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This paper explores the opportunities for a 'just transition' to low carbon and sustainable energy systems; one that addresses the current inequities in the distribution of energy benefits and their human and ecological costs. In order to prioritize policies that address energy poverty alleviation and sustainability concerns, national action and higher levels of international cooperation and coordination are required to steer public policy towards a broader range of public interests. This also implies re-directing the vast sums of private energy finance that currently serve a narrow set of interests. This paper considers how national and global energy governance must adapt and change to ensure a just transition to low carbon and sustainable energy systems. Creating a low carbon and sustainable energy transition will face significant challenges in overcoming opposition from a broad array of interest groups. The challenges of guiding a just transition are amplified by the relinquishing of government control over the energy sector in many countries and the current weak and fragmented state of global energy governance. The necessary changes in energy decision making will entail complex trade-offs and rebound effects that make strong, participatory and transparent institutional arrangements essential in order to govern such challenges equitably. In this respect, procedural justice is critical to achieving distributive justice and to creating a simultaneously rapid, sustainable and equitable transition to clean energy futures.

This book is the first of two volumes that review various approaches and instruments that have been tried, tested, and utilized to scale up clean energy development in Asia and the Pacific. This volume examines clean energy investment needs and financing gaps in the region and reviews existing financing options and approaches, including examples of how these have been applied. Innovative solutions for mobilizing private finance and managing risks associated with clean energy investments are also discussed.

The EU Clean Energy Package sets the EU energy efficiency and renewable energy ambitions for the 2030 horizon. It also updates the rules that govern the functioning of the internal electricity market and the transmission and distribution grids. The package, proposed by the European Commission in November 2016, includes 8 legislative proposals on the electricity market and consumers, Energy Efficiency and Energy Efficiency of buildings, Renewables & bioenergy sustainability as well as governance of the Energy Union. The Council agreed on its negotiating position for four legislative proposals of the EU Clean energy package in December 2017. For the different topics selected for this report, we will present the Commission proposals as well as the Council position included in the electricity Directive and Regulation. The positions of the different stakeholders of the EU electricity sector will also be stated at the end of each discussed topic.

Ecuador was 'refounded' at the turn of the 21st century, with the articulation of progressive and inclusive ideals in a new Constitution. Social movements and leftist intellectuals in Ecuador have expressed that president Rafael Correa has failed to uphold the 2008 Constitution's goals and values. President Correa and his Alianza PAIS government have utilized the rhetoric of the revolutionary ideals articulated in the Constitution, but in practice, they have continued to implement the status quo Western development model, and a large part of their development strategy involves 'neo-extractive' activities. Hydroelectric energy production is contributing to the 'neo-extractive' development model in Ecuador, and its implementation has often violated Constitutional rights. This thesis is an analysis of natural resource extraction in Ecuador and its social repercussions, with a focus on hydroelectric energy production. It is shown that the hydroelectric industry in Ecuador is not as "clean," sustainable, or non-extractive as it is purported to be, through a case study of the San José del Tambo hydroelectric project and the exploration of an international support for hydroelectric extractivism, the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, and its misleading framing of extractive projects as "sustainable development." Social movements in Ecuador are acting to reverse the perversion of their originally revolutionary ideals, and to implement a post-extractive model informed by those revolutionary ideals.

This report summarizes the investments in clean energy made by the operations departments of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2015, condensing information from project databases and formal reports in an easy-to-reference format. This report was prepared by ADB's Clean Energy Program which provides the cohesive agenda that encompasses and guides ADB's lending and nonlending assistance, initiatives, and plan of action for sustainable growth in Asia and the Pacific.

