The move towards addressing two pertinent energy challenges that is access to electricity and climate change has seen the transition towards sustainable forms of energy including Ocean Based Renewable Energy (OBRE). However, much work remains to be done in understanding the critical success factors that could enable such potential transition, especially in the area of OBRE electricity generation. This research addresses this concern by drawing on transition theory and frameworks to critically evaluate the prospects towards OBRE development in Nigeria. The rationale for the study stems from issues around the inadequate supply of electricity, which has become a profound concern and, where its absence is mostly observed in rural and remote areas including coastal communities. Based on an interpretative philosophical stance, the study adopted a qualitative approach for conducting the research. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from twenty-seven research participants. The research findings revealed that there is scope for transitioning towards OBRE electricity generation. However, this potential may be hindered by key features of the incumbent socio-technical regime: inconsistency of statements in formal policy documents; unclear institutional arrangements to foster renewable energy development; and lack of regulatory and market support mechanisms, which keep renewable energy development at the margins. Nevertheless, the study found certain perceived critical success factors that when considered could aid in facilitating OBRE development in Nigeria. These included, in particular, meaningful stakeholder engagement that aimed to harmonise the diverse interests of key actors’ and the role of adequate political governance to facilitate OBRE design and implementation. The research concludes by developing a conceptual intervention model called the OBRE Transition Model. This model argues that through more meaningful engagement with pertinent stakeholders’ and stronger political commitment, the prospect for a transition towards OBRE development in Nigeria could be accomplished. This thesis is the first of its kind to study the prospects for a transition towards OBRE innovation in West Africa. Additionally, the model that has been developed is now going to be corroborated in an OBRE project in Nigeria, thus, forming the evidence on the model’s potential applicability for future study.

En raison du changement climatique, le monde doit de plus en plus faire face aux urgences environnementales. Plusieurs questions écologiques, notamment énergétiques, surgissent globalement d’une manière préoccupante et impose dans les esprits la nécessité d’une « transition énergétique » comme solution. Cette transition implique des changements économiques, politiques et sociétaux n’engagent plus la seule responsabilité gouvernementale. Et c’est au nom de ce principe que les autorités ont appelé tout à chacun à se prononcer sur ces questions lors du Débat National sur la Transition Énergétique (DNTE) en France en 2013. L’objectif principal de cette thèse est d’exposer les spécificités discursives et textuelles de ce débat national, depuis son origine jusqu’à son aboutissement présenté sous forme de synthèse. En situant dans le cadre théorique de l’analyse du discours, ce travail recourt à diverses approches : historique, communicationnelle, socio-politique et linguistique. Il entend en particulier décrire la fabrication des synthèses de ce débat et leur dimension textuelle pour à la fois rendre compte des caractéristiques propres du DNTE et son issue, laquelle devant permettre en principe au gouvernement de délibérer et décider sur des politiques à adopter. / Due to climate change, the world is experiencing numerous environmental problems, which are in urgent need of solutions. Among the major ecological concerns being discussed globally are energy-related problems. The "energy transition" is known as an effective solution to such a situation. This implies the economic, political and societal changes that the government is no longer solely responsible for this global issue. In France, everyone is called upon to take a stand as evidenced by the National Debate on Energy Transition (DNTE) in 2013. The main objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the discursive and textual specificities of this national debate, from its origin to its completion presented in the form of synthesis. Within the theoretical framework of the French discourse analysis, this thesis combines historical, communicational, socio-political and linguistic approaches to analyze the debate. It focuses particularly on describing the production of the synthesis of this debate and their textual dimension in order to show the specific characteristics of the DNTE as well as its result which allows the government to deliberate and decide on the policies to adopt.

