No description available.

This thesis examines energy planning to reduce GHG emissions from cities. Examining federal government policy to reduce GHG emissions suggests that municipalities and provinces may be the better government levels for action. A review of types of municipal energy planning, and energy-GHG reduction plans from three cities shows different strategies and policies in implementation, and differing levels of success. Interviewing planners from these case-study cities provides critical insight into the challenges of implementing energy-GHG planning. The lessons learned show the best course of action for other jurisdictions, including the importance of an appropriate policy framework to support municipalities. Such a framework is suggested by this thesis. This research is meant to inform planners of best practices, challenges, opportunities, and courses of action for municipalities in formulating GHG reduction strategies.

All jurisdictions have an energy system consisting of processes responsible for the conversion and transportation of supplies of energy from various sources to meet the end-use energy demands. Energy systems are dynamic as they respond to uncertainties such as higher energy costs, new energy technologies, public concern over the environmental impacts of energy production, evolving consumption patterns, and the aging of existing infrastructure; these changes can affect the energy suppliers, the end users, and those responsible for operating the energy system. To reduce possible adverse effects and improve the energy security of the system, energy policies are often designed by those responsible for the processes. However, changes to the energy policies can also impact the system’s energy security. Therefore, it is critical to study the possible effects of changing energy policies before they are deployed. To address this problem, a visualization tool has been developed to represent a jurisdiction’s energy system. The tool allows the effects of changing energy policies on energy security to be analysed. A case study using real-time wind data from the City of Summerside has been implemented to demonstrate the capabilities of the tool. This presentation will elaborate on the methods and implementation of the visualization tool and explain the results obtained from the analysis of the Summerside project.

This work investigates the question, “what made ethanol’s time come when it did?” The case examined is the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-158), a landmark public policy law implemented in the United States to address the nation’s energy concerns. The Act’s emphasis on ethanol as a central part of the solution to address the energy crisis represented perhaps the most significant single policy shift in the history of the nation’s energy programme. This research draws attention to the process that resulted in ethanol being given a key role in American energy policy by investigating the pre-decision, agenda setting stage, of the process. Using qualitative research methodologies, this study conducts a historical case study analysis of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Multiple Streams agenda setting framework developed by Kingdon ([1984] 1995) is the one which forms the backbone of the study. This research suggests that the greatest influence on ethanol’s placement on the agenda was the way in which policy problems were constructed. When the energy, agricultural, and environmental problems that had garnered ethanol some legislative consideration in the 1970s and 1980s reemerged in the early 2000s, ethanol emerged as an attractive policy option that was seen as addressing each of these concerns. The role of interest groups and policy entrepreneurs helped to reinforce the relationship between these problems. The tactic of seeking aid from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had its advantages, as support from these agencies gave the proposals offered by pro-ethanol interest groups and corn state politicians greater weight. In addition, the fall in political influence of the petroleum industry (a traditionally effective oppositional force to the advance of ethanol) helped to facilitate and reinforce favourable political factors such as pro-ethanol presidential campaign platforms and a public mood that favoured decisive action. With some small modifications, Kingdon’s agenda setting framework, originally designed and applied in the context of health and transportation, holds up well when extended to the energy policy domain. One key point where the energy agenda setting process appears to diverge from Kingdon’s model occurs in the problem stream, which does not appear to be distinct from the political stream. Instead, this research suggests that problem definition plays a strong role in informing the content of the political stream. Kingdon’s framework has significant potential to enhance our knowledge of alternative energy policy formation.

Two areas of sustainable development were investigated to test the importance of economic development and the planning process on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions outcomes between 2000 and 2010 across all sectors in the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Following this, a model was developed to evaluate the social benefits and costs of solar photovoltaic programs in the City of Atlanta. Results indicated that some econometric models relating emissions to GDP per-capita are poor descriptors over this decade. Planning process and growth in GDP per-capita are shown to be better indicators of performance, although these are also subject to specific contextual differences between regions, notably through adversarial polycentrism. Existing solar photovoltaic programs are also estimated to provide tens to hundreds of millions in cumulative net benefits to the City of Atlanta, although this is likely only a fraction of the potential. These findings suggest that the management of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions could be improved through increased participatory planning approaches and through the removal of barriers to realizing cost-effective improvements in energy and carbon performance.

The research question animating this project is ‘what is the nature of neoliberalism’s influence on recent and contemporary US climate change policy?’ Situating itself against several growing bodies of literature which have sought to underscore the fetishism of markets in recent environmental and climate policy agendas under neoliberalism – e.g., the work of Heynen et al (2007) on ‘neoliberal environments’; Paterson and Newell’s (2010) work on neoliberalism and carbon markets; and the work of Dryzek et al (2003) on state forms and ecological modernization – this project argues that any such analysis must be predicated on a considerably more nuanced conception of (a) ‘neoliberalism’, (b) the historic role of states in fostering accumulation, and (c) the nature of policy development within any specific neoliberal context. Applying these theoretical re-conceptualizations to the American context, the project argues that a central tension informing contemporary US climate policy under neoliberalism can be understood a stand-off between two prevailing logics in the federal policy process: on the one hand, Washington’s attempt to build on its tradition of using state power to foster high-tech market development by cultivating the alternative energy realm as a developmental state project, and on the other, the anti-regulationist bent of neoliberalism which seeks to delegitimize the ‘pull’ policies required to ‘creatively destroy’ conventional energy and animate domestic alternative energy markets. Against the general conception of the US as a ‘climate laggard’ whose policy options are restricted market mechanisms and generally anathema to progressive ecological modernization, this body of work shows how the US has managed to develop a robust set of interventionist ‘push’ and ‘pull’ climate policies along ‘alternative policy pathways’, despite the prevailing anti-state rhetoric of neoliberalism.

