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Energy communities, fostering decentralised, renewable supply, need support with their additional social responsibilities.

We are inviting abstracts for the IAG 2024 in Adelaide for our session on Energy Geography and Renewable Energy.
Energy Geography and Renewable Energy
Organised by: Gareth Bryant (USyd) gareth.bryant@sydney.edu.au, James Goodman (UTS) James.Goodman@UTS.edu.au, Lisa Lumsden (Next Economy) l.lumsden@nexteconomy.com.au, Sophie Webber (USyd) sophie.webber@sydney.edu.au
Sponsored by the Economic Geography Study Group and the Nature, Risk and Resilience Study Group
Transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy are multilevel and transformative. Energy is rescaled, from distributed and household contexts to new greenfield or 'brownfield' wind, solar and storage utilities, regional renewable development modelling, national planning frameworks and global energy and climate policy-making. There is extensive scale shifting by renewable energy corporates and financial institutions as well as by critical climate NGOs and activist networks, that often leverage variations in regulatory regimes or in commitments to decarbonisation. Drivers of transition can be complementary, as 'co-benefits', but they can also collide. Much of the renewable sector is privately owned, albeit dependent on state authority, and the priority of maintaining investor returns can take precedence over emissions reduction. Efforts at maximising returns in neoliberal renewables can exacerbate social divisions, negate community or livelihood benefit and prevent wider democratic participation, involvement or social ownership. All these aspects pose problems for renewable energy legitimacy, driving new contestations and new forms of claim-making, including for social ownership and for socio-ecological priorities to take precedence over corporate interests. We seek papers that address how people interpret these and related transitions, how lives are re-ordered and how the meaning and potential of places is thereby transformed. We are especially interested in how the new socio-ecological geographies of energy can be generative, producing new capacity for climate agency and decarbonisation.
Interested presenters should send (no more than) 250-word abstracts, with title, keywords, authors and contact information to the session organisers by Friday March 22. We will notify accepted papers before the IAG deadline.
Cover image: Illustration by Matt Rota for The Transnational Institute
The post CFP IAG 2024: Energy Geography and Renewable Energy appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

In A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with an Energy Mix, NJ Ayuk argues that Africa can address “energy poverty” and become a global energy leader by developing a mix of non-renewable and green projects. Alejandra Padín-Dujon is unconvinced by Ayuk’s proposal of a “just transition” for African countries which relies on scaling up … Continued

Australia is confronted with three multi-billion dollar investment treaty claims from a mining company. The basis for two of the claims is a judgment from the Queensland Land Court, in which the court recommended that no mining lease and environmental authority should be granted to a subsidiary of the claimant for its coal mine. The investment treaty arbitration serves as another illustration of how the international investment protection system poses a threat to an urgent and just energy transition. In this blog post, I explain the background of the investment treaty claim, the decision of the Queensland Land Court, and argue that the Court's decision is an important precedent for the connection between coal, climate change, and human rights.

It took Russia's invasion of Ukraine to illustrate the strategic mistake of Russian gas dependence in the EU. Forced to reevaluate its energy strategy, the EU has shown that it can be resilient and also that renewables can work.

How wonderful:At United Downs, a stone's throw from many of the old mines, a pioneering project run by Geothermal Engineering is drawing heat from granite rocks that lie more than three miles below the surface.It does this by pumping out water warmed to 200 degrees celsius to power a heat exchanger, before being pumped back down again to a shallower well.It's a known technology, it works, it is at least possible for it to be economic, so why not? Well, of course, this being Britain we do have a problem:However, the UK currently lacks a specific regulatory regime for geothermal, according to a House of Commons Library report,That's one of those things that is terribly easy to provide. Just print the fracking regs with "geothermal" copy pasted in where necessary. The similarity - drilling holes which might cause earthquakes, more importantly the reinjection of wastewater which causes earthquakes - is obvious enough that they can and should be both governed by the same rules. So, what's to stop us? Except the clear point that if geothermal were to be restricted by the same rules as fracking then geothermal would not be possible. Therefore geothermal will gain different rules - and the hypocrisy of the fracking rules will be revealed. Not that they've exactly been hidden, but made even more clear perhaps. Nothing like the clear rule of law, is there, and this is nothing like it.

