1,942 research outputs found
China's ETS: A vote of confidence in carbon markets ahead of Paris. CEPS Commentary, 12 October 2015
No full textIn this CEPS commentary, Andrei Marcu welcomes the recent announcement by President Xi Jinping that China will start a national emissions trading scheme in 2017. Calling it a "genuine game changer" in the global climate talks, Marcu describes the decision as giving a much-needed boost to carbon markets and cap-and-trade as the preferred way forward for those economies that have the capacity, the depth and the breadth for a liquid carbon market
A close call before Paris. CEPS Commentary, 2 November 2015
No full textFollowing the final negotiating session in Bonn, October 19-23, and in the run-up to COP21 in Paris, which is expected to culminate in a new global climate agreement in December, Andrei Marcu offers his assessment of this immensely complicated and important project and its chances to succeed. In his view, the latest version of the text allows all countries to feel ownership and can succeed if sufficient political will can be summoned
Climate Change: Balancing economic and environmental concerns. CEPS Commentary, 3 October 2014
No full textIn surveying the portfolio for climate change assigned to Commissioner-designate Arias Cañete, Andrei Marcu finds in this CEPS Commentary that the approach proposed in the European Commission’s January 2014 package offers a sound basis on which to proceed overall, but he specifies that it needs to be put in a context where the causes and symptoms are correctly identified. He singles out timing and governance as other important elements and discusses their practical implications
Post Durban: Moving to a fragmented carbon market world? CEPS Commentary, 22 December 2011
No full textIn his assessment of the recent agreements struck during the COP 17 negotiations in Durban, November 29th to December 9th, Andrei Marcu concludes in this new CEPS Commentary that global climate change is approaching a new crossroads. In his view, the outcome of Durban will influence whether the initial Cartesian vision of a global carbon market and one single price for carbon, which emerged from the Kyoto Protocol but was never accomplished, is to receive a new impetus, or whether we are heading towards a long period of building through a bottom-up approach, which may or may not lead to a unitary carbon market in the future
Doha/COP 18: gateway to a new climate change agreement. CEPS Commentary, 13 December 2012
No full textDrawing on his recent experience in the climate negotiations in Doha as an advisor and negotiator on a wide variety of issues, Andrei Marcu offers his assessment of the progress achieved in the two weeks of intensive talks. In spite of modest results, he describes the talks as an important and necessary step in the revolution, first ignited at the Montreal negotiations in 2005, that rejected the top-down Kyoto Protocol model in favour of a bottom-up climate change regime. In his view, the decisions taken in Doha enable the start of a new negotiating process aimed at delivering a new global climate agreement
Taking stock after the Warsaw COP. CEPS Commentary, 4 December 2013
No full textDrawing on his direct participation in the latest round of climate talks in Warsaw, Andrei Marcu looks at the results of the 19th COP through the lens of three basic questions, with a view to understanding how much progress was made and where we stand two years ahead of Paris.
Are the targets adequate and how do we reach environmentally adequate targets?
Can one understand and compare what other Parties are promising to do to ensure that the level of effort is comparable and equitable, and that companies are not asked to do more than their competitors in other jurisdictions? Is there comparability and equity in the eyes of the beholder?
Do we understand what tools each country uses (what is available, what one gets as support) to ensure that no one country (and its companies) gets an easier ride or competitive advantage in meeting the commitment/promises that countries make.
The author asserts that these questions need to be answered if an agreement is to be reached in 2015. And if they are not, he warns of mistrust, fear of carbon leakage and the temptation to resort to protectionist measures to compensate for competitive disadvantage
Carbon leakage: an overview. CEPS Special Report No. 79, 6 December 2013
No full textCarbon leakage is central to the discussion on climate policy, given the confluence of issues
that are currently being debated, including the 2030 Energy and Climate Framework and the
review of the EU carbon leakage list by 2014. Carbon leakage is the result of asymmetrical
carbon policies, especially carbon pricing, and the resulting carbon cost, which affects the
international competitive position of some EU industry and could displace production
and/or investment, and the emissions of the activities displaced.
