Can ‘digitalisation’ (the process of running business through procedures that take place in digital format) contribute to the green transition? If so, to what extent? The European Union (EU) has recently embraced the idea of synergically combining climate policies and digitalisation, whereby the digital transformation becomes a key tool to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Arguably, while there are manifold advantages in improving, for instance, energy distribution via smart grids, digitalisation also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore necessary to strike the right balance and understand how to best harness digitalisation to implement the green transition. Notably, it is essential that the EU monitor the impact of digitalisation on the overall energy demand to avoid an excessive increase in energy consumption. Arguably, the EU can profitably couple a holistic embracement of digitalisation as the panacea to climate challenges with a ‘learn-by-doing’ approach, setting a variety of real-world experiments across supply chains to test the viability of its digital policy, in close collaboration with stakeholders.

In June 2020, the German Federal Government adopted its National Hydrogen Strategy (NWS), which was updated in July 2023, viewing green hydrogen as a key to the energy transition. To achieve net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045, as required by law, the NWS envisages a rapid market ramp-up for hydrogen. This policy is supported by the recent amendment of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG), which introduces provisions for a prompt creation of a so-called hydrogen core network. However, for now, the required infrastructure does not exist. Against that background, this chapter will examine the existing permission regime in Germany for pure hydrogen infrastructure, specifically its transportation via pipelines and its large-scale storage in salt caverns as the best short-term storage option. The analytical focus will be trained on existing legal barriers that stand in the way of accelerating the construction and repurposing of infrastructure to disseminate hydrogen. To secure the planning and approval framework for the rapid expansion of hydrogen infrastructures in Germany, necessary adjustments to the current legal framework are proposed.

What happens when we read the Irish literary canon for energy? We find numerous mentions of wind power, solar power, petrol, coal, peat, gas, and dung, and we find these energy resources and infrastructures trellised into plot lines and character arcs in some unexpected ways in Irish literature, from Joyce and Beckett to Heaney and McCormack. What emerges is a partial but suggestive cognitive map – of Irish energy economies, ecologies, and phenomenologies – that reveals Ireland’s unique energy signature and at the same time links Ireland to other imperial and global regimes of petromodernity.

In 1996, along the Yangtze River in Zigui 秭归, Hubei Province, the villagers of Guilin were in the middle of packing their belongings. Their friends and relatives were helping them to remove tiles, doors, and windows from the soon to be deluged homes. Down the hill, people were loading farm tools, furniture, and other essentials onto boats anchored along the river’s banks. Amid the din of firecrackers and farewells from their fellow villagers, the first group of Three Gorges migrants set off for their government-designated places of resettlement. Because of the low-altitude location of their residence, Zhang Bing’ai 张秉爱, together with her disabled husband, and two children, were supposed to be part of the first group of migrants. For years, thanks to the help of her maternal family, Bing’ai had been able to cope with the burdensome farm work during busy seasons. Therefore, she insisted on staying for “moving up” resettlement, requesting a flat area for residential use at a higher altitude above the state designated displacement line, which was at odds with the government’s resettlement policy. “I am just attached to this land. With land, you can have everything.” Bing’ai refused to cooperate with the government’s resettlement plan, but it was to no avail. Her home, along with what remained of those of her fellow villagers, was soon underwater. Her family ended up living in a temporary hut not far from the rising water.

The distribution and abundance of species is limited by the availability of nutrients and energy. Adding limiting nutrients to an ecosystem can increase the abundance of some species and may have far-reaching effects on ecosystem functioning. Conversion of light energy into chemical energy by photosynthesis is the primary method by which energy enters an ecosystem. Three different processes of carbon fixation have evolved: C3, C4, and CAM. Each process has costs and benefits that are environment-dependent, but scientists are still evaluating these. Heterotrophs get energy by consuming autotrophs and other heterotrophs. Herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, detritivores, and decomposers are the major classifications of heterotrophs and combined with autotrophs make up the organisms within a biological community. There are numerous morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptations associated with each type of feeding. Species distribution is influenced by how the ratio of nutrients available to species affects their physiological and ecological processes. It is also influenced by the presence of predators and adaptations of prey species that reduce their probability of being eaten. Some defenses may be induced by the presence of predators.

