Stoffel Fourie The Drive behind the delvelopment fin

Academia Letters, 2021

A Modern Guide to Rethinking Economics, 2017

2007

University Press, Oxford, 2003). These textbooks for an undergraduate course at the United Kingdom's Open University address the question of supplying energy cleanly, safely, and sustainably in view of increasing population, increasing industrialization, and global warming. The first volume covers a wide variety of renewable energy systems. The second volume covers all primary energy sources and their associated technologies, the physical forms of energy, energy economics, environmental impacts, and the sustainability of each major energy technology. There are no exercises or problems. (E) 2. Energy: Physical, Environmental, and Social Impact, G.J. Aubrecht (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliff, NJ, 3rd edition 2006). This book's three major parts deal with fossil, nuclear, and solar energy resources and their consequences. There are individual chapters on overpopulation, energy efficiency, mineral resources, recycling, fossil-fuel pollution, transportation, climate change, nuclear-power risks, and the energy cost of agriculture. The final chapter presents the book's bottom line: alarm bells of overpopulation and overexploitation are sounding worldwide. Each chapter includes a list of key terms, a summary, problems, and questions. (E) 3. Energy: Its Use and the Environment, R.A. Hinrichs and M. Kleinbach (Thomson Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA, 4th edition 2006). This book covers all the major energy resources, transmission, efficiency, and environmental effects. Each chapter includes worked examples, a reading list, questions, numerical problems, and hands-on activities. (E) 4. Energy and Society: An Introduction, H.H. Schobert (Taylor & Francis, New York, 2002). This book is best described as a history of technology. Its 37 chapters include human energy, fire, waterwheels, wind energy, steamelectric power, transportation, six chapters on fossil fuels including separate chapters on diesel and jet fuel and gasoline, three chapters on nuclear power including fusion, chapters on environmental effects, and three chapters on renewables (biomass, wind, solar). There are no exercises or problems. (E) 5. Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options, J.

Birkhäuser, Vienna and Basel, 2017

by Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Buhlmann, Sebastian Michael Imagine a world where the power is always on, where there is not just enough energy, but an abundance of it. Such a world is no Utopia, it is a possible reality. Using indefinitely available sources of energy – especially photovoltaic solar, in combination with others – and networking this energy, much in the way that we have networked information, we can get beyond our current energy ‘crisis’ and resolve it. The world we then find ourselves in is not a world without problems – we will face new challenges on the way – but in terms of energy it is a world of plenty. Rooted in sound theory and based on technology that is available now, A Genius Planet offers an accessible but detailed and insightful perspective on how we can free ourselves from our dependency on natural resources and generate, trade, and use energy in ways that open up the genuine potential that we have at our disposal today. FROM THE FOREWORD: "This book has a simple and optimistic message: energy isn’t a resource, energy is clean, and energy isn’t scarce, in fact the opposite, it is abundant! Because now, with information technology, energy has become what we might call an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be captured, stored, distributed – ‘cycled’, so to speak – by electronic coding. And as there are no limits in principle to how much ‘energy cycling’ is possible, energy itself loses the limitations we’re used to associate with it. It is not, at first, entirely obvious or perhaps intuitive to think of energy as an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be ‘cycled’, and so the book explains in detail how and why this is so, and it makes a compelling case for embracing this extremely relevant reality: we have more than enough energy. For the foreseeable future, and beyond. We can relax. "

Transition to a sustainable energy regime is one of the key global societal challenges for the coming decades. Many technological innovations are in the pipeline, but an uncritical appraisal of anything and everything called green innovation lacks methods for testing both the necessity and the sufficiency of these developments. We propose to develop a philosophy of energy to fill this lacuna. Its task is to explore and clarify the space in which the so-called energy transition is taking place. This article sketches the fundaments of such a philosophy and suggests how it might be built upon the work of twentieth century critics of the functioning of energy in society, including Mumford, Bataille, and Heidegger; but not without empirical analysis of contemporary energy systems. Via the example of flux and potentiality - two apparently opposing conceptions of energy - we propose that a philosophy of energy allows for a broader perspective on specific problems in energy transition, and illuminates implicit and problematic assumptions behind these problems. Keywords : Philosophy of energy; Energy transition; Sustainability; Renewable energy; Mumford; Bataille; Heidegger.

Landscape Research, 2010

Now that the curtain is falling on the era of cheap oil we are reminded once again of the vital role of energy for our existence. Even God appears to have understood the key role of energy, for according to the bible, upon creating the heavens and the earth, God's second act of creation was to switch the light on (Genesis 1:1-3), providing a vital energy service in advance of anticipated future demand 1. The value of energy is of course recognised well beyond the realms of science and religion. Shifts in patterns of energy generation, control and use are very closely linked to power relations, including conquest and submission, expressed in ideology, enacted in governance and embedded in national, collective and individual identities. Lenin equated communism with electrification; Franco-and many a dictatorial regime sincesought to symbolise the virtue of his regime through the development of hydropower. The restoration of national pride and political independence of postwar France was expressed through nuclear power. The big car economy lies at the heart of the American dream and national identity-something that Hitler was perhaps hoping to emulate with his support for the Autobahn and Volkswagen. In short, the use of energy in human society, expressed by the practices through which it is harnessed, transported and consumed, has always played a key role in the structuring of identities, territories and landscapes. Renewable energy, once the only source of energy available to humans, is currently undergoing a renaissance. The international Kyoto process and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have progressively presented the evidence of global warming as the future and most urgent challenge for humanity. National and supra-national energy policies are at the core of the strategies developed in order to face it. Officially driven by a range of objectives, such as the security of the energy supply, environmental concerns, the development of export technologies or rural development, state support for renewable energies has been greatly increased in most developed countries and many developing countries too. The growing agreement in favour of a global development of alternative energies has been further strengthened by changes in political leadership, most notably and recently in the United States. Technological innovation in fields such as solar energy, biomass production and especially wind energy are now invoked as being part of the solutions to the current economic depression. While

D espite its obvious economic and social importance, energy (broadly understood) is an understudied field. True, among academics, one can find several engineers and geologists, along with some economists, geographers, legal scholars, and political scientists, who devote much of their research efforts to devising and/or analyzing various energy-related technologies, supply sources, markets, and institutions. By and large, however, very few individuals have tried to understand how all the various parts of the energy puzzle fit-or not-together, and much-if not most-of the public discussion of the issue is agenda-driven and ignorant of basic physical and economic principles.

Angeboten für: Studierende im Master-Studiengang "Internationale Beziehungen" (anrechenbar für das Modul GPOE-IF und SIP) und ggfs. im Bachelor-Studiengang "Internationale Beziehungen" ab 3. Fachsemester sowie Studierende der Politik-, Geschichts-bzw. Kommunikationswissenschaften und ggfs. anderer Fakultäten Das Seminar findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Journal of Energy History/Revue d'Histoire de l'Énergie [Online], 2018

Energy and Civilization is a journey through the world history of energy from the discovery of re to the latest energy transition. Smil reviews the evolution and differentiation of energy's uses and transformations, and energy's role in shaping economies. Furthermore, he evaluates energy's many bene ts and problematic aspects. However, the book presents some epistemic and methodological challenges.

The Northeastern Geographer , 2018