1,725,796 research outputs found
Growth, sustainable development and climate change : friends or foes?
No full textGlobal climate change due to rising levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is one of the most serious environmental challenges of the present time. While significant uncertainties remain, there is increasing consensus on the scope and drivers that shape global climate change. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that climate change is not only accelerating but has been induced by human activity, particularly by the combustion of fossil fuels for energy
Vervroegde toelating van griepvaccins - tussen vaart en veiligheid
No full textBij een pandemisch griepvirus moeten vaccins snel beschikbaar zijn. Daartoe heeft de Europese Unie een regeling voor de vervroegde markttoelating van medicijnen opengesteld voor deze vaccins. Snelheid van handelen kan echter wel gepaard gaan met vragen over veiligheid, eff ectiviteit en zorgvuldigheid. Dit artikel beschrijft een vijftal kwesties die spelen in dit spanningsveld tussen het strikt beheersen van risico’s enerzijds, en de vraag naar snelle toegang tot veelbelovende behandelingen, anderzijds
Power of efficiency : international comparisons of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of fossil-based power generation
No full textThe thesis looks at developments in capacity, energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of fossil power generation. Fossil fuel combustion for power generation is responsible for 27% of total greenhouse gas emissions emitted globally in 2005. It is estimated that by implementing best available technology for fossil power generation and thereby improving energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions of power generation could be reduced by 29%. This is if all fossil power plants would be replaced by best available technology and power generation would remain the same. With continuing trends however, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil power generation would grow by 95% in 2030. Energy efficiency improvement of fossil power generation alone is therefore not sufficient to compensate for the growth of fossil power generation, in case the current trend continues. This is confirmed by a case study for the EU. Despite climate targets, a large amount of new fossil capacity has been built and is planned. By placing new efficient production capacity, the efficiency of gas-fired generation in the EU increased from 34% in 1990 to 50% in 2005. For 2015, a further rise to 54% is expected. The efficiency of coal-fired power generation increased from 34% in 1990 to 38% in 2005 and is expected to increase to 40% in 2015. Despite these efficiency improvements, it is expected that greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 will have increased by 10% compared to 2005, due to an increase of fossil-fired electricity generation. It is also shown that a large portion of new capacity is not suitable for CO2 capture technology. It is estimated that CO2 capture can be applied to only 15-30% of power plants in 2030 in EU. The large amount of new fossil capacity makes it difficult to achieve greenhouse gas emission objectives. This is not only due to the limited ability to capture CO2 but also due to the long lifetime of these plants, which reduces the opportunity for renewable energy. Renewable energy is one of the main options for greenhouse gas emission reduction from electricity generation in addition to energy savings. This thesis shows the important role energy savings should play. Global electricity consumption in a business as usual scenario grows from 17 PWh in 2005 to 47 PWh in 2050. In a scenario where technical measures for energy efficiency improvement in demand sectors are implemented, electricity consumption would only grow to 22 PWh. This is a reduction of 53% in comparison to reference electricity consumption in 2050, but still a growth of nearly 30% in comparison to the 2005 level. Due to the limited potential of different options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it follows that a menu of options is needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, including energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy and CC
Uncertainty and entrepreneurial action. The role of uncertainty in the development of emerging energy technologies
No full textTo counteract the environmental problems of the existing energy system, more sustainable technologies need to be developed and implemented on a large scale. Entrepreneurs play a crucial role in this, since their actions help turn the outcomes of R&D activities into commercial technological products. However, whether or not different types of actors (technology developers or adopters) are willing to act entrepreneurially is highly dependent on the uncertainties that these actors perceive with respect to the development of the emerging technology. The central aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the role of perceived uncertainties in the development and implementation of emerging, more sustainable energy technologies. To analyse what types of uncertainty are dominant, a distinction is made between different sources of uncertainty: technological, resource, competitive, supplier, consumer, and political uncertainty. The thesis consists of four case studies on the development of emerging energy technologies in the Netherlands. The technologies studied are micro-CHP, biofuels, biomass gasification and biomass combustion. The results show that political uncertainty is in all four cases a dominant source of uncertainty. The importance of political uncertainty mainly stems from the frequent changes of the financial instruments aimed at stimulating more sustainable energy in the Netherlands. Technological uncertainty plays a dominant role in the micro-CHP and biomass gasification cases, since practical experience with these emerging technologies is still lacking. Uncertainty about the mobilization of resources (including financial resources as well as feedstock) is dominant in the biomass gasification case and the biomass combustion case. The entrepreneurs involved in these cases perceive uncertainty about the availability, price and quality of biomass as well as about the mobilization of financial resources from external investors. These uncertainties greatly influence entrepreneurial action. Because of the many perceived uncertainties, some actors (like the potential buyers and users of micro-CHP systems) are reluctant to invest in entrepreneurial activities. Those actors who are motivated to act entrepreneurially try to reduce the perceived uncertainties by initiating various sorts of activities (including lobbying, cooperation