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Renewable Energy Transition in Asia: Policies, Markets and Emerging Issues
by Nandakumar Janardhanan Vaibhav ChaturvediThis book covers critical debates on policies, markets and emerging issues that shape renewable energy transition in the Asian region, which is fast becoming an epicenter of the global energy consumption. The chapters focus on domestic policies, geopolitics, technology landscape and governance structure pertaining to the development of renewable energy in different Asian countries ranging from China to the Middle East. The book presents an insightful view of the pace and magnitude of the energy transition. It presents critical steps countries are taking to promote affordable and clean energy (SDG 7) as well as strengthening climate mitigation actions (SDG 13). In addition, this book introduces the concept of co-innovation---a collaborative and iterative approach to jointly innovate, manufacture and scale up low-carbon technologies---and its role in promoting energy transition in Asia. Chapter 8 (Renewable energy deployment to stimulate energy transition in the Gulf Cooperation Council) is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Renewable Gas: The Transition to Low Carbon Energy Fuels (Energy, Climate and the Environment)
by Jo AbbessThe author looks at the prospects for a transition from natural gas to low carbon gas, which could take several decades, and at how this will depend on the evolution of the fossil fuel industry. She investigates the technologies and energy systems for making the best use of renewable gas resources.
Renewable Natural Resources: A Management Handbook For The Eighties
by Dennis Little Robert E. Dils John John GrayEnormous in scope, this book presents in comprehensive and logical form the sum of our national knowledge about renewable energy resources. It deals with these resources in terms of opportunities and dangers, in terms of current availability and possible expansion, in terms of how natural resources relate to human resources and needs, and in terms of their replacement potential for nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels. It also puts domestic resources and needs into the context of international needs, supplies, and policies, emphasizing the issues facing an interdependent world and the urgent requirements perceived by countries less endowed than the United States. This is a handbook for the concerned citizen as well as for resource managers and policymakers at local, regional, and national levels. The analyses it contains underscore the fact that there are no easy answers: everything is part of an interlocking system, and every decision will affect multiple aspects of our daily lives and indeed our very existence. The authors emphasize the crucial importance of early planning, balanced management, and timely decisions, while suggesting that something more is required—a new ideology and a new educational approach.
Renewables: The Politics of a Global Energy Transition (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Michael Aklin Johannes UrpelainenA comprehensive political analysis of the rapid growth in renewable wind and solar power, mapping an energy transition through theory, case studies, and policy.Wind and solar are the most dynamic components of the global power sector. How did this happen? After the 1973 oil crisis, the limitations of an energy system based on fossil fuels created an urgent need to experiment with alternatives, and some pioneering governments reaped political gains by investing heavily in alternative energy such as wind or solar power. Public policy enabled growth over time, and economies of scale brought down costs dramatically. In this book, Michaël Aklin and Johannes Urpelainen offer a comprehensive political analysis of the rapid growth in renewable wind and solar power, mapping an energy transition through theory, case studies, and policy analysis.Aklin and Urpelainen argue that, because the fossil fuel energy system and political support for it are so entrenched, only an external shock—an abrupt rise in oil prices, or a nuclear power accident, for example—allows renewable energy to grow. They analyze the key factors that enable renewable energy to withstand political backlash, andt they draw on this analyisis to explain and predict the development of renewable energy in different countries over time. They examine the pioneering efforts in the United States, Germany, and Denmark after the 1973 oil crisis and other shocks; explain why the United States surrendered its leadership role in renewable energy; and trace the recent rapid growth of modern renewables in electricity generation, describing, among other things, the return of wind and solar to the United States. Finally, they apply the lessons of their analysis to contemporary energy policy issues.
Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics
by Anne-Marie SlaughterFrom the acclaimed author of Unfinished Business, a story of crisis and change that can help us find renewed honesty and purpose in our personal and political livesLike much of the world, America is deeply divided over identity, equality, and history. Renewal is Anne-Marie Slaughter’s candid and deeply personal account of how her own odyssey opened the door to an important new understanding of how we as individuals, organizations, and nations can move backward and forward at the same time, facing the past and embracing a new future.Weaving together personal stories and reflections with insights from the latest research in the social sciences, Slaughter recounts a difficult time of self‐examination and growth in the wake of a crisis that changed the way she lives, leads, and learns. She connects her experience to our national crisis of identity and values as the country looks into a four-hundred-year-old mirror and tries to confront and accept its full reflection. The promise of the Declaration of Independence has been hollow for so many for so long. That reckoning is the necessary first step toward renewal. The lessons here are not just for America. Slaughter shows how renewal is possible for anyone who is willing to see themselves with new eyes and embrace radical honesty, risk, resilience, interdependence, grace, and vision.Part personal journey, part manifesto, Renewal offers hope tempered by honesty and is essential reading for citizens, leaders, and the change makers of tomorrow.