This paper identifies the difference between carbon price and carbon cost to leakage exposed
industry as one of two fundamental issues to be understood and addressed; lack of
visibility on future climate policies and anti-leakage provisions is the other key issue. While
this is a global issue, most of the experience has been accumulated in the EU. Carbon leakage
is only one of the factors that could affect the competitive position of sectors, but it is
difficult to attribute the impact of carbon costs versus other variables such as energy costs,
labour, etc. Studies have predicted the risk of a significant amount of production leakage in a
number of energy-intensive industries. To address the danger, they were included in the EU
ETS carbon leakage list, which gave them access to free allowances. However, a limited
number of studies undertaken after the end of the second trading period (2012) show little
evidence of production leakage and asks the question whether the issue has not been blown
out of proportion.
The paper argues that the past may not be a good representation of the future, as it was
heavily influenced by a high level of free allocation, the exceptional economic downturn, CO2
prices significantly below what was anticipated, as well as the potential for changes in some
fundamental variables such as the shrinking pool of allowances available for free allocation.
It emphasises the need for a well-informed debate in the EU on measures to address carbon
leakage post-2020, underpinned by a number of options, and objective criteria to evaluate
those options. It emphasises that the debate should cover both investment and production
leakage, caused by both direct and indirect carbon costs
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning using Centralized Critics in Collaborative Environments
No full textAgents trained through single-agent reinforcement learning methods such as self-play can provide a good level of performance in multi-agent settings and even in fully cooperative environments. However, most of the time, training multiple agents together using single-agent self-play yields poor results as each agent tries to learn how to perform their task while their teammates are also learning. Thus, training models to reach an optimal behaviour in such situations becomes a challenging, if not impossible issue to overcome. One possible solution to deal with this problem is to facilitate a centralized training process in which the policies of all agents are evaluated by a centralized critic that has access to the observations and actions of all the agents in the environment. By using this approach, the environment becomes stationary and the agents learn in a similar way to using a single-agent algorithm in settings where only one agent needs to be trained. In this paper, we test whether by using a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm with centralized critics, as opposed to single-agent ones, we would obtain an agent that generalizes better to new partners in a collaborative environment such as Overcooked, where coordination is critical for good performance. The results display a similar performance between the two algorithms when evaluated through self-play and slightly better or worse results when paired with the human model, representing a mediocre agent, depending on the map. Thus, the multi-agent, centralized critics algorithm used in this study did not train agents that generalize better to new partners. However, the training metrics clearly indicate that the centralized critics method makes the agents learn and converge twice as fast as its single-agent version.https://github.com/andrei-07/rp-overcooked-centralized-critics Link to GitHub repositoryCSE3000 Research ProjectComputer Science and Engineerin
Bucarest, le « petit Paris des Balkans ». L'architecte roumain Duiliu Marcu, diplômé de l'École des beaux-arts
No full text« Bukarest, "das kleine Paris des Balkans" und der rumänische Architekt Duiliu Marcu, gra- duiert an der École des Beaux-Arts », von Bogdan Andrei Fezi Vor iiber 1 00 Jahren nannte man Bukarest « das kleine Paris des Balkans ». Die Verwaltung, die städtischen Gesetzgebungen und das Unterrichtswesen waren beeinflusst vom französischen Modell. Die rumänischen Architekten hatten in Paris studiert, und eine bedeutende Anzahl der Gebäude stammten von franzosischen Architekten. Die Zwischenkriegszeit war fur Rumänien ein Höhepunkt der Blüte. Die Hauptstadt des Landes befand in einem bis dahin unerhörten Bauwirbel. In dieser Zeit ist Duiliu Marcu (1885-1966) der repräsentativste Architekt der staatlichen Architektur. Nach dem Studium an der École des Beaux-Arts in Paris erhält er 1913 von der französischen Regierung das Diplom. Architekt, Urbanist und Professor ist er, zur gleichen Zeit, Offizier der Ehrenlegion und Mitglied der Rumänischen Akademie. Er ist der