This thesis involves an examination of the main international, regional and national legal regimes regulating marine renewable energy in England and Wales. Deriving from a complex patchwork of law and policy, developments have ensued in the absence of a distinct governing ‘legal regime’ and within a number of competing paradigms. This original synthesis attempts to identify lacunae, conflicts and connections within and between the span of legal genres that MRE evokes. Against a backdrop of climate change mitigation, the key findings show that despite the presence of political will for offshore renewable energies, MRE development faces a number of legal obstacles, all of which seek to protect other important public and private interests. Although predominantly satisfactory at the international level (international law of the sea), national private property rights, environmental protection laws and regulatory development controls each encompass particular legal incongruities that have the potential to act as barricades to development. This thesis discusses these issues and reaches conclusions as to potential areas for reform.

The UK government has committed to challenging climate change and renewable energy obligations to 2020 and beyond. The renewable electricity sector remains a key focus in meeting these targets, given the critical need to decarbonise the power sector in the longer term. This has led to an ambitious renewable electricity sectoral target of 30 percent of total electricity generation from renewable sources (RES-E) by 2020, corresponding to a deployment target of 35-40GW of installed capacity. In 2011, RES-E deployment stood at 12.3GW, resulting in the UK requiring 23-28GW of additional renewable electricity technology (RET) deployment in eight years. This requires a substantial amount of new RET capacity be adopted, the majority anticipated to come from a four large-scale (>5MW) technologies (onshore and offshore wind, biomass conversion and dedicated biomass). However, large-scale renewable deployment has consistently under-performed against previous targets and other policy objectives. There are a number of failures that historically and currently act as constraints to RET deployment. This thesis categories those constraints as either internal or external failures. Internal failures are due to the design of the subsidy mechanism used to promote renewable deployment (type of mechanism, how it operates, revenue risk, investment (lender) risk, subsidy support levels and mechanism complexity). External failures are those constraints out-with the direct control of the mechanism (planning, network, public participation and engagement and policy risk). These constraints need to be addressed. This thesis has carried out an evaluation of the current UK approach to large-scale RET deployment to 2020 and beyond by adopting a systemic framework approach to determine whether or not the UK will be successful in addressing the potential constraints – the internal and external failures – to deployment. The systemic approach is based on three key criteria regarding the potential constraints: a comprehensive set of constraints, analysed in-depth and taking into account the interaction of the constraints in a systemic fashion. In contrast, the government approach to dealing with these potential constraints has typically focused on failures in isolation; also government commissioned modelling and existing research does not take into account all of the internal and external failures and/or examine them in-depth. Critically, no research has analysed the systemic interactions. With this approach, this research aims to fill the gap in extant knowledge and analysis due to the absence of existing research meeting the key criteria. This thesis was carried out by a textual analysis of key policy documents and legislation that form the basis of the UK government’s current approach to addressing the barriers to RET deployment. The method of inquiry utilised here is that of the qualitative research approach. The results show that there are significant systemic interactions between the internal and external failures (internal>internal; external>external; and internal to external and vice versa). There are also a number of feedbacks, specifically between grid>planning and public participation and engagement>planning. This creates systemic imbalances and unresolved tensions between the constraints. Importantly, the systemic interactions impact disproportionately on the key RETs, with a particular emphasis on onshore and offshore wind. By not addressing potential constraints from a systemic perspective, the current UK approach discriminates in favour of a system highly dependent on large-scale developments, of a few select RETs by a limited number of developers of a particular type (typically ex-utility, large-scale). This limits the focus on social and behavioural issues, particularly in terms of participation and engagement in ownership, decision-making and reducing the role of small-scale, independent and community group participation. In conclusion, under the current approach, decisions will be made on a separate ad-hoc basis leading to continual reform and adjustment with less clarity of where the risks lie. Increasing deployment year-by-year will only accumulate and intensify the potential constraints with limited options to address this. Effectively, government can only buy or control its way out of the constraints. In contrast, a systemic approach offers policy makers a way out of this. By providing an overview of the system and identification of systemic interactions in an early and novel way, this approach offers the opportunity for pragmatic decision-making at the systemic level leading to more predictable routes to solving problems via focused reforms, thus mitigating risks to a greater extent and redefining the system in a more optimal and resilient way. In other words, it allows government to connect the dots in addressing potential constraints to deployment.

The following thesis outlines the Chinese government's push for new-energy vehicles within their auto industry. By giving a history of the Chinese automotive industry and the central planning devices used to push the industry forward, we should develop a more refined understanding as to the direction of China' auto industry in the future.