The toolbox for subnuclear physics.

How the Lorentz transformations can be found from basic properties of space-time, independently of electromagnetism, as in the usual presentations. Lorentz-invariance is a common property of all the fundamental interactions.

Clear discussion of the fundamental concepts of energy, momentum and mass; of their relations; and of their transformations between reference systems, in particular the laboratory and centre of mass frames.

The sources of high-energy particles, cosmic rays and the different types of accelerators. The progress of our knowledge is fully linked to the experimental ‘art’ of detector design and development. Detectors are made of matter, solid or liquid, or gaseous. The interactions of charged and neutral high-energy particles with matter are described. The principal types of detector and the principles of their operation are introduced.

Chapter 1 sets the scene for this book, providing the requisite background for the chapters that follow. It begins with a short overview of the military regime, focusing on repression and the gradual restoration of democratic freedoms, highlighting the role the latter played in facilitating the country’s burgeoning environmental movement. It then turns to the dictatorship’s plans for industrial growth and energy production. The chapter closes with an overview of the symbolism that surrounds big dams and an introduction to the influential generals and engineers responsible for orchestrating the dictatorship’s dam-building campaign. This chapter also lays the groundwork for the book’s first argument, that political pressures encouraged the military regime to build big dams quickly and with little regard for their social and environmental impacts.

Many suburban and urban residents spend little time contemplating where their food and energy come from. This chapter begins with the author’s introduction to West Virginia – coal country – in all its complexity. That complexity includes regional domination by fossil fuel interests, environmental and economic degradation, and political conflict, intermingled with the region’s uniquely appealing cultural traditions, natural amenities, and local efforts to fight for a better future, including through labor uprisings, law clinics, and savvy politics. West Virginia serves as an entry point for the book’s broader analysis of the half-truths often told about rural communities generally to justify extraction of rural natural resources for urban consumption. The analytical lens of law and political economy is introduced as the book’s tool to debunk myths about rural communities. Centrally, rural America is not, as we are often told, a product of benign markets operating organically. Rural America is a creature of public creation. The book illustrates how US laws, institutions, and policymakers have created, perpetuated, and justified rural disadvantage. By highlighting the human role in geographic inequality, this search for accountability can help inform a more prosperous, equitable, and resilient future for all, especially in the face of climate change.

This chapter addresses the myth that rural America is a relic of history and that rural contributions to society are no longer as critical as they once were. This chapter argues that rural America is the current and future site of essential national amenities and services. These underappreciated rural amenities include agricultural land and clean energy production, as well as rural regions’ status as the national safety net for a society that will need to migrate inland from the coasts where much of the population is concentrated today. The chapter makes the case that agricultural land, clean energy production, and rural infrastructure should be treated as commons resources, stewarded for our society’s collective benefit. Reconceptualizing rural America as a commons helps provide broad normative guidance for the challenging governance task of reconciling local entitlement to rural resources alongside regional and national entitlement to them. The chapter proposes five principles that would help better govern rural America as a more resilient commons, including recognizing more rural work as work in the public interest, building capacity to avoid boom–bust cycles, democratizing rural resources, pursuing racial justice as central to resilience, and recognizing that investing in rural infrastructure benefits society as a whole.

As the UK, and the world, enters another decade of climate-anguished debate, the record of the Conservatives’ policy and actions between 2010 and 2024 is under scrutiny. Dieter Helm analyses the extent to which the natural environment improved, how housebuilding interacted with pressures to protect the environment, the legacy of privatised industries, comparisons to what a Labour government’s actions in office may have been and to what extent a sustainable path to net zero was achieved by the Conservative Party.