key role in these most challenging fields of human societies’ development in the 21st century. The three topics are well suited to capture the great variety of issues, which have the potential to shape the scientific discussion in economics and related disciplines in the years to come. The presented contributions show the broadness and high standard of Schumpeterian analysis. The ideas of dynamics, heterogeneity, novelty, and innovation as well as transformation are the most attractive fields in economics today and offer the most prolific interdisciplinary connections now and for the years to come when humankind, our global society, has to master the transition towards sustainable economic systems by solving the grand challenges and wicked problems with which we are confronted today. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students, interested in a better understanding of innovation, catch-up, and sustainability, and Schumpeterian economics in general. The chapter “Industrial life cycle: relevance of national markets in the development of new industries for energy technologies – the case of wind energy” is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 License via link.springer.com.




Renewable Energy in East Asia


Book Description

Energy is crucial to the functioning of any human society and central to understanding East Asia’s ‘economic miracle’. The region’s rapid development over the last few decades has been inherently energy-intensive and the impact on global energy security, climate change and the twenty-first-century global system generally is now very significant and will become more so over foreseeable years and decades to come. The region is already the world’s largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, so establishing cleaner energy systems in East Asia is both a regional and global challenge, and renewable energy has a critically important part to play in meeting it. This book presents a comprehensive study of renewable energy development in East Asia. It begins by examining renewable energy development in global and historic contexts, and situates East Asia’s position in the recent worldwide expansion of renewables. This same approach is applied on sector-specific chapter studies on wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, ocean (wave and tidal) and bioenergy, and to general trends in renewable energy policy. Governments play a critical role in promoting renewables and their contribution to tackling climate change and other environmental challenges. Christopher M. Dent argues this is particularly relevant to East Asia, where state capacity practice has been increasingly allied to ecological modernisation thinking to form what he calls ‘new developmentalism’, the principal foundation on which renewables have developed in the region as well as how East Asia’s low carbon development is being generally promoted. Renewable Energy in East Asia will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, economics, political economy, energy studies, business, development, international relations and environmental studies. It will also appeal to researchers working on the subject matter in government, business, international organisations, think tanks and civil society organisations.




Mining & Environment


Book Description

Compilation of keynote addresses delivered at different national and international conferences, symposiums, seminars, etc., with special reference to India.