Federal policies regarding renewable and clean energy often lack clear definition, are incomplete, and are scattered across multiple statutes and agencies. Yet at the same time, recent decisions of both federal agencies and courts have attributed a preemptive effect to federal statutes that threatens to hobble innovation in renewable and clean energy policy by subnational regulators. One consequence of this approach is that most significant policies promoting clean and renewable energy are channeled toward subsidies from the federal fisc, rather than diverse policies undertaken independently by state governments or regional customers and suppliers. This Article argues that, contrary to many agency and judicial decisions, the text, structure, history and purpose of key federal statutes does not require a singular approach to federalism in clean energy policy. Borrowing from environmental law, we plant a flag for a preemption approach that we call the "clean energy floor,†and show that this is consistent with the history and structure of federal energy legislation, including both New Deal and more modern statutes. As a normative matter, we also argue that reading of federal energy statutes to incorporate regulatory floors is a good idea, to the extent that it allows federal and state energy regulators an opportunity to work together to overcome problems of fragmentation, stagnation and stalemate -- and especially to address important issues related to climate change and new technologies such as renewable energy and fracking, even absent new congressional action or completely defined federal policy. Our approach to clean energy federalism also has some important implications for how courts should interpret other statutes in the regulatory contexts where federal and state authority are often perceived as substitutes for one another, such as health care.

Over the past 20 years, Massachusetts has evolved as a leader in clean energy policy, which has led to market development, job and economic growth, and reductions in greenhouse gas and other emissions. This course will provide direct insights into the brief history of these policy developments, including policy objectives, legislative and regulatory roles, tradeoffs of costs and benefits, the use of analytical methods to establish program design, and stakeholder perspectives and engagement. The course will explore the market and economic development and challenges that have resulted from the policy, and explore the economic tradeoffs and distributional impacts that may result. Lastly, the course will consider the current energy and climate issues in Massachusetts and the latest policy development and proposals that will impact our energy future.

The 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shifted the nature of the political economy challenge associated with achieving a global emissions trajectory that is consistent with a climate. The shifts generated by CoP21 place country decision-making and country policies at centre stage. Under moderately optimistic assumptions concerning the vigour with which CoP21 objectives are pursued, nearly every country in the world will set about to design and implement the most promising and locally relevant policies for achieving their agreed contribution to global mitigation. These policies are virtually certain to vary dramatically across countries. In short, the world stands at the cusp of an unprecedented era of policy experimentation in driving a clean energy transition. This book steps into this new world of broad-scale and locally relevant policy experimentation. The chapters focus on the political economy of clean energy transition with an emphasis on specific issues encountered in both developed and developing countries. Lead authors contribute a broad diversity of experience drawn from all major regions of the world, representing a compendium of what has been learned from recent initiatives, mostly (but not exclusively) at country level, to reduce GHG emissions. As this new era of experimentation dawns, their contributions are both relevant and timely.

Contributors: Gillian McEachern, Charles Campbell, Matt Price. BlueGreen Canada is a partnership of Environmental Defence and United Steelworkers. The report compares the government investment in clean energy jobs between Canada and the U.S. since Obama became President, and concludes that the lack of investment in Canada is creating thousands of lost jobs for Canadians. If Canada's spending matched U.S. investment in renewable energy alone, an additional estimated 66,000 jobs would have been created. The actual job gap is much larger once energy efficiency and transportation investment are taken into account. The report suggests an improved path for Canada to try to bridge the jobs gap. Includes a bibliography.

In the face of a changing climate, rising sea levels, and various national security concerns, market forces—assisted by public policy—continue to shift key portions of the American economy away from carbon-intensive, fossil fuel driven activities toward cleaner, more efficient, and higher-output ones, especially through greater energy efficiency and more use of renewable energy sources. Consumers are changing their behavior and increasingly seeking greener alternatives as new products flood the marketplace. Businesses are launching new innovations, shifting production schedules, and bringing cleaner products and services to the market to serve them. And with the recent promotion by climate activists of an ambitious Green New Deal, fiery policy debates have broken out in Congress over the need for investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure. As a result, big changes in consumption patterns, manufacturing processes, the power sector, and regulatory affairs—all related to the shift to reduced carbon emissions—have become some of the highest-profile, most-debated trends of the decade. The resulting analysis projects great promise for the U.S. labor market and household opportunity as the clean energy economy transitions continues to push forward. Yet delivering economy-wide prosperity based on the inclusive nature of many clean energy economy occupations will require a more concerted effort to ensure all individuals can fill these jobs.