Renewing America’s Nuclear Arsenal: Options for the 21st century (Adelphi series)
by James E. DoyleIn the next few years the US government will make decisions regarding the renewal of its triad of air-, land- and sea-based nuclear weapons that will have huge implications for the security of the country and its allies, its public finances, and the salience of nuclear weapons in global politics. Current plans provide for spending an estimated US$1 trillion over 30 years to modernise or replace the full triad. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate viable alternatives to the current US plan to modernise or replace its full triad of air-, land- and sea-based nuclear weapons. These alternatives would allow the US to maintain deterrence at a lower cost, thereby freeing up funds to ease pressing shortfalls in spending on conventional procurement and nuclear security. Moreover, these alternative structures – which propose a reduction in the size and shape of the US arsenal – offer distinct advantages over the existing plan with regard to maintaining strategic stability vis-à-vis Russia and China; upholding existing arms-control treaties, in particular New START and the INF Treaty; and boosting the security of US nuclear forces and supporting the global non-proliferation regime, including the NPT. They would also endow the US with a nuclear force better suited to the strategic environment of the twenty-first century and mark an advance on the existing triad with regard to supporting conventional military operations.
Renewing Design with Communities: Another Way of Building
by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji and Snehanshu MukherjeeThis book looks at alternative ways of analyzing traditional and contemporary architectural design and building practices in South Asia with a special focus on India. It showcases how collaborative projects between architects and local communities and drawing from local building traditions can lead to sustainable and equitable practices in architecture. The volume includes an analysis of projects in rural, tribal, and urban areas of India and Nepal and first-hand accounts of architects, teachers, and professionals engaged in the theory and practice of design and architecture. It examines the differences between the individualistic and the collective approach and explores the meaning of architecture as a process and as a product and as a decentralized, ecologically, and locally sensitive way of designing. While comparing traditional and modern methods of building, it also examines the impact of each method on the community, the economy and the surrounding environment. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, urban studies, urban planning, urban ecology, urban geography, and sustainable development. It will also be useful for architects, planners, urban designers, and professionals associated with these disciplines.
Renewing Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy, Performance and Prospects
by Deryke Belshaw Ian LivingstoneRenewing Development in Sub-Saharan Africa reviews the debates and brings together specialist contributions, to provide a clear guide to the major complexities of African development. They lay the foundation for designing a range of individual country-specific policy-sets, in which the strategic components are prioritized according to each country's constraints and opportunities. The emphasis of the book is on the identification of effective strategies that will enable individual countries to most effectively exploit their growth opportunities and to meet poverty-reducing and other key equity objectives.
Renewing Liberalism
by James A. ShermanThis book develops an original and comprehensive theory ofpolitical liberalism. It defends bold new accounts of the nature of autonomyand individual liberty, the content of distributive justice, and thejustification for the authority of the State. The theory that emergesintegrates contemporary progressive and pluralistic liberalism into a broadlyAristotelian intellectual tradition. The early chapters of the book challenge the traditionalconservative idea of individual liberty--the liberty to dispose of one'sproperty as one wishes--and replace it with a new one, according to which libertyis of equal value to all persons, regardless of economic position. The middle chapters present an original theory of socio-economicjustice, arguing that a society in which every citizen enjoys an equal share ofliberty should be the distributive goal of the State. It is argued that thisgoal is incompatible with the existence of large disparities in wealth andeconomic power, and that (contra conservativeand libertarian economic arguments) such disparities are harmful to the overallhealth of national and global economies. The final chapters provide anoriginal argument that the State has both a moral duty and a moral right topursue this program of socio-economic justice (contra conservative and libertarian moral arguments), and that onlythe measures necessary to implement this program lie within the morallyjustifiable limits on the State's authority. Though primarily a politicalwork, it spans most areas ofpractical philosophy--including ethical, social, and legal theory; andmeta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. And though fundamentally aphilosophical work, it incorporates research from a number of fields--including decisiontheory, economics, political science, and jurisprudence; primatology,neuroscience, and psychology; and history, anthropology, sociology, andecology--and is sure to be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students.
Renewing Local Democracy?: The Modernisation Agenda in British Local Government
by Lawrence PratchettBringing together research on different features of the democratic renewal agenda to investigate how local authorities are responding, this text includes a contribution from the main architect of the modernization, Local Government Minister Hilary Armstrong.
Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, And Imagination
by Leo PanitchRenewing Socialism opens with an exploration of the contemporary meaning of revolution and reform, beginning by stressing the appropriation of both terms into the rhetoric of the political right. Panitch examines the failure to realize socialisms revolutionary promise through an analysis of social democratic parties and the politics of compromise t
Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal
by Renia Spiegel Elizabeth BellakA New York Times bestseller A USA Today bestsellerThe long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into EnglishRenia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939 Renia began a diary. “I just want a friend. I want somebody to talk to about my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that’s why I have decided to look for a confidant in the form of a diary.” And so begins an extraordinary document of an adolescent girl’s hopes and dreams. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl, a city in the south, just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.Like Anne Frank, Renia’s diary became a record of her daily life as the Nazis spread throughout Europe. Renia writes of her mundane school life, her daily drama with best friends, falling in love with her boyfriend Zygmund, as well as the agony of missing her mother, separated by bombs and invading armies. Renia had aspirations to be a writer, and the diary is filled with her poignant and thoughtful poetry. When she was forced into the city’s ghetto with the other Jews, Zygmund is able to smuggle her out to hide with his parents, taking Renia out of the ghetto, but not, ultimately to safety. The diary ends in July 1942, completed by Zygmund, after Renia is murdered by the Gestapo.Renia's Diary has been translated from the original Polish, and includes a preface, afterword, and notes by her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak. An extraordinary historical document, Renia Spiegel survives through the beauty of her words and the efforts of those who loved her and preserved her legacy.
Renminbi Internationalization
by Barry Eichengreen Masahiro KawaiMeet the next global currency: the Chinese renminbi, or the "redback." Following the global financial crisis of 2008, China's major monetary policy objective is the internationalization of the renminbi, that is, to create an inter-national role for its currency akin to the international role currently played by the U.S. dollar.Renminbi internationalization is a hot topic, for good reason. It is, essentially, a window onto the Chinese government's aspirations and the larger process of economic and financial transformation. Making the renminbi a global currency requires rebalancing the Chinese economy, developing the country's financial markets and opening them to the rest of the world, and moving to a more flexible exchange rate. In other words, the internationalization of the renminbi is a monetary and financial issue with much broader supra-monetary and financial implications. This book offers a new perspective on the larger issues of economic, financial, and institutional change in what will eventually be the world's largest economy.
Renminbi Internationalization
by Barry Eichengreen Masahiro KawaiMeet the next global currency: the Chinese renminbi, or the "redback." Following the global financial crisis of 2008, China's major monetary policy objective is the internationalization of the renminbi, that is, to create an inter-national role for its currency akin to the international role currently played by the U.S. dollar.Renminbi internationalization is a hot topic, for good reason. It is, essentially, a window onto the Chinese government's aspirations and the larger process of economic and financial transformation. Making the renminbi a global currency requires rebalancing the Chinese economy, developing the country's financial markets and opening them to the rest of the world, and moving to a more flexible exchange rate. In other words, the internationalization of the renminbi is a monetary and financial issue with much broader supra-monetary and financial implications. This book offers a new perspective on the larger issues of economic, financial, and institutional change in what will eventually be the world's largest economy.
Renminbi Rising: A New Global Monetary System Emerges
by Guonan Ma William H. Overholt Cheung Kwok LawCritical analysis of RMB internationalization and the coming global currency shift Renminbi Rising charts the emergence of China's internationalizing currency and provides an in-depth analysis of the global repercussions. Written by a team of renown economics researchers, this book describes the pressures that enabled the emergence of a new global monetary system and why China's Renminbi (RMB) became the default 'second in line' as the U.S. receded from leadership. Policy makers and regulators will appreciate the examination of the motivations behind those driving the shift, and financial professionals will find valuable guidance in the discussion surrounding business opportunities that the RMB brings to the table. Coverage includes the emergence of new Chinese-sponsored financial institutions, the scale of various RMB businesses and the coming transformation of the global financial system. Effective management of international monetary affairs has never been more fundamental to the global economic recovery. The rapid emergence of China's RMB is a transformative event of global significance, and this book provides the context you need to understand the depth and breadth of changes on the horizon. Understand why a new global monetary system is needed Consider the outcomes as China emerges and the U.S. recedes Learn the context and motivations behind principal players' strategies Discover the scale of opportunities presented by the rise of the RMB It is essential for finance professionals and economic policy makers to understand the drivers, progress and likely trajectory of the RMB internationalization and to fully grasp the implications for the global financial system, international business and supporting financial products and services. Renminbi Rising offers detailed analysis of the key opportunities and threats inherent in this major economic shift.
Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism (Great Transformations #1)
by Nathan Gardels Nicolas BerggruenThe rise of populism in the West and the rise of China in the East have stirred a rethinking of how democratic systems work—and how they fail. The impact of globalism and digital capitalism is forcing worldwide attention to the starker divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” challenging how we think about the social contract. With fierce clarity and conviction, Renovating Democracy tears down our basic structures and challenges us to conceive of an alternative framework for governance. To truly renovate our global systems, the authors argue for empowering participation without populism by integrating social networks and direct democracy into the system with new mediating institutions that complement representative government. They outline steps to reconfigure the social contract to protect workers instead of jobs, shifting from a “redistribution” after wealth to “pre-distribution” with the aim to enhance the skills and assets of those less well-off. Lastly, they argue for harnessing globalization through “positive nationalism” at home while advocating for global cooperation—specifically with a partnership with China—to create a viable rules-based world order. Thought provoking and persuasive, Renovating Democracy serves as a point of departure that deepens and expands the discourse for positive change in governance.
Rent (What is Political Economy?)
by Joe CollinsThe problem of rent is at the root of vital social concerns in the twenty-first century, ranging from the climate emergency and spiralling economic inequality to the repercussions of global economic crises. But while many of us may be familiar with rent (especially paying it), how should we really understand it? Examining both concrete contexts and complex concepts, in this book Joe Collins provides a comprehensive but concise survey of the theories and debates over rent and rentier capitalism. He examines global gentrification from São Paolo to Dublin, the tyranny of technology from Taipei to San Francisco, and the excesses of extractivism from Sekondi to Karratha. In doing so, he reveals how rent is fundamental to the current dominant form of capitalist social organization across the globe and how we can prevent the next generation from seeing our societies rent asunder. An essential resource for students and scholars alike, this groundbreaking book will be of interest to anyone working on capitalism, property, political economy, economic sociology and contemporary politics.
Rent Control in North America and Four European Countries: Regulation and the Rental Housing Market
by William Smith Michael TeitzRent control, the governmental regulation of the level of payment and tenure rights for rental housing, occupies a small but unique niche within the broad domain of public regulation of markets. The price of housing cannot be regulated by establishing a single price for a given level of quality, as other commodities such as electricity and sugar have been regulated at various times. Rent regulation requires that a price level be established for each individual housing unit, which in turn implies a level of complexity in structure and oversight that is unequaled.Housing provides a sense of security, defines our financial and emotional well-being, and influences our self-definition. Not surprisingly, attempts to regulate its price arouse intense controversy. Residential rent control is praised as a guarantor of affordable housing, excoriated as an indefensible distortion of the market, and both admired and feared as an attempt to transform the very meaning of housing access and ownership.This book provides a thorough assessment of the evolution of rent regulation in North American cities. Contributors sketch rent control's origins, legal status, economic impacts, political dynamics, and social meaning. Case studies of rent regulation in specific North American cities from New York and Washington, DC, to Berkeley and Toronto are also presented. This is an important primer for students, advocates, and practitioners of housing policy and provides essential insights on the intersection of government and markets.
The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age
by Pedro Fiori ArantesA critique of prominent architects’ approach to digitally driven design and labor practices over the past two decades With the advent of revolutionary digital design and production technologies, contemporary architects and their clients developed a taste for dramatic, unconventional forms. Seeking to amaze their audiences and promote their global brands, “starchitects” like Herzog & de Meuron and Frank Gehry have reaped substantial rewards through the pursuit of spectacle enabled by these new technologies. This process reached a climax in projects like Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and the “Bilbao effect,” in which spectacular architectural designs became increasingly sought by municipal and institutional clients for their perceived capacity to enhance property values, which author Pedro Fiori Arantes calls the “rent of form.”Analyzing many major international architectural projects of the past twenty years, Arantes provides an in-depth account of how this “architecture of exception” has come to dominate today’s industry. Articulating an original, compelling critique of the capital and labor practices that enable many contemporary projects, Arantes explains how circulation (via image culture), consumption (particularly through tourism), the division of labor, and the distribution of wealth came to fix a certain notion of starchitecture at the center of the industry.Significantly, Arantes’s viewpoint is not that of Euro-American capitalism. Writing from the Global South, this Brazilian theorist offers a fresh perspective that advances ideas less commonly circulated in dominant, English-language academic and popular discourse. Asking key questions about the prevailing logics of finance capital, and revealing inconvenient truths about the changing labor of design and the treatment of construction workers around the world, The Rent of Form delivers a much-needed reevaluation of the astonishing buildings that have increasingly come to define world cities.