 The government's decision to award about 100 new licences for offshore oil and gas drilling is a welcome move towards addressing the UK's energy shortfall, and the announcement of a major carbon capture initiative is a significant step on the road to developing technological solutions to address environmental concerns.The UK's energy problem is that it needs abundant and affordable energy, while simultaneously meeting environmental concerns. The government wishes to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, while building up renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, and building up non-polluting nuclear power.  There is a problem, in that while renewables are reducing in cost, they are still much more expensive than their fossil fuel alternatives, especially due to Britain's lack of storage capacity.Although people publicly express support for policies designed to reduce the energy environmental impact, their revealed preferences differ from their expressed preferences. It seems that they still want affordable transport, and the ability to heat their homes in winter and cool them in summer. This suggests that promotion of, and reliance on, behavioural change will not be sufficient to address the problem, and that more attention should be paid to increasing supply, rather than to reducing demand.The energy supply can be a diversified mix of different sources. This diversification can include a combination of renewable energy, nuclear power, and cleaner fossil fuel technologies such as natural gas with carbon capture and storage. By diversifying its energy sources, the country can enhance energy security while reducing environmental impacts.It makes environmental sense to phase out the most polluting sources first. Coal pollutes more than oil, which pollutes more than gas. This suggests that gas could be the bridge to maintain the supply until lower cost renewables can be developed and rolled out alongside nuclear power.Increasing the nuclear proportion of the energy mix is important, since it is clean, reliable, and not dependent on foreign suppliers. The UK nuclear proportion is 15%, compared to France's 75%. Since nuclear power plants, even SMRs, take time and great expense to plan, build and go on-line, gas is the obvious bridge until the UK reaches that point.There is a treasure trove of natural gas beneath us, and the technology in the shape of hydraulic fracturing to access it. The government caved in before environmental lobbyists and set the tremor limit far too low to make it viable. Any tremor over 0.5ML [local magnitude] on the Richter scale requires fracking to stop and testing and monitoring to commence. Some commentators have pointed out that this corresponds to a lorry passing by in the street, or a cat jumping off a wardrobe in the next room.Dr Brian Baptie, of the British Geological Survey (BGS), and Dr Ben Edwards, of Liverpool University, have argued that the limit could be raised safely to 1.5ML, which, they said, was unlikely to be felt. Politically, this could be implemented if compensation were given to households in the area any time it might be exceeded. It could be a cash sum, or a reduction in fuel bills.Development of extraction technology should run in parallel to carbon sequestration technology, with awards available for those developing practical techniques for achieving this. In addition, research should be instigated to explore the suggestion that some geologists have made that it might be possible to access parts of the gas field offshore, or from the Isle of Mann, which would probably welcome the extra jobs and opportunities it would bring.Energy storage has a role to play in handling the intermittent nature of some renewable sources, and a programme to encourage firms to develop the appropriate technologies is yet another item in a co-ordinated, multi-source strategy for ensuring a continued supply of affordable and reliable energy into the future. The use of an interconnector, such as that proposed by Aquind, to link Britain and France, offers the UK 5% of its demand in clean nuclear energy, and the possibility of selling to the European electrical market. It could help achieve our energy needs - if it is permitted to be built. 

Key to Europe's future energy security is rebuilding Ukraine's Infrastructure with renewable energy.

We knew the US energy industry had changed the world in a decade. We just couldn't quite grasp that President Biden would have all this success, and want to risk it.
The post Will Biden Ruin His Own Energy Triumph? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

December 27, 2019. A short list of environmental and energy law changes compared to recent years: Fisheries. As interest in shellfish aquaculture has increased, so have concerns about the impact of the rapidly evolving aquaculture industry on water recreation and navigation. Senate Bill 648 creates a new framework for management of aquaculture operations by […]

Many people associate technologies like solar and wind power with efforts to tackle climate change. But for the world's most vulnerable populations, they are much more than a clean-energy solution. By creating jobs, improving health ...

By: Rachel Kamis In his State of the Union address, Biden said "Let's face reality. The climate crisis doesn't care if you're in a red or blue state. It's an existential threat. We have anContinue reading

After five rounds, tens of thousands of online voters have chosen the most wasteful federal program: the subsidies and tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The results from Spending Madness suggest that the highest priority budget cut for Congress is the vast corporate welfare unleashed by the IRA.

Pursuit of industrial competitiveness and renewable technologies must avoid a backlash from disengaged citizens.

Congress should repeal the IRA and the pre‐​IRA energy credits. As a whole, these tax credits are a highly inefficient and expensive system of subsidizing energy from some politically popular low greenhouse gas emitting sources