How sustainable is Australia’s pattern of energy supply and use? What are the major factors explaining Australia’s sustainable energy performance relative to other countries? This thesis explores energy supply and use in Australia during the 1990s and 2000s and examines major drivers such as policy decisions, economic structure and trade profile. Performance and drivers in Australia are compared with other OECD countries. / To address the questions posed above, it is first necessary to explore the concepts of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainable energy’ and consider how best to measure sustainable energy performance. Alternative sustainability frameworks and models are examined, with the ‘strong sustainability’ model adopted for this thesis being distinguished from other models in three principal ways: i) it places biophysical constraints on economic activity; ii) it regards certain critical natural capital is being non-substitutable; and iii) it places roughly equal emphasis on intra- and intergenerational equity. The strong sustainability model is operationalised into a series of principles and objectives for energy sustainability, which in turn are used as a basis for systematically developing a suite of sustainable energy indicators. This approach is preferred over other approaches to assessing sustainable energy performance given the study’s focus on measurable objectives and outcomes. / The second part of the thesis is devoted to measuring the sustainable energy performance of Australia and other OECD countries against twelve indicators. Some of the indicators selected are ‘standard’, being quite commonly used in other contexts. A number of the indicators though, are unique or have unique features that increase their validity as measures of strong sustainability. Initial results of the performance assessment suggest that Australia is amongst the weakest performing OECD countries, ranking last of all OECD countries against two of the twelve sustainable energy indicators and in the lower quartile of OECD countries against a further six indicators. Further analysis, combining and weighting indicator scores and country rankings across the 12 indicators confirms Australia’s poor performance. Australia ranks 28th of 30 OECD countries by two different ranking methods and 15th of 16 OECD countries by another two methods. Only the USA ranks consistently lower than Australia. Denmark consistently ranks highest of all countries by all methods. / The third and final part of the thesis examines drivers of sustainable energy performance by Australia and a subset of four OECD countries: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden (OECD 4). The primary basis for OECD 4 selection was strong performance against the sustainable energy indicators, although other criteria including economic structure, trade and demography were also considered. A range of techniques, including factorisation, ‘what if’ analysis and linear regression are used to diagnose the underlying factors driving the performance of Australia and the OECD 4 against the sustainable energy indicators. The analysis is extended to include a qualitative assessment of policy drivers including strategic and institutional settings, energy pricing, electricity market policies, R & D and regulation. / A major conclusion of the thesis based on the analysis is that Australia’s weak sustainable energy performance since 1990, relative to other OECD countries, has been substantially shaped by domestic policy decisions, decisions that were not inevitable given Australia’s economic structure, trade profile, demography, and geography.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Centre for Environmental and Urban Studies, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 360-379. / Electrification: an historical process -- A prehistory of electrification: the Sydney energy system to1881 -- Slow dawn of the electric light, 1881-1904 -- The momentum of growth, 1904-1932 -- The state takes charge, 1932-1950 -- Triumph of the grid, 1950-1986 -- The limits to electrification. / All technological systems require energy. The concentration of human population and economic activity in cities has relied on the development of urban energy systems, which bring energy to the city and distribute it to points of end use within it. Over the past century, electro-technology has come to dominate urban energy systems throughout the developed world. This process has been imperfectly documented and analysed, because the relationships between electricity and the energy service markets and local political frameworks within which each instance of urban electrificaiton has taken place have generally been neglected. -- This thesis presents electrification as an historical change in the urban energy system. It identifies the most important influences on urban energy demand and on the organisation of energy supply, and traces their interaction before the introduction of electro-technology, then from the beginning of electrification in the 1880s to its completion in the 1980s. -- Urban electrification is best observed and understood by following its course within a single city. Sydney is well suited to such an analysis, since it is highly electrified and encompasses within its two hundred year history all the major energy technologies of the past millenium. During the first century of its existence, it developed distinctively urban markets for transportation, street lighting, commercial, industrial and residential energy services. These were revolutionised by steam and by gas, the first specifically urban energy technology. -- The thesis examines how each energy form in turn gained a foothold in the Sydney energy system, diffused through it and spread beyond it to the rest of the state of New South Wales. It analyses long term trends in each of the various urban energy markets, and draws parallels in the pattern of succession of supply technologies. It demonstrates that these patterns were repeated with the introduction of electricity and, in the 1970s, by its emerging successors. -- During Sydney's second century each of its energy markets was electrified in turn, while its separate electricity supply systems coalesced into a unified grid serving the entire metropolis, and extending later into the rest of the state. Largely as a result of political circumstances in the 1880s, when electric lighting was first introduced, the municipal electricity supply organisations acquired considerable influence and autonomy, and resisted the later attempts of state governments to co-ordinate their development. --The electrification of the Sydney and NSW energy systems had largely run its course by the late 1970s. Electricity supply had exhausted the economies of scale and technological development which had given it an advantage over other fuels. It had saturated the urban energy markets, and was facing new competitors in the form of natural gas and more efficient utilisation technologies. These changes in the energy system exacerbated the inherent problems in the organisation of electricity supply, which was predicated on unlimited growth and slow to adapt to the end of electrification. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / [13], 379 leaves ill., maps

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Universiẗat, Diss., 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-202) and index.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--RAND Graduate School, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed on Oct. 24, 2008). "This document was submitted as a dissertation in September 2008 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School." --T.p. Includes bibliographical references: p. 168-178.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2008. / Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Creative Technologies and Media. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-148)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Technology, Sydney, 2005. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 12, 2005). Includes bibliographical references (p. 463-499).

Honors Thesis (Politics)--Oberlin College, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

V. I Mission possible: stellar Canadian performance in the global economy -- v. II Mission possible: a Canadian resources strategy for the boom and beyond -- v. III Mission possible: successful Canadian cities -- v. IV Mission possible executive summary: sustainable prosperity for Canada (an executive summary of Volumes I, II and III). / " ... set of four volumes comprising the final report of The Canada Project, Mission Possible: Sustainable Prosperity for Canada."--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online. Access restricted to authorized users and institutions.

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