Implementation of the Third energy package into the legal order of the Czech Republic Summary This thesis discusses the implementation issue of the Third energy package, also known as the Third liberalization package, into the Czech national law. It consists of three regulations and two directives of the European Union, which determines the energy politics both on the European level and on the level of the member states. The first part of this thesis describes the ancestors of the Third energy package and their accomplishments or failures together with reasons for creating the next generations of liberalizing legislation. The author describes the liberalization in the form of the legal, functional and accounting unbundling separately for electricity and gas industry at the European level, and then the implementation at the level of the Czech legislation. In the next chapter it is further explained, what were the European legislator's incentives for creating the Third energy package, and what new institutes it stipulates. It is herein described that the European Union came with three different unbundling versions of the transmission system operators (TSO) - Ownership unbundling (OU), Independent system operator (ISO) and the Independent transmission operator (ITO). Requirements of all of the three variations...

Thesis title: Legal regulation of the use of alternative energy resources The goal of the paper is to analyze the legal regulation of the use of alternative energy sources and to provide a summary and logical overview of this matter that is closely related to environment and climate protection. The greenhouse effect is frequent topic of current debates regarding the climate changes that lead the international communities to decision on limitation of greenhouse gases emissions by using among others renewable energy sources. The reason for my research is a long-term interest in renewable energy sources. The thesis is composed of seven chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of promotion of the use of alternative energy sources. Chapter One is introductory and provides the overview of the research topic. Chapter Two explains the term alternative energy sources and its relation to renewable energy sources. Chapter Three is divided into two subchapters dealing with international and European aspects of the climate protection and related law. History of the Czech legal regulation of promotion of renewable energy sources is provided in Chapter Four and the main issues are outlined. Chapter Five deals with current Czech legal regulation on promotion of renewable energy sources and provides...

The safe extraction of shale gas resources has become a controversial issue in the energy sector and within energy law and policy circle. These issues have transcended to other areas of the society such as the environment, public health, and geopolitics. In fact, in environmental issue and regulation, it has become a norm in the minds of many that finding a model individual to do the right thing is a onerous task. One solution to this problem currently would be to realise the benefits energy resource extraction presents by devising the right regulatory strategies to improve the compliance level of those operating such risky activity to do the right thing. However, the strategic solutions to achieve the benefits are not that complex when compared with the strategic measures for achieving compliance to set regulatory standards for mitigating risks from energy extraction activity. This thesis argue for a complementary regulatory instrument mix (self-regulation and command & control regulatory strategies) to improve effective compliance for mitigating risks associated with energy extractive and consumption activities. One fundamental problem for this disparity is that the available regulatory strategies and approaches are fraught with diverse limitations that makes it unable to accommodate the dynamic of energy resource extraction. Also, industry and regulators of such activity's dependence on regulatory approaches has been centred on command and control regulation that inhibits the incentive for the operator to go beyond the set standards. Hence, the urgency to devise an effective framework to balance costs that comes with the quest to relaise the benefits from resource extraction activities and the need for the preservation of the environment and health. Though achieving full compliance is far-fetched but optimal compliance is achievable within the context of collective participation amongst all industry players. One pragmatic means of achieving these conflicting interests within the global energy sector is through alternatives or a combination of regulatory instrument mixes (self-regulation and command and control regulation). This thesis intends that these alternatives should serve as complements to the command and control regulation and not to replace them. Such alternatives to regulation which this thesis argue and formulate that can help mitigate especially water contamination risk which has an increased frequency of occurrence is what it calls: 'the risk/segment based strict liability rule.' In addition, 'self-regulation' as a complement to command and control environmental regulation. While self-regulation helps to address the problem of information asymmetry that regulation grapple with, the risk based strict liability rule helps to address risks that have a highly probable or increased frequency level of occurrence. By risk based strict liability rule being proposed in this thesis, it means a risk from an activity can be subject to a strict liability cause of action without necessarily subjecting the entire activity to stricter environmental laws. This is based on the legal rationale that where particular risks' has an increased frequency level of occurrence or the impacts could lead to transgenerational harm, it should be classified as abnormal. Therefore, should be subject to strict liability cause of action. Thus, the philosophy behind this thesis is to see how regulation can deal with particular risks under strict liability when they have an increased frequency to occur and not necessarily the entire activity. Thus, the significance of this thesis is that it resonates the ability of self-regulation and liability systems to direct the costs of the harms to those who create them. More so, these innovative policy options embedded in the properties of self-regulation and liability system will force operators to incur additional costs needed to forestall or control their actions that might result in externalities beyond the socially optimal level. Thus, environmental governance through self-regulatory and risk/segment liability rule systems as alternatives to command and control regulation will erode that complacency on the part of the creators of such possible negative impacts to act sustain-ably. These alternatives to command and control regulation are cogent in mitigating risks associated with shale gas as an energy source on two grounds. Based on the above problems, this thesis shall examine the critical question of whether stricter environmental liability and regulatory approaches is required to achieve a sustainable shale gas extraction. Also, what other features should be included in these environmental protectionist tools to achieve effectiveness in managing water contamination and dispersed risks associated with fracking activity. This thesis, argue for a stricter liability and regulatory approach as a complement to the limitations of command and control regulation with some added features to address dispersed harms associated with energy extraction activity especially the risk of water contamination.

