The Future of Cleantech


Book Description

From the low of 2009, and the so-called ‘death’ of cleantech, five years have seen a steady resurgence of climate innovation - or 'cleantech 2.0' - as governments and organisations around the world increasingly pursue the sustainability agenda. Climate-KIC believes that entrepreneurs and innovators hold the key to responding to the climate challenge.




Generating Electricity in a Carbon-Constrained World


Book Description

The electric power sector is what keeps modern economies going, and historically, fossil fuels provided the bulk of the energy need to generate electricity, with coal a dominant player in many parts of the world. Now with growing concerns about global climate change, this historical dependence on fossil-fuels, especially those rich in carbon, are being questioned. Examining the implications of the industry's future in a carbon-constrained world, a distinct reality, is the subject of this book. Containing contributions from renowned scholars and academics from around the world, this book explores the various energy production options available to power companies in a carbon-constrained world. The three part treatment starts with a clear and rigorous exposition of the short term options including Clean Coal and Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technology, Coal, and Emission trading. Renewable energy options such as Nuclear Energy, Wind power, Solar power, Hydro-electric, and Geothermal energy are clearly explained along with their trade-offs and uncertainties inherent in evaluating and choosing different energy options and provides a framework for assessing policy solutions. This is followed by self-contained chapters of case-studies from all over the world. Other topics discussed in the book are Creating markets for tradable permits in the emerging carbon era, Global Action on Climate Change, The Impossibility of Staunching World CO2 Emissions and Energy efficiency. - Clearly explains short term and long term options - Contributions from renowned scholars and academics from around the world - Case-studies from all over the world




Planetary Improvement


Book Description

An examination of clean technology entrepreneurship finds that “green capitalism” is more capitalist than green. Entrepreneurs and investors in the green economy have encouraged a vision of addressing climate change with new technologies. In Planetary Improvement, Jesse Goldstein examines the cleantech entrepreneurial community in order to understand the limitations of environmental transformation within a capitalist system. Reporting on a series of investment pitches by cleantech entrepreneurs in New York City, Goldstein describes investor-friendly visions of incremental improvements to the industrial status quo that are hardly transformational. He explores a new “green spirit of capitalism,” a discourse of planetary improvement, that aims to “save the planet” by looking for “non-disruptive disruptions,” technologies that deliver “solutions” without changing much of what causes the underlying problems in the first place. Goldstein charts the rise of business environmentalism over the last half of the twentieth century and examines cleantech's unspoken assumptions of continuing cheap and abundant energy. Recounting the sometimes conflicting motivations of cleantech entrepreneurs and investors, he argues that the cleantech innovation ecosystem and its Schumpetarian dynamic of creative destruction are built around attempts to control creativity by demanding that transformational aspirations give way to short-term financial concerns. As a result, capitalist imperatives capture and stifle visions of sociotechnical possibility and transformation. Finally, he calls for a green spirit that goes beyond capitalism, in which sociotechnical experimentation is able to break free from the narrow bonds and relative privilege of cleantech entrepreneurs and the investors that control their fate.




Renewed Energy


Book Description

"Sheds light on the recent history of clean energy between the 2009 recession and 2012. What went wrong? What went well? This book provides ... perspectives from the industry's leading policymakers, technology investors, and industry experts" --




100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything


Book Description

Textbook on the science and methods behind a global transition to 100% clean, renewable energy for science, engineering, and social science students.




Green Innovation in China


Book Description

As the greatest coal-producing and consuming nation in the world, China would seem an unlikely haven for wind power. Yet the country now boasts a world-class industry that promises to make low-carbon technology more affordable and available to all. Conducting an empirical study of China's remarkable transition and the possibility of replicating their model elsewhere, Joanna I. Lewis adds greater depth to a theoretical understanding of China's technological innovation systems and its current and future role in a globalized economy. Lewis focuses on China's specific methods of international technology transfer, its forms of international cooperation and competition, and its implementation of effective policies promoting the development of a home-grown industry. Just a decade ago, China maintained only a handful of operating wind turbines—all imported from Europe and the United States. Today, the country is the largest wind power market in the world, with turbines made almost exclusively in its own factories. Following this shift reveals how China's political leaders have responded to domestic energy challenges and how they may confront encroaching climate change. The nation's escalation of its wind power use also demonstrates China's ability to leapfrog to cleaner energy technologies—an option equally viable for other developing countries hoping to bypass gradual industrialization and the "technological lock-in" of hydrocarbon-intensive energy infrastructure. Though setbacks are possible, China could one day come to dominate global wind turbine sales, becoming a hub of technological innovation and a major instigator of low-carbon economic change.




