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Energy Policy

Theses/Dissertations

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Full-Text Articles in Science and Technology Studies

How Climate Change Is Altering Energy Finance And Governance In China And The United Arab Emirates, Hans Gebauer Jan 2024

How Climate Change Is Altering Energy Finance And Governance In China And The United Arab Emirates, Hans Gebauer

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Climate change is an environmental problem with catastrophic ecological, economic, social, and political impacts. The dramatic scale of the problem has appropriately earned it the name of “climate crisis.” As a protracted crisis, climate change will dominate national and international agendas while transforming institutional politics. Conflicts within policy communities, new interest alignments, social pressure on governments, and ecological collapse could conceivably transform the norms and institutions through which economics, policy, and politics are conducted. Nowhere is this clearer than the energy sector, which is responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions and wherein massive institutional shifts are just beginning to occur. …

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Positive Out Of The Negative: Tracking Renewable Energy Projects In Central America, Jordan Ethan Castillo (Miner) May 2023

Positive Out Of The Negative: Tracking Renewable Energy Projects In Central America, Jordan Ethan Castillo (Miner)

Master's Theses

Central America is undertaking a vast Renewable Energy (RE) transition, due to widespread investments across the region in an array of technologies. These technologies include Community Solar, Wind, and Hydroelectricity. Hydroelectricity has long been the backbone of many countries’ energy grids in the region due to the region’s long history with hydroelectricity. Ambitious climate goals coupled with diminishing hydroelectric power generation opportunities have led to an expansion of investment in Community Solar and Wind energy. The embrace of Solar and Wind has been accelerated due to declining costs for these technologies as they mature. Central America as a case study …

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Grain-Washing: The Issue With Corn Ethanol As A Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Emily J. Rinn Jan 2023

Grain-Washing: The Issue With Corn Ethanol As A Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Emily J. Rinn

Scripps Senior Theses

Decarbonizing the aviation sector remains one of the most prevalent obstacles in reducing the United States’ significant contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Launched in 2021, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Grand Challenge aims to supply enough fuel to meet 100% of demand by 2050 through reducing its production costs and enhancing its sustainable practices. Corn ethanol feedstock has been proposed to make up as much as half of all SAF production in the 2030 benchmark. This thesis explores the assemblage of corn ethanol – from its true environmental impacts, role in the future SAF market, to research claiming corn …

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Does Thorium Have A Place In The Future U.S. Electricity Mix?, Danny West Dec 2014

Does Thorium Have A Place In The Future U.S. Electricity Mix?, Danny West

Master's Projects and Capstones

Thorium is an alternative fuel source for nuclear energy. Coupled with its use in a new reactor design, called a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, the two have the ability to disrupt the nuclear industry and power sector. Nuclear energy is a clean and reliable source of energy; however, it generates hazardous waste that must be stored away for hundreds of thousands of years and power plants are at risk of a catastrophic incident that can lead to a wide scale release of radiation. These drawbacks to nuclear energy can be mitigated using thorium in a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. These …

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Risk, Oil Spills, And Governance: Can Organizational Theory Help Us Understand The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?, Evelyn Cade May 2013

Risk, Oil Spills, And Governance: Can Organizational Theory Help Us Understand The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?, Evelyn Cade

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico awakened communities to the increased risk of large-scale damage along their coastlines presented by new technology in deep water drilling. Normal accident theory and high reliability theory offer a framework through which to view the 2010 spill that features predictive criteria linked to a qualitative assessment of risk presented by technology and organizations. The 2010 spill took place in a sociotechnical system that can be described as complex and tightly coupled, and therefore prone to normal accidents. However, the entities in charge of managing this technology lacked the …

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Life-Cycle Assessment In Government Policy In The United States, Daniel L. Reed Aug 2012

Life-Cycle Assessment In Government Policy In The United States, Daniel L. Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States government, both at the Federal and state levels, are continuously relying on emerging technological and methodological tools in order to provide essential information to decision and policy-makers. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a rapidly emerging tool for both the private and public sectors. Governments around the world are aggressively looking towards life-cycle information to guide policy and promote environmental issues. LCA’s beginning in the United States dates back to 1969 at the Coca-Cola Company as a innovative way at looking at their beverage container’s impact on the environment. Since then life-cycle concepts have been slowly adapted and accepted …

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