This thesis applies concepts and techniques in geography in order to contribute to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with the transition toward renewable energy. The work is best understood as the sum of two parts. In the first part, the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of the field of energy geography are explored in order to situate the research in the broader constellation of geographical practices surrounding energy. I make the case that energy transitions are not merely shifts in energy supply but are also simultaneously fundamental shifts in prevailing spatial relations, so that energy transition management is best conceived as a spatial strategy with emphasis on regional level land-energy planning. In the second part of the thesis, I aim to provide decision support in favour of this spatial strategy. This begins in Chapter 4 with a comprehensive critical review of how GIScience and remote sensing has been applied in RE assessments and spatial planning. The next three chapters engage key gaps in this literature and are the analytical contributions of the thesis. The focus of the research is on biomass and solar energy in (eastern) Ontario. In Chapter 5 I develop geographically explicit supply-cost curves for forestry and agricultural biomass and assess the relative merits of a mixed biomass feedstock stream. In Chapter 6 I recognize and address the issue that developers of dedicated bioenergy crops and ground-mount solar PV systems prefer the same type of land. Land-energy trade-offs are modeled and their implications in the context of incentivizing RE development are discussed. In Chapter 7 I explore ways in which targeted facility siting can capture ancillary benefits related to RE production. I argue that focusing on the benefits as well as the costs of system siting is critical to linking developer and public interests. Ontario’s feed-in tariff program is evaluated in the light of this claim. Chapter 8 concludes with a summary of key findings and describes the ways in which this thesis can be used as a platform upon which a broader research program can be raised. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2013-07-03 00:36:53.142

<p>Na regionalnom planu evidentne su potrebe za visokim energetskim performansama, promenom strukture izvora energije i modernizacijom energetske infrastrukture, što zahteva novi i inoviran razvojni put praćen korenitim promenama i sistemskim pristupom a u skladu sa novim društvenim, ekonomskim i tehnološkim prilikama. Takav razvojni put bi učinio regionalne energetske sisteme efikasnim i održivim i predstavlja energetsku tranziciju. Disertacija kombinuje različite tehnike i pristupe za analizu mnogih aspekata razvoja regionalnih energetskih sistema od kojih su najvažniji povećanje energetske efikasnosti u sistemima proizvodnje energije, diversifikaciju izvora energije (kombinovanje obnovljivih i neobnovljivih izvora energije) i poboljšanja u energetskoj infrastrukturi (nova i savremena tehnološka rešenja).</p> / <p>At the regional level, there are evident needs for a high energy performance, change the structure of energy sources and modernization of the energy infrastructure, which requires a new and innovative development path, followed by fundamental changes and systemic approach in accordance with the new social, economic and technological conditions. Such a development path would make regional energy systems efficient and sustainable and represents the energy transition.<br />The thesis combines a variety of techniques and approaches for the analysis of many aspects of the development of regional energy systems, but especially increasing of energy efficiency in energy production systems, diversification of energy sources (a combination of renewable and non-renewable energy sources) and improvements in energy infrastructure (new and modern technological solutions).</p>

A stylised analytical framework is used to show how the global carbon tax and the amount of untapped fossil fuel can be calculated from a simple rule given estimates of society's rate of time impatience and intergenerational inequality aversion, the extraction cost technology, the rate of technical progress in renewable energy and the future trend rate of economic growth. The predictions of the simple framework are tested in a calibrated numerical and more complex version of the integrated assessment model (IAM). This IAM makes use of the Oxford carbon cycle of Allen et al. (2009), which differs from DICE, FUND and PAGE in that cumulative emissions are the key driving force of changes in temperature. We highlight the importance of the speed and direction of technological change for the energy transition and how time impatience, intergenerational inequality aversion and expected trend growth affect the time paths of the optimal global carbon tax and the optimal amount of fossil fuel reserves to leave untapped. We also compare these with the adverse global warming trajectories that occur if no policy actions are taken.

abstract: Societies seeking sustainability are transitioning from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources to mitigate dangerous climate change. Energy transitions involve ethically controversial decisions that affect current and future generations’ well-being. As energy systems in the United States transition towards renewable energy, American Indian reservations with abundant energy sources are some of the most significantly impacted communities. Strikingly, energy ethicists have not yet developed a systematic approach for prescribing ethical action within the context of energy decisions. This dissertation reinvents energy ethics as a distinct sub-discipline of applied ethics, integrating virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism with Sioux, Navajo, and Hopi ethical perspectives. On this new account, applied energy ethics is the analysis of questions of right and wrong using a framework for prescribing action and proper policies within private and public energy decisions. To demonstrate the usefulness of applied energy ethics, this dissertation analyzes two case studies situated on American Indian reservations: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Navajo Generating Station. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2019