Climate change will result in variable – but undeniably severe – changes to our natural world. These changes will lead to extreme human and ecosystem consequences if climate change is not mitigated effectively, efficiently, and rapidly. Increasing the use of renewable energies around the world is seen as one of the most effective and promising mitigation strategies. Several communities around the United States have recently denounced publicly their electrical utilities for their failure to offer the choice to increase the percentage of energy that comes from renewable sources. A growing number are taking action to work with – or sometimes against – their energy providers to increase the percentage of renewable energies available. Boulder, Colorado is one of these communities. Since 2005, Boulder has been exploring the possibility of municipalizing its investor-owned electric utility, thereby bringing the utility under city control. In doing so, it would control the sources of electricity that would be used by its residents, and potentially provide these customers with 100 percent renewable energy. Boulder is in the final phases of studying the possibility of full municipalization and aims to begin this process in the near future. While it remains to be seen if the city will successfully create a municipally owned utility (MOU), an examination of Boulder’s thought processes, studies, and decision making to date provides an opportunity for a discussion of the benefits and possible downsides of municipalization and allows a glimpse into the future of MOUs in the United States.

The purpose of this paper was to compile a nationwide survey by state, on legislation designed to protect access to solar energy. Brief summaries of the information received are included. Land use planning techniques and tools such as zoning and subdivision regulations, as well as special solar zones and planned unit developments have been discussed as they relate to protection of solar access and solar energy use. This paper has distinguished between two types of solar energy systems, active and passive, and associated problems with each.Primary concerns for the users of solar energy systems have been the availability of solar energy and its access to the collector's surface. Solar energy is environmentally safe, however, access to solar energy can be a limiting factor to its use. Solar access protection methods vary with location. The differences in needs between rural and urban areas have been discussed.Increasing solar technologies indicate the need for communities to regulate solar access through innovative legislation. This paper with brief introductions to solar energy access protection techniques, and the state-by-state survey was prepared so as to provide the reader with a basic understanding of solar access protection and act as a guide to access protection methods. / Department of Urban Planning

89 Public law regulation of renewable energy sources usage in the Czech Republic Abstract This thesis is devoted to the public regulation of renewable sources usage in the Czech Republic. It is however strongly emphasizing the European component of the regulation and it gives some focus to a comparison of Czech regulation with foreign regulation, specifically German. Its objective is to define concepts that are necessary to analyze legal regulation, analyze the evolution of the public law regulation in the area of renewable energy sources, describe current situation and provide some prospect for future, as well as offer suggestions on improvement of the regulation. The thesis therefore in its first part provides definitions of basic concepts, such as renewable energy sources and particular types thereof, production and source of electrical energy. In a following part the thesis using historical legislation as well as other sources follows the evolution of the regulation in question on the Czech territory and focuses on a successful program Zelená úsporám in a greater detail. Chronologically comes the thesis to a current state of regulation of renewable energy sources usage, mainly from a viewpoint of a public support thereof. Hence it concerns mainly about the law No. 165/2012 Sb. on supported energy...

How people perceive risk or threats is important to many disciplines that seek to assist policy makers in developing policies, regulations and laws. Using the previous work of Slovic et al. (Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein, Read and Combs, 2000; Slovic P., 1992; Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein, 2000) in development of the psychometric paradigm, a sample of residents (n=600) from a region with a large number of nuclear reactors was surveyed. The question set was expanded to include demographic questions to determine if they impact risk perception. Two aspects of risk perception were examined, perception of overall risk and perception of riskiness along specific dimensions of concern identified previously in the literature. For both risk and riskiness, respondents’ perceptions of nuclear power were compared to three other perceptions of technologies including use of modern farming methods using chemicals, railroad transportation and coal-generated electricity. The recent increase in public concern about nuclear power following the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant led to the expectation that nuclear power would be rated higher in overall risk and riskiness than the other three technologies consistent with Slovic’s earlier work on risk perception. This expectation was generally supported although respondents tended to perceive modern farming methods using chemical as similar in overall risk and riskiness to nuclear power. The research specifically tested five hypotheses concerning the impact of five demographic factors: gender, race, income, education and political orientation on the overall perception of risk and riskiness. Subsequent analysis using analysis of variance and linear regression found that select demographics only explained 2% of the risk perception for nuclear power generation.