• Energy Research

Abstract China's industrial transformation of the past thirty years, when its GDP has been increasing by an average of 10% per year, has been underpinned by an energy industrial revolution. Electrical energy is the driver of this transformation, with China utilizing latecomer advantages in building an electrical energy generation machine of prodigious size. In terms of electrical energy generated, China's system has expanded twelve-fold in 30 years, from 280 TWh in 1980 to over 3500 TWh in 2010. In this paper we describe the principal features of this remarkable transformation, examining the official projections to 2020, the semi-official projections to 2050, and offering our own projections based on observed logistic industrial dynamics for the uptake of renewable energies as well as the continuing role to be played by fossil fuels, particularly coal. We emphasize the role to be played by China's construction of a ‘strong and smart’ electric power grid, as envisaged in the 12th Five Year Plan released in March 2011, and the complementary proposals to build a national high speed rail system. We see China as on track to phase out fossil fuels altogether in its power production system by the end of the century. We develop an argument as to why it might be expected that fossil fuel utilization will decline while renewable energy utilization might increase in China, constituting a genuine energy industrial revolution.

The shift to renewable energy options and low-carbon technologies, in response to the concerns over energy security and climate change, is proceeding more slowly than many would like. The usual argument against rapid deployment of new technologies is the costs imposed on the economy, commonly interpreted in terms of upfront costs to be borne or involving large cash transfers to fund, for example, efforts to preserve rainforests. In this contribution I argue that such a perspective provides a continuing barrier to taking effective action, whereas a perspective based on creation and use of carbon credits provides a means of avoiding the shock of abrupt industrial change. Carbon credits granted for bona fide carbon load reductions could be created through private initiative, for example by merchant banks, to constitute a market that will complement regulatory-based initiatives such as national emissions trading systems. This is not a novel idea; indeed it is the way that capitalism has funded every major change, including the Industrial Revolution, through the creation of credit. The emergence of a global carbon credit economy is likely to precede a global regulatory system governing climate change and will doubtless help to stimulate the emergence of such a global system.

Abstract Although Argentina came late to the biofuels revolution, a series of measures taken recently at federal and provincial government level have created new opportunities. New federal laws on biofuels promotion have sparked an investment boom. The main activity has been in the biodiesel sector—partly because diesel is the dominant fuel sector in Argentina, and partly because the country had already engineered a soy revolution over the past 15 years, becoming the world's largest exporter of soy oil and soy meal. Biodiesel allows this revolution to be extended—from soy as foodstuff to soy as fuelstock. The biodiesel revolution now underway promises to extend Argentina's latecomer advantages by combining greater scale and lower costs with introduced technical innovations such as genetically modified crops and no-till farming. In this way, Argentina can be seen to be demonstrating the superiority of biofuel production in countries of the South over the conditions obtaining in countries of the North—including superior resources availability, superior energetics and lower costs. Whereas Brazil has demonstrated its superiority in sugarcane-based ethanol, Argentina is about to demonstrate its superiority in soy-based biodiesel.

The injection of grinded particles of charcoal through the tuyeres in Blast Furnaces, here coined Bio-PCI, presents as an attractive and plausible alternative to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions generated during hot metal production. In this contribution a summary of the technological fundaments, benefits and limitations of the incorporation of Bio-PCI is presented. Additionally the principal economic challenges of renewables fuel in ironmaking are exposed, with especial interest in the main productions costs of charcoal making. In this sense, a strategic question arises: can the residual biomass drive the emergence of Bio-PCI?, our analysis leads to conclude that the use of residual biomass (e.g. agricultural and forestry residues) may significantly reduce the production cost in 120-180 USD/t in comparison to primary woods sources, this naturally increment the economical attractiveness of Bio-PCI substitution. La inyección de carbón vegetal por toberas en Altos Hornos, aqui denominada Bio-PCI, se presenta como una forma atractiva y realista de reducir significativamente las emisiones de CO2 generadas durante la producción de arrabio. En esta contribución se presenta un resumen de los fundamentos tecnológicos, los beneficios y las limitaciones de la incorporación de la tecnología del Bio-PCI. Adicionalmente se exponen los retos económicos que enfrentan los combustibles renovables a los fósiles, con especial interés en los principales costos de producción del carbón vegetal. En este sentido se plantea una pregunta estratégica: ¿puede la biomasa residual impulsar el desarrollo de la Bio-PCI?. Nuestro análisis conlleva a concluir que la utilización de biomasa residual (residuos forestales y agrícolas) puede reducir sensiblemente el costo del carbón vegetal entre 120-180 USD/t en comparación con biomasa primaria, incrementando su competitividad frente al carbón mineral.