Notre thèse interroge les processus de transition énergétique engagés dans les collectivités territoriales françaises, en les inscrivant dans une perspective historique. Nous analysons les politiques territoriales de développement des énergies renouvelables, de maîtrise de la demande et de modernisation des réseaux d’énergie, qui se développent depuis le milieu des années 2000. Elles se déploient dans un contexte de remise en cause des logiques historiques gouvernant les politiques publiques françaises dans le domaine de l’énergie, et en particulier le secteur de l’électricité. Cela offre des opportunités à un ensemble d’acteurs en contestant les principes d’organisation, mettant en avant des logiques alternatives, qu’ils construisent et étayent depuis plusieurs décennies. A la faveur de l’action d’entrepreneurs politiques, qui mobilisent des ressources acquises au cours de leur carrière, un modèle énergétique alternatif se construit à l’échelle territoriale. Progressivement, il se traduit par l’émergence de systèmes productifs locaux, principalement pilotés par les conseils régionaux et les métropoles. Ces processus entraînent des changements, la plupart du temps incrémentaux, mais qui connaissent des phases d’accélération et peuvent entraîner de profondes transformations des systèmes énergétiques. Ils introduisent une différenciation au sein de l’organisation nationale du secteur de l’énergie, d’autant plus puissante qu’elle est portée de manière standardisée. Au vu de l’importance de l’énergie dans la structuration de l’Etat, ces transitions pourraient avoir des effets sur l’action publique et sur l’Etat lui-même. / Our work focuses on energy transition policies launched by French local authorities through a historical perspective. We analyze renewable energy and energy efficiency local policies as well as grid modernization, especially since their development in the mid-2000s. They are embedded in a process where historical principles guiding public policies in the energy sector are being challenged, especially as regards electricity. This offers opportunities to actors contesting these organizational principles, who promote alternatives they crafted for a few decades. Thanks to policy entrepreneurs mobilizing resources acquired over the course of their career, an alternative territorialized energy model is emerging. Gradually, it gains ground through the development of local production systems, mostly controlled by regional councils and large urban centers. These processes bring about a number of changes, most of them being incremental. However, we identify accelerating periods that can lead to changes of energy systems on a wider scale. They introduce differentiation from the French energy system, organized and controlled at a national scale. These alternatives are standardized, and it makes them more powerful to confront strong path dependency in this area. Since energy policy has been central in the crafting of the French modern state, these transitions could have consequences on public policies in general and on the state itself.

This thesis studies technological progress in the energy sector and the transition path from fossil fuels to renewable energy, with a particular emphasis on the conse- quences to the whole economy. Currently, there is an active discussion regarding sub- sidizing renewable energy sources, which are often portrayed as the sole future source of energy and the driver of signi cant employment and economic growth. However, innovation in the fossil fuel sector and its continuing development can also be a game changer and should not be ignored. In the rst chapter, we use a dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous technological progress in energy production to study the optimal transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy in a neoclassical growth economy. We emphasize the importance of modeling technology innovation in the fossil fuel sector, as well as in the renewable energy industry. Advancements in the development of shale oil and gas increase the supply of fossil fuel. This implies that the \parity cost target" for renewables is a moving one. We believe that this important observation is often neglected in policy discussions. Our quantitative analysis nds that these advancements allow fossil fuels to remain competitive for a longer period of time. While technological breakthroughs in the fossil fuel sector have postponed the full transition to renewable energy, they have also created many jobs and stimulated local economies. In the third chapter, we use an econometric analysis to compare job creation in the shale gas and oil sectors with that in the wind power sector in Texas. The results show that shale development and well drilling activities have brought strong employment and wage growth to Texas, while the impact of wind industry development on employment and wages statewide has been either not statistically signi cant or quite small. The rst and third chapters question the current enthusiasm in policy circles for only focusing on alternative energy. Chapter 2 provides some theoretical support for subsidizing renewable energy development. Here we develop a decentralized ver- sion of the model in Chapter 1 and allow for technological externalities. We analyze the e ciency of the competitive equilibrium solution and discuss in particular dif- ferent scenarios whereby externalities can result in an ine cient outcome. We show that the decentralized economy with externalities leads to under-investment in R&D, lower investment and consumption, and delayed transition to the renewable economy. This may provide an opportunity for government action to improve private sector outcomes.