This thesis examines energy planning to reduce GHG emissions from cities. Examining federal government policy to reduce GHG emissions suggests that municipalities and provinces may be the better government levels for action. A review of types of municipal energy planning, and energy-GHG reduction plans from three cities shows different strategies and policies in implementation, and differing levels of success. Interviewing planners from these case-study cities provides critical insight into the challenges of implementing energy-GHG planning. The lessons learned show the best course of action for other jurisdictions, including the importance of an appropriate policy framework to support municipalities. Such a framework is suggested by this thesis. This research is meant to inform planners of best practices, challenges, opportunities, and courses of action for municipalities in formulating GHG reduction strategies.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the relative influence of state and societal actors on public policy and, specifically, to determine the potential for state autonomy in Canada. To advance this project, two 'paradigms' of state-society relations are developed from an analysis of a range of contending theories of state-society relations. These include Eric Nordlinger's state autonomy theory, elitism, pluralism, and Marxism. The paradigms are then applied to a case study of the design and implementation of the petroleum related elements of the National Energy Program. We conclude that the Canadian state can demonstrate a significant degree of autonomy from societal influence using various strategies and resources which are generally unavailable to societal actors. The specific findings of our case study are that in the development and implementation of the NEP the greatest impediments on the federal government's autonomy arose, not from business interests or public pressure, but from the opposition of other state actors and the impact of market forces and international economic conditions.

This thesis uses a staples-based political economy approach, supplemented with regulation theory, to investigate why Canadian governments pursued interventionist or non-interventionist approaches to oil export policies over the years 1949-2002. Three distinct paradigms over this time period are identified and examined at multiple levels of analysis, with a focus on power relations as causal factors. Structural biases of the Canadian economy, namely staples dependence and continentalism, combined with entrenched political cleavages of national identity and federalism to influence the success or failure of paradigms of oil export policy. External crises and power shifts precipitated the creation and destruction of these paradigms. In between these transformations, hegemonies formed based upon social, political, and economic arrangements that mutually supported the negotiation of major structural cleavages. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the role of labour as a catalyst for the development of a new interventionist, anti-continentalist paradigm in oil policy.

Thailand is one of the largest rice producing nations in the world. Moreover, there is a trend for Thai rice exports to increase. This could imply that if the trend continues, there will be an increased quantity of rice husk in the future. Rice husk is a co-product of rice products generated in the rice milling process, accounting for about 23 percent of the total paddy weight. To make use of this large quantity of rice husk, the husk has traditionally been used as an energy source in the rice mills themselves. More recently, the Thai government has promoted the use of biomass to substitute for fossil fuel consumption and to reduce the environmental impacts caused by using fossil fuels. Therefore, rice husk, which is one of the main sources of biomass in Thailand, has already been used on a commercial scale. However, the environmental impacts associated with different rice husk applications have not yet been widely investigated in the Thai context. While there is a need to find ways of dealing with rice husk disposal, it is also important to ensure that this husk is used in ways that harm the environment least. This research aims to identify the most environmentally friendly use of rice husk for Thailand. To achieve this, the research is divided into three main stages; identification of main current and potential uses of rice husk in Thailand; data collection; and data analysis using Life Cycle Analysis approach. A range of methods such as literature review, questionnaires with rice mill owners, and interviews with industry personnel, were used to help in identifying the current and potential uses of rice husk. The major current and potential rice husk uses chosen to be examined in this research are those uses of rice husk in electricity generation, in cement manufacture and in cellulosic ethanol production. The second stage is to collect detailed data about the processes of the selected rice husk uses to be examined. This was undertaken by literature review, questionnaires and interviews with involved industry personnel. The last stage is to analyse the data collated. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach and the L CA software package SimaPro (version 7.1.6) were used to assess the environmental impacts of the selected rice husk uses. Results from the LCA are reviewed in the context of critical policy issues, including the Thai government biomass policies; the capacity of the production process of rice husk use options; and the infrastructure availability and practicality of the rice husk use options. Based on the goal and scope of the study, the data available for this study and the review of the issues just mentioned, it is concluded that, in the short term, the most practical environmentally friendly use of rice husk across the three uses investigated is the use of rice husk in electricity generation. However, with expected oil shortages in the future, rice husk should also be considered for use in cellulosic ethanol production, as this option helps to save some amount of petrol.