AbstractWhile debate on biofuels and bioenergy generally has sparked controversy over claimed greenhouse gas emissions benefits available with a switch to biomass, these claims have generally not taken into account indirect land use changes. Carbon emissions from land that is newly planted with biocrops, after land use changes such as deforestation, are certainly real – but efforts to measure them have been presented subject to severe qualifi cations. No such qualifications accompanied the paper by Searchinger et al. published in Science in February 2008, where the claim was made that a spike of ethanol consumption in the USA up to the year 2016 would divert corn grown in the USA and lead to new plantings of grain crops around the world to make up the shortfall, resulting in land use changes covering 10.8 million hectares and leading to the release of 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent. These emissions, the paper argued, would more than offset any savings in emissions by growing biofuels in the first place; in fact they would create a ‘carbon debt’ that would take 160 years to repay. Such criticism would be devastating, if it were valid. The aim of this perspective is to probe the assumptions and models used in the Searchinger et al. paper, to evaluate their validity and plausibility, and contrast them with other approaches taken or available to be taken. It is argued that indirect land use change effects are too diffuse and subject to too many arbitrary assumptions to be useful for rule‐making, and that the use of direct and controllable measures, such as building statements of origin of biofuels into the contracts that regulate the sale of such commodities, would secure better results. © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Accelerated internationalization is an important phenomenon in international business (IB), where it has been linked mainly with studies of born globals and patterns of internationalization utilized by small and medium-sized enterprises. Building on recent research on the (redefined) concept of speed of internationalization, we seek to extend the domain of accelerated internationalization to encompass cases where large firms in certain industries from emerging markets such as China and India globalize at an accelerated pace. We utilize cases from the Chinese wind turbine manufacturing industry to illustrate the process, and apply strategic reasoning based on resource leverage as a means of explaining such phenomena – complementing the extant frameworks based on microeconomic reasoning. We argue that both approaches are needed to make sense of the important empirical phenomena revealed by examination of the patterns of internationalization exhibited by emerging market multinationals.

Abstract Capitalism is arguably the most amazing cultural and economic product of humankind. It nurtured political liberty in Europe; it ushered in the industrial revolution in Britain and then around the world; it raised incomes everywhere; and it cleared away centuries of obscurantism and superstition. But it also brought into being a ‘spirit of capitalism’ that is individualist, expansive, acquisitive, ruthlessly rational and insatiable. This spirit has been responsible for commodifying relations and turning the natural world into a ‘resource base’ on the one hand, and a sink for wastes at the other. The industrial scale of this objectification and destruction of the natural setting has proceeded to the point where it is global, and now threatens our industrial civilization with collapse. My purpose in this paper is to sketch an account of how industrial capitalism might be ‘naturalized’, so that it continues to grow and deliver improvements in the quality of life without destroying humankind's resource base, and the biosphere as well. My focus is on rules and institutions rather than policies or prescriptions. My argument is that a green economy is already growing within the old, fossil-fuel economy, and that through competitive dynamics it will dominate by mid-century – unless blocked politically by vested interests.

Abstract How are biofuels to be certified as produced in a sustainable and responsible fashion? In the global debate over this issue, one party to the proceedings seems rarely to be mentioned—namely the commodities exchanges through which a global biofuels market is being created. In this contribution, I propose a solution to the problem of sustainability certification through a biofuels futures contract equipped with ‘proof of origin’ documentation. The proposal does not call for any radical break with current practice, extending existing certification procedures with a requirement for the vendor to provide documentation, probably in barcoded form, of the history of the biofuel offered for sale, including plantation and biorefinery where the biofuel was produced and subsequent blendings it may have undergone. The proposal is thus compatible with the blending practices of large global traders, whose activities are the source of the difficulties of other approaches to certification. It is argued that if such a sustainable futures contract for bioethanol (in the first instance) were to be introduced, then it would likely trade at a premium and become the primary vehicle for North–South trade in biofuels.

Abstract Energy futures continue to attract heated debate. There is a well-established tradition associated with centralized giga-scale nuclear systems and continental super grids, which may be contrasted with future trajectories based on decentralized “conventional” renewables such as hydro, wind and solar power. The traditional centralized view emphasizes a seemingly ineluctable direction of evolution based on claimed fossil fuel decarbonization which leads, via nuclear power, to the hydrogen economy. But China and to some extent India are emerging as the principal practitioners of an alternative vision of energy growth, underpinning their vast industrialization efforts, based on conventional renewables that are the products of manufacturing, and whose industrial dynamics are driven by cost reduction achieved by learning curves. In this paper, a critique is offered of the traditional view of a centralized energy future, and a restatement of the real drivers of alternative energy pathways actually being pursued by countries like China and India is offered.