Rent Seeking in China (Routledge Contemporary China Series)
by Tak-Wing Ngo Yongping WuIn China, rent seeking has been linked to the idea of the local developmental state in which rapid economic development is explained in terms of the promotion of village and township enterprises by local cadres who wants to maximize revenue. At the same time, the rent-seeking state is also seen as the root of corrupt practices and in the creation of a political market where state assets and authorities are diverted into private interests. Despite the prevalence of rent seeking practices in present day China, no systematic study of the phenomenon across different regions and economic sectors has yet been undertaken and as such what accounts for the occurrence of the phenomenon, what range of activities are related to rent seeking practices and, more importantly, how rent seeking shapes political and economic development are barely understood. Rent Seeking in China seeks to address these questions using case studies from across economics sectors including primary industry, strategic industry, heavy industry, and light industry. It will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of Chinese politics, comparative politics and Chinese economic and business management.
Rent-Seeking in Private Pensions
by Silvia Borzutzky Mark HydeThis bookargues that the implementation of compulsory, highly regulated, privatelyadministered, defined contribution pensions facilitates rent-seeking behaviouron the part of the pension fund administrators and undermines the retirees'income and well-being. While the book focuses primarily on Chile, its analysisand conclusions are applicable to several Latin American and Eastern Europeancountries where privately administered pension systems have been implemented. Chapters evaluate the scholarly literatureand empirical evidence around three aspects of the pension fund industry:structure, pricing and performance. The authors conclude that state regulationhas facilitated the accumulation of capital in the hands of the pension fundadministrators. They also demonstrate that these systems owe more to the valuesand principles of conservative philosophy than to neoliberalism in providingalternative solutions to the rent-seeking approach to retirement.
Rentier Capitalism: Disorganised Development and Social Injustice in Pakistan
by S. AhmedSince the early 1950s East Asia (China, Taiwan and South Korea) and South-East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam) have, despite war and other challenges, managed to transform the lives of their people, whereas South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) has lagged behind. The success of East and South-East Asia has not been accidental – it has been driven by action to reduce rural poverty, by the provision of decent education and health services to the people, and by high quality physical and institutional infrastructure, such as roads, ports and railways, and targeted support from the State to develop particular industries. In contrast, Pakistan has never confronted the problem of rural poverty, nor invested in public services. This failure is a reflection of the power of the landed class and its urban allies. This has now taken the form of widespread rent-seeking in the economy with the country's ruling elite sharing out the spoils amongst themselves rather than taking measures to grow the size of the economy so that all might share in the resulting prosperity.Rentier Capitalism sheds light on the reasons behind Pakistan's failure to bring prosperity to its people when compared to other East Asian and South-East Asian countries.
Rentier Capitalism: Disorganised Development and Social Injustice in Pakistan
by Shahid AhmedSince the early 1950s East Asia (China, Taiwan and South Korea) and South-East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam) have, despite war and other challenges, managed to transform the lives of their people, whereas South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) has lagged behind. The success of East and South-East Asia has not been accidental – it has been driven by action to reduce rural poverty, by the provision of decent education and health services to the people, and by high quality physical and institutional infrastructure, such as roads, ports and railways, and targeted support from the State to develop particular industries. In contrast, Pakistan has never confronted the problem of rural poverty, nor invested in public services. This failure is a reflection of the power of the landed class and its urban allies. This has now taken the form of widespread rent-seeking in the economy with the country's ruling elite sharing out the spoils amongst themselves rather than taking measures to grow the size of the economy so that all might share in the resulting prosperity.
Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
by Brett ChristophersHow did Britain&’s economy become a bastion of inequality?In this landmark book, the author of The New Enclosure provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as &‘rentier capitalism&’, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets—such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms—is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers. If a small elite owns today&’s economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism—vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation—are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers&’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it.Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.
Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents: Power, Morality and Resistance in Central Asia
by Balihar Sanghera Elmira SatybaldievaThis book explains and evaluates today’s economic, political, social and ecological crises through the lens of rentier capitalism and countermovements in Central Asia. Over the last three decades the rich and powerful have increased their wealth and political power to the detriment of social and environmental well-being. But their activities have not gone unchecked. Grassroots activism has resisted the harmful and damaging effects of the neoliberal commodification of things. Providing a much-needed theorisation of the moral economy and politics of rent, this book offers in-depth case studies on finance, real estate and natural resources in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The authors show the mechanisms of rent extraction, their moral justifications and legitimacy, and social struggles against them. This book highlights the importance of class relations, state-countermovement interactions and global capitalism in understanding social and economic dynamics in Central Asia. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in political economy, development studies, sociology, politics and international relations.