Architekt, der zwischen den Jahren 1936-1941 in Bukarest die meisten Verwaltungsgebäude erbaut hat : das Palais des AuBenministeriums, das der Autonomen Generaldirektion des Bahnwesens und das der Büros der Staatsmonopolverwaltung. Die von Duiliu Marcu gebauten Ministerien zeugen von einer globalen, architektonischen und urbanistischen Herangehensweise, von der Suche nach technischen Spitzenlösungen und modernem architektonischem Ausdruck, die Eleganz ästhetischer Experimente vorziehend. Sein Streben war international. Er widmete sich dem Raum, den er sich wünschte : ein Europa ohne Grenzen."Bucharest, 'the small Paris of the Balkans' and the Romanian architect Duiliu Marcu, graduated from the the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris" by Bogdan Andrei Fezi More than one century ago, Bucharest was called "The Small Paris of the Balkans". The French model inspired the administration, the urban legislation and the education. Most Romanian architects studied in Paris and many important buildings in Bucharest were built by French architects. The inter-war period is the period of Romania's utmost growth, when the capital city launched an important building campaign. The most representative architect for the "official architecture" of this period was Duiliu Marcu (1885-1966). He graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1913. He was also an urbanist, a professor, an officer of the Légion d'Honneur and a member of the Romanian Academy. He was the architect who built most of the administration buildings between 1936 and 1941 : the building of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the building of the General Department of Railways and the offices of the Administration of State monopolies. The ministries built by Duiliu Marcu show a general architectural and urban approach, a search for the most advanced technical solutions and for the modern architectural vocabulary. His modernism was tempered inasmuch as he was more inclined to elegance than to esthetical experimentations. His ambition was international and meant for the place he was dreaming of, that is to say a "Europe without borders".« Bucarest, le "petit Paris des Balkans" et l'architecte roumain Duiliu Marcu, diplômé de l'École des beaux-arts », par Bogdan Andrei Fezi II y a plus d'un siècle, Bucarest était surnommé « le petit Paris des Balkans ». L'administration, la législation urbaine et l'enseignement s'inspiraient du modèle français. La plupart des architectes roumains firent leurs études à Paris et un nombre important de bâtiments fut construit par des architectes français. L'Entre-deux-guerres représente pour la Roumanie une période de floraison exceptionnelle, quand la capitale du pays se lance dans une campagne de construction sans précédent. Pendant cette période, l'architecte le plus représentatif de « l'architecture d'Etat » roumaine est Duiliu Marcu (1885-1966). Après des études à l'École des beaux-arts de Paris, il est diplômé par le gouvernement français en 1913. À la fois architecte, urbaniste et professeur, il est officier de la Légion d'honneur et membre de l'Académie roumaine. Il est l'architecte qui construit, entre 1936 et 1941, le plus grand nombre de bâtiments administratifs à Bucarest : le palais du ministère des Affaires étrangères, le palais de la direction générale autonome des chemins de fer et les bureaux de l'administration des monopoles d'État. Les ministères construits par Duiliu Marcu témoignent d'une approche globale architecturale et urbaine, d'une recherche des solutions techniques les plus avancées et d'un vocabulaire architectural moderne. Son modernisme est cependant tempéré par une préférence pour l'élégance face aux expérimentations esthétiques. Il aspirait à une vocation internationale, destinée à l'espace dont il rêvait, une Europe sans frontières.Fezi Bodgan Andrei. Bucarest, le « petit Paris des Balkans ». L'architecte roumain Duiliu Marcu, diplômé de l'École des beaux-arts. In: Livraisons d'histoire de l'architecture, n°8, 2e semestre 2004. pp. 41-51
Andrei Tarkovsky:
No full textThe author studies the originality of the film language of Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the great filmmakers of the twentieth century. For this purpose he considers the symbolic, poetic, technical and mystical elements of Tarkovsky’s seven films. Beyond the standard critics, he builds an unitary language for the interpretation of a work reputedly tight.El autor estudia la originalidad del lenguaje cinematográfico de Andrei Tarkovsky, uno de los grandes directores de cine del siglo XX. Para este propósito considera los aspectos simbólicos, poéticos, técnicos y místicos de sus siete películas. Desecha el formato de ficha crítica y construye un lenguaje unitario para la interpretación de una obra reputada como hermética
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