EMC Working Papers

Are We Creating a Compromise?

Every year in the United Kingdom and Australia, thousands of incidents involving devastating fires linked to batteries in waste management facilities or vehicles are reported. Paradoxically, these are facilities meant to contain such hazardous activities. Furthermore, headlines such as “Batteries Starting Fires at Yellowknife’s Landfill, City Says,” posted by Cabin Radio, report unreported hazardous incidents potentially linked to batteries, and are becoming more common around the globe. These reports and news are increasingly alarming because they come at the cost of life, property damage, and monetary losses, and given the fact that we heavily rely on batteries for the energy transition, they could lead to safety and environmental compromises if not treated properly.

• Croatia should commission a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) as a pioneer of new types of nuclear power station

This short policy report considers the opportunities available to the Croatian government for the utilisation of new nuclear technology for domestically produced energy.

As other European countries struggle to balance their desire for a reliable energy supply with their contribution to climate change, recent advances in nuclear technologies present a solution.

A pressing issue for policy makers

Availability and affordability of energy have become pressing issues. Particularly in the poorest areas on the planet where energy infrastructures is still insufficiently developed, but in more mature countries as well, where the less favoured have too often no choice but to accept poor housing conditions characterised by low energy efficiency and hence expensive energy bills. Today, access to affordable energy is considered to be a basic human right and as such a key goal for policy makers. In this context the concept of “fuel poverty” has emerged. Robinson et al. (2018)1 define fuel poverty as « an inability to attain the socially and materially necessitated domestic energy services that ensure the wellbeing of a household, allowing them to participate meaningfully in society ». This view is aligned with the general definition of poverty and social exclusion2. Of course, a large number of academic studies, surveys and reports addressing this specific theme have been produced. Their aim is first to reveal the growing importance of this problem and its related potential severe consequences, then to identify the mechanisms involved in the rise of this form of poverty and to imagine indicators to identify the population at risk. The ultimate goal is of course to propose guidance for corrective actions.

A relevant approach? 

Download the paper to read more ...

Growth has been the driving force for most countries and organizations. Global economy has grown over the last thirty years. Although the growth rate varied, but overall the global economy has got a rate of over 2 % as measured by GNP. During the last ten years we are seeing a new phenomenon; the emerging markets have grown at a much faster rate. The balance of global economy has radically changed. But where does energy come in? The growth means demand for energy. Energy production has to grow to sustain the growth.

This paper evaluates the energy efficiency of EU countries over the period 2000-2010. At the first stage, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is employed, combining multiple energy consumption data, economic outputs, structural indicators, and environmental factors. The efficiency estimates obtained from the analysis are evaluated in a second stage through a multiple criteria decision aiding methodology (MCDA). The proposed non-parametric approach combining DEA with MCDA enables the modeling of the problem in an integrated manner, providing not only energy efficiency estimates, but also supporting the analysis of the main contributing factors, as well as the development of a benchmarking model for energy efficiency evaluation in country level.

In this paper we present an empirical study to verify the assertion of a negative impact of economic growth on carbon efficiency using a cross country analysis. More precisely we are concerned with the relation between past growth and CO2 emissions, assuming that rapid growth in the past may explain lower carbon efficiency today. The central idea tested is that hasty growth is likely to slow down the improvement of energy and carbon efficiency. In other words, using an ordinary least square multifactor model to explain carbon intensity, we verify that the coefficient for an exogenous variable measuring the average past growth rate (apgr) for each country in our sample, is significantly positive.

Most executives know that overarching paints of plausible futures will profoundly affect the competitiveness and survival of their organisation. Initially from the perspective of Shell, this article discuses oil scenarios and their relevance for upstream investments. Scenarios are then incorporated into generative explanation and its principal instrument, namely agent-based computational laboratories, as the new standard of explanation of the past and the present and the new way to structure the uncertainties of the future. The key concept is that the future should not be regarded as 'complicated' but as 'complex', in that there are uncertainties about the driving forces that generate unanticipated futures, which cannot be explored analytically.