The Future of Energy: The 2021 Guide to the Energy Transition - Renewable Energy, Energy Technology, Sustainability, Hydrogen and More.


Book Description

The Future of Energy 2021 Edition - The guide to sustainability, renewable energy, climate change and the energy transition. The 'Future of Energy' is written to be accessible for anyone interested in learning more about energy. Substantially updated in 2021 to reflect the impact of Covid-19 on the world of energy, the book takes the reader through a future for energy generation, transportation, and utilisation. Concise and comprehensive, the book brings together discussion on energy and thoughts on the range of topics which form the fulcrum of the challenges ahead of us including climate change, hydrogen, heat, sustainability, and renewable energy. Written to spark ideas, discussion and debate the 'Future of Energy' engages the reader in the future challenges and opportunities of this hugely exciting and important field. Background There exists a huge range of information on the 'energy transition' with competing technologies and theories vying for supremacy. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing there is an easy answer or 'silver bullet' to the huge challenges we face. It is substantially more complicated with an inevitable patchwork of future technologies, rather than a single simple solution. There is no perfect answer to the challenges we face but most will in some way shape the way we use energy through the next decade and beyond. About the author John Armstrong is an engineer whose career has spanned the extremes of the energy industry - giving him a front-row seat on the energy roller-coaster. He began his career constructing oil refineries before moving to work across fossil and renewable electricity generation. John lives in Bath in the United Kingdom with his wife and two children. Reviews for the 'Future of Energy' books by John Armstrong Concise while being comprehensive. Thorough but with a bit of a personal perspective that makes it interesting. Realistic about the challenges but with a dose of optimism about what could be done. Well-informed but accessible. David Elmes, Professor, Warwick Business School, Sept 2020. I would highly recommend this book to anybody working within energy or interested in learning more about the movement towards clean energy. I'd been looking for a book like this for years but couldn't find anything that wasn't a chunky textbook. Amazon Review, August 2020 A very good guide to the challenges the energy industry faces today. I will be recommending it to all my team to get up to speed with the industry - incredibly accessible in how the ideas are laid out. Seb, Energy Conference Producer, May 2020 This should be mandatory reading for future undergraduates and graduates as part of our induction process. Darren, Senior Energy Manager, May 2020 The author manages to present a complex topic in an engaging and authoritative way. Andrew, May 2020




How to Avoid a Climate Disaster


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this urgent, singularly authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical--and accessible--plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid an irreversible climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help and guidance of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science and finance, he has focused on exactly what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only gathers together all the information we need to fully grasp how important it is that we work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases but also details exactly what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. He describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions; where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively; where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions--suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but by following the guidelines he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.




Global Renewables Outlook: Energy Transformation 2050


Book Description

This outlook highlights climate-safe investment options until 2050, policies for transition and specific regional challenges. It also explores options to eventually cut emissions to zero.




Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation


Book Description

The industrial age of energy and transportation will be over by 2030. Maybe before. Exponentially improving technologies such as solar, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy and transportation industries as we know it. The same Silicon Valley ecosystem that created bit-based technologies that have disrupted atom-based industries is now creating bit- and electron-based technologies that will disrupt atom-based energy industries. Clean Disruption projections (based on technology cost curves, business model innovation as well as product innovation) show that by 2030: - All new energy will be provided by solar or wind. - All new mass-market vehicles will be electric. - All of these vehicles will be autonomous (self-driving) or semi-autonomous. - The new car market will shrink by 80%. - Even assuming that EVs don't kill the gasoline car by 2030, the self-driving car will shrink the new car market by 80%. - Gasoline will be obsolete. Nuclear is already obsolete. - Up to 80% of highways will be redundant. - Up to 80% of parking spaces will be redundant. - The concept of individual car ownership will be obsolete. - The Car Insurance industry will be disrupted. The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of rocks. It ended because a disruptive technology ushered in the Bronze Age. The era of centralized, command-and-control, extraction-resource-based energy sources (oil, gas, coal and nuclear) will not end because we run out of petroleum, natural gas, coal, or uranium. It will end because these energy sources, the business models they employ, and the products that sustain them will be disrupted by superior technologies, product architectures, and business models. This is a technology-based disruption reminiscent of how the cell phone, Internet, and personal computer swept away industries such as landline telephony, publishing, and mainframe computers. Just like those technology disruptions flipped the architecture of information and brought abundant, cheap and participatory information, the clean disruption will flip the architecture of energy and bring abundant, cheap and participatory energy. Just like those previous technology disruptions, the Clean Disruption is inevitable and it will be swift.