Estimates show that fossil fuel subsidies average USD 400–600 billion annually worldwide while renewable energy (RE) subsidies amounted to USD 66 billion in 2010 and are predicted to rise to USD 250 billion annually by 2035. Domestic political rationales for energy subsidies include promoting innovation, job creation and economic growth, energy security, and independence. Energy subsidies may also serve social and environmental goals. Whether and to what extent subsidies are effective to achieve these goals or instead lead to market distortions is a matter of much debate and the trade effects of energy subsidies are complex. This paper offers an overview of the types of energy subsidies that are used in the conventional and renewable energy sectors, and their relationship with climate change, in particular greenhouse gas emissions. While the WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) is mostly concerned with harm to competitors, this paper considers the extent to which the Agreement could also discipline subsidies that cause harm to the environment as a global common. Beyond the existing legal framework, this paper surveys a number of alternatives for improving the ability of subsidies disciplines to internalize climate change costs of energy production and consumption. One option is a new multilateral agreement on subsidies or trade remedies (with an appropriate carve-out in the WTO regime to allow for it if such an agreement is concluded outside it). Alternatively, climate change-related subsidies could be included as part of another multilateral regime or as part of regional agreements. A third approach would be to incorporate rules on energy subsidies in sectorial agreements, including a Sustainable Energy Trade Agreement such as has been proposed in other ICTSD studies.

The energy is omnipresent and it can neither be created nor be destroyed. The energy can be changed from one form to another form. Some forms of the energy is used by the human being for his daily needs. One such form is the electrical energy. Man depends on the traditional methods to generate electricity like Thermal energy, hydro electricity, atomic energy etc. The availability of such form of electrical energy is very much possible in the cities where population is more concentrated. The power supply companies under the control of the government/private sector is responsible for the energy production. The distribution of this electrical energy is done by the department like KPTCL in Karnataka which is under the control of the state government. This department finds it easy to distribute the energy to cities where population is more for a given area. But the people living in the rural places are finding it difficult to get the benefit of such facility because the department is either not showing interest in providing the service at rural places or the cost incured in providing such facility is more than the return out of it. This leads to a lot of problems to the people living in the villages in getting the service from such companies. An alternative arrangement for such people is the use of clean and green energy by using the freely available solar energy. In this paper a small village called Mala is taken as a sample village. This paper gives the geographical structure of Mala, the various waste products that can be reused to maintain clean environment. This paper also gives a cost difference in using traditional energy system and renewable energy system and time required to recover the investment done for installing renewable energy sources.

Since the New Deal, federal preemption has precluded many state and local regulatory decisions that depart from wholesale electric prices determined under federal standards. Recent decisions treat prices that meet the federal standard as a preemption ceiling, which prohibits states from setting prices that exceed the wholesale price set in a competitive market. Both appellate courts and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERCâ€) - the primary federal agency responsible for the electric power sector - have recently applied a price preemption ceiling to clean energy policies. I argue in this Article that this price ceiling preemption approach hobbles the advancement of clean energy policy under both federal and state laws. State and local governments, along with regional institutions, have adopted a number of clean energy innovations, including feed-in tariffs for renewable power, novel approaches to transmission siting and cost allocation, and energy conservation policies. As subnational governments today consider how to encourage clean energy investments, they are increasingly bumping into limitations imposed by FERC and the courts under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Imposing a legal preemption ceiling on clean energy prices thwarts the ability of subnational governments to adopt policies that advance conservation and renewable energy goals. I argue that reassessing application of wholesale price ceiling preemption to regional, state and local clean energy innovations will allow courts and federal regulators to more effectively imagine the ability of federal energy laws to advance clean energy goals.