Die Deutsche Bundesregierung hat nach Jahrzehnten intensiver energiepolitischer Diskussionen und infolge der Ereignisse im japanischen Fukushima im Frühjahr 2011 die sogenannte Energiewende beschlossen. Diese läuft auf einen grundsätzlichen Umbau, eine Transformation der gegebenen Versorgungsstrukturen hinaus. Damit ist ein Kernproblem jedweder langfristigen Planung berührt: die Unmöglichkeit, längerfristig verlässliche Aussagen treffen zu können, und gleichzeitig anerkennen zu müssen, dass gerade infrastrukturelle Entscheidungen eine enorme zeitliche Reichweite besitzen. Dieses Zukunftsdilemma lässt sich letztlich nur durch Formen sozialen Lernens bewältigen, die sich über bestimmte Prinzipien der Planung ausdrücken, die man prozessual auch als das Ausloten von Korridoren nachhaltiger Entwicklung bezeichnen könnte. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, die Gestaltungschancen und -notwendigkeiten des Umbaus auf der Ebene der Kommunen genauer auszuloten. Zum einen geht es dabei um die Verknüpfung des neuen Forschungs- und Politikfeldes der Transformation beziehungsweise des Transformationsmanagements mit der aktuellen Debatte um das Management konzeptioneller Stadtentwicklungspolitik. Zum anderen geht es um die Verknüpfung der Transformationsforschung mit dem Forschungsfeld der öffentlichen Wirtschaft und damit verbunden mit der Frage, inwieweit gerade aus der anstehenden Aufgabe des energiewirtschaftlichen Umbaus auch neue Begründungen für die kommunale Energieversorgungswirtschaft erwachsen. Transformationsmanagement bedeutet einen Multiakteursprozess unter Einbindung von (kommunaler) Politik und Verwaltung, etablierten wie neuen Marktakteuren der Versorgungswirtschaft, Wohnungswirtschaft, Wissensträgern aus Forschung und Politikberatung, sozialen Organisationen oder auch intermediären Organisationen wie beispielsweise Energieagenturen. Die Zusammensetzung der Akteure innerhalb der Transformationsarena und damit verbunden auch der Governance- Form kann und wird dabei je nach Kommune unterschiedlich sein, da sie abhängig ist von politischen Allianzen, Verwaltungsaufbau, institutionellen Konfigurationen der Energieversorgung, Beteiligungskultur, Gemeindegröße und vielem anderen mehr. Wichtig ist gleichwohl, dass die Kommune eine koordinierende Rolle im Netzwerk der verschiedenen Akteure einnimmt und proaktiv als gestaltende Kraft das Transformationsmanagement angeht. Insbesondere die Stadtentwicklung als strategische städtische Ebene ist gefordert, einen entsprechenden Gestaltungsanspruch anzunehmen und ihre integrierenden und moderierenden Kompetenzen einzusetzen.

This thesis develops the notion of the bioenergy transition as the long-term transformation of biomass from a local resource into a global commodity. An historical assessment is combined with interdisciplinary analysis that focuses especially on liquid biofuels and highlights the environmentally innovative case of bioethanol. The bioenergy transition is investigated from several different perspectives: technical-economic, socio-economic, socio-technical and political-economic. Linkages across different levels from household to global are analysed in relation to the effectiveness of bioenergy policies. In addition to studies at household and national levels, a North-South perspective is taken by including two major regions: the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The relation of EU biofuels policy to international climate and trade regimes is assessed to show how regional-global linkages affect policy design and implementation. Household bioenergy markets in developing countries are poorly articulated and difficult to link to other sectors; a detailed choice model in Ethiopia showed that product-specific factors should be evaluated to inform design of programmes and policies. Municipal and sub-national markets for bioenergy have been successfully linked to national policies to coordinate supply and demand in Brazil and Sweden. Regional market development for biofuels has great potential in southern Africa but regional-national linkages currently remain unexploited. National level efforts remain quite important in terms of energy security and environmental innovation, as evidenced in Brazil, Malawi and Sweden. Biofuels sustainability criteria in the EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU-RED) were evaluated in relation to the international climate and trade regimes and were found to shift some costs onto developing countries. One of the mechanisms for assuring biofuels sustainability is bilateral agreements, which remain untested but potentially effective. Cross-level linkages were often unexploited in the cases studied; national approaches cannot easily capture complementarities across sectors and scales in biophysical and economic terms. Linking biofuels markets across different levels from household to global through regional development policies and specialised governance mechanisms could help to steer the bioenergy transition towards sustainability. / <p>QC 20141112</p>