Reforming Energy Law at a National Level

This short chapter provides a brief introduction to the key steps of how to reform energy law. Initially, there is a need to understand energy law and its origin and its relationship with other disciplines through the energy life-cycle. Then the article details the drivers of energy law, four recent positive developments, and finally the seven principles of energy law. Finally, there is a discussion on legal certainty and how it is developed through the application of the energy law principles and the recent new initiatives. As legal certainty will provide the platform for long-term change in energy sector through ensuring there is investment.<br/

Relationships between geographic and inertial coordinates of position

Relationships between geographic and inertial coordinates of positio

Testing the middle ground in Assyro-Anatolian marriages of the kārum period

Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age is marked by an extremely well-documented Assyrian presence during the kārum period (20th-mid 17th c. B.C.),1 a dynamic time of long-distance trade and cultural contact.2 Many Assyrians settled here on a permanent or semi-permanent basis, some marrying locals and raising children in their Anatolian homes, but also maintaining close contact with their home city of Aššur, following business interests and family affairs there. One of the idiosyncrasies of the social history of this period is a special bigamous arrangement which allowed Assyrian men to enter second marriages on the condition that one wife remained at home in Aššur, and the other in Anatolia. So far unattested for other contemporary or later Mesopotamian societies, this appears to be a custom peculiar to Old Assyrian society, designed to accommodate the needs of its travelling men (Michel 2006: 163). The potential role of Anatolian agency3 in the formation of this new custom, however, is seldom considered, despite numerous marriage contracts featuring mixed Assyro-Anatolian couples. This is partly due to the nature of the textual record, which offers very little of the kind of information one would require for reconstructing default conditions for Anatolian marriage practices, or gauging the extent to which these may have differed from Assyrian customs. While it is inevitable that discussions of kārum period marriage rely mostly on the Assyrian perspective, it would be a mistake to accord to it full explanatory capacity for how marriage practices took shape in mixed Assyro-Anatolian communities. Arguably certain aspects of long-distance bigamy cannot be explained as prioritising Assyrian needs, but instead suggest compromise. In other words, in generating a new legal mechanism of second marriages, Assyrians were not simply adapting to the logistics of long-distance life, but also to a new set of social expectations. As already noted by Lumsden (2008) and recently reiterated by Larsen and Lassen (2014), the nexus of intermarriage and cross-cultural compromise aligns Assyro- Anatolian marriage with R. White’s (2011) model of the ‘middle ground.’ This article tests the extent to which a middle ground may be recognisable in Assyro-Anatolian marriage practices, and how the peculiar terminology of bigamous arrangements can be interpreted as the crucial element of