or knowledge-development activities). However, these activities are not always sufficient. The cases show various examples of entrepreneurial projects in which perceived uncertainties accumulated and the motivation of the entrepreneurs decreased over time. The reason for this is that different sources of perceived uncertainties can interact and negatively reinforce each other. In addition, various factors in the project environment (like institutional change or successful developments of competing technologies) can negatively influence the perception of uncertainties and/or the motivation of the entrepreneurs. These negative interaction patterns are mainly found in the case on biomass gasification, the technology that has just entered the market. As a result of these negative interaction patterns, many projects have been abandoned and the development of the technology has stagnated. To prevent so many entrepreneurial projects from failing, governmental policy should aim to reduce political uncertainty and support promising technologies through all the successive phases of the innovation process. This type of policy may include ‘tailor-made’ strategies to help a limited number of pioneer projects to become successful. However, this is easier said than done since uncertainty is an inevitable characteristic, and likely even a precondition of innovation
Science and the struggle for relevance
No full textThis thesis deals with struggles for relevance of university researchers, their efforts to make their work correspond with ruling standards of relevance and to influence these standards. Its general research question is: How to understand changes in the struggle for relevance of Dutch academic researchers in chemistry, biology and agricultural science, in the period 1975-2005? With this study of the relevance of science I aim to contribute to the understanding of transformations in the knowledge infrastructure, as discussed in a large and expanding literature using concepts like Mode 2 knowledge production, post-academic science and the Triple Helix of university-government-industry relationships. A state-of-the-art of this literature is provided in Chapter 2. My theoretical starting point is a distinction between the agency of scientists and the structures patterning their behavior. In this thesis I develop and use three central concepts to analyze struggles for relevance: the credibility cycle, the science-society contract, and the research system. This research follows a case study approach and deals with chemistry, biology and agricultural science in the Netherlands. Within each case I focus in particular on two or three fields representing the breadth of the discipline in terms of possible stakeholders. Data have been drawn from in-depth interviews with 47 academic researchers, and with a number scholarly experts and representatives of various organizations in the research system. Moreover I have analyzed a selection of governmental policy documents, reports and strategic plans of research councils, foresight studies, evaluations and other important publications about the disciplines. In the period 1975-2005, three general trends were visible in the struggles for relevance of Dutch academic researchers in chemistry, biology and agricultural science: the intensification of the struggle for relevance during the collection of data, the decreasing value of practical applications as a source of recognition, and the intensification of the struggle for relevance in the context of funding acquisition. However, the changes also varied across scientific fields, regarding the intensity of stakeholder interactions during data collection, the precise value of practical applications as a source of recognition, the actual influence of stakeholders on the research agenda, and the relationship between practical applications and scientific productivity. The changes observed can be understood as effects of structural changes, in particular the diversification of funding, the rise of performance evaluations, and changing views on the societal position of the university, in combination with characteristics of scientific fields and their stakeholders. My findings have two implications for the debate about changing science systems. First, this study shows that the increasing pressure for productivity, as measured in bibliometric terms, can counteract the pressure for practical utility. Second, my work indicates that the debate deserves a further differentiation, as the dynamics of science vary much more across scientific fields than most literature suggests
Patent Transactions and Markets for Patents : Dealing with Uncertainty
Full text linkThe last decade was characterized by a growing awareness for markets for intellectual property rights, notably patents. Recent economic studies detect growing markets for technologies and patents and provide evidence for increasing international IP licensing activities during the past decades. Parallel, results from international surveys indicate imperfect markets and high transaction costs in IP transactions (Teece 1981; Gambardella/Giuri/Luzzi 2007; Motohashi 2005). One transaction-related obstacle in a market refers to uncertainty (Williamson 1979). Based on the aforementioned studies, this thesis investigates different facets and sources of uncertainties in patent transactions. The overarching research question is: Which uncertainties exist in patent transactions and how do managers cope with uncertainties in bilateral patent licensing and patent auctions? Using a sociological framework, the example of patent licensing on early stage drug compounds and drugs in the clinical stage IIa is studied. More precisely, the effects of high fundamental uncertainty about the innovation and patenting process on patent licensing transactions between US universities and German pharmaceutical companies are examined. Markets for patents imply typical market transactions which are standardized and do not require long negotiations between the parties (‘arm’s length transactions’ (Williamson 1979; 1981)). The thesis inspects valuation-pricing and cooperation problems (Beckert 2009) in market sales transactions of patents, notably IP auctions. It delves into the contribution of IP auctions to the formation and constitution of secondary markets for patents (Chesbrough 2006). Furthermore, the thesis explores different functions of patent market intermediaries in the secondary market for patents in the US and attempts to reconstruct the structure of this market
Opening the black box of environmental innovation. Governmental policy and learning in the Dutch paper and board industry
No full textCauses of climate change and potentials to realize energy savings are known, but insight into underlying learning, organisational, and behavioural processes affecting the application of these innovative potentials is lagging behind. There is a challenge to open the black box of environmental innovation. The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, we pursue a better understanding of the interaction of an industry with the government, and second a better understanding of the structuring of the underlying learning processes for environmental innovation and the interactions within these learning processes. This thesis focuses on the Dutch paper and board industry because of its highly energy intensive process of paper and board production and other environmental topics, namely waste water and waste, related to the production process of paper and board. Over the last decades different (types of) policy instruments have been implemented. There has been an accumulation of policy instruments. In the first empirical chapter we study the (relative) role of an industry association in the policy-making processes of these different policy instruments. The results show that the role is clearly different in policy-making processes of distinct types. In the case of interactive regulation the involvement of the industry is largest and smallest in the case of top-down regulation. In Chapter 4 we investigate these same sets of instruments to gain more insight into the way accumulation of policy measures affects research activities and eco-efficiency. These results show that in general an increase in policy pressure results in an improvement of eco-efficiency, with or without a time-lag. To obtain more insight into the effect of individual policy instruments we shift in Chapter 5 towards an agency perspective and study the adoption of CHP-installations. The results show that for paper and board factories environmental policies are relevant, yet it is only one of the influencing factors. The most important reason appeared to be the high energy price combined with the cost price reduction or the threat of regulation. With regard to policy instruments interactive regulations had the largest impact on CHP adoption, and positive economic instruments are important as a stimulus. In Chapter 6 the process of engaging external partners during the adoption and implementation of these CHP-installations (i.e. how they organized their learning structure) is central. The results show that a learning structure that focuses on the acquisition of external knowledge in addition to supplier relations and own knowledge is more likely if the internal resource base is weak and if the technological complexity is larger. Chapter 7 shifts to the intra-project level and studies the effects of volatility of inputs on trial-and-error learning in the case of a knowledge generation project by means of a process approach. The results show that suboptimal performance of partners is best to be avoided because this will result in negative outcomes and the other way around. Furthermore, the results show that volatility of the network increases the likelihood of less modification of the action course, suboptimal performance and the exit of project members. After opening the black box of environmental innovation, we conclude that environmental innovation is a challenge: for industry, politics and innovation science
The policy mix and its role for innovation: Insights from offshore wind in Germany
No full textAgainst the background of climate change, a decarbonization of the energy system constitutes a major objective in many countries. Renewable energy technologies (RET) play a key role for this – yet some of these technologies are still rather immature thus requiring further innovation to become more competitive. While innovation is often hindered by a number of failures and barriers, policy intervention may help removing these. Due to the multitude of failures, multiple policy instruments – so-called policy mixes – are required. Such policy mixes are in fact complex formations, exceeding policy instruments added up to instrument mixes. Yet the literature on policy mixes for innovation often neglects major policy mix components such as strategic elements or overarching characteristics, e.g. consistency and credibility. Therefore the first objective of this thesis is to develop an overarching concept of the policy mix for innovation in RET and for sustainability transitions more broadly that goes beyond policy instruments and that can serve as analytical framework for empirical analyses. An important prerequisite for successfully fostering innovation in emerging RET is a better understanding of the innovation impact of such a complex policy mix on these technologies. The second objective of the thesis addresses this issue – it is to explore the effects of such a comprehensive policy mix on innovation in RET. Such impacts are studied both at the level of firms as key innovators and at the innovation system level, providing for a systemic and more encompassing innovation perspective. The analysis is carried out for the case of offshore wind in Germany due to the importance of offshore wind for achieving renewable energy targets and to the rich policy mix in place for this technology in Germany. While the policy mix concept is developed based on a review of the literatures on innovation studies, environmental economics and policy analysis, the innovation impact of the policy mix is analyzed with a predominantly qualitative approach, including interviews, history event analysis and document analysis. The first finding of the thesis is the comprehensive policy mix concept consisting of a policy strategy and instrument mix, policy processes and policy mix characteristics. Second, regarding the impact of the policy mix on innovation in offshore wind in Germany it is found that several policy mix components (besides other factors) – particularly the policy strategy, the instrument mix and policy mix consistency – play a decisive role for corporate innovation activities. Furthermore, the policy mix does not only influence the development of the technological innovation system (TIS) of offshore wind in Germany but is also altered based on TIS developments. Finally policy processes have been found to be an influential determinant of TIS functioning. These findings point to a crucial role of the comprehensive policy mix for innovation. Policy makers aiming to foster offshore wind and RET in general should therefore consciously design the whole policy mix (not only particular policy instruments) considering, for instance, interactions between instruments, characteristics of instrument mixes and also the process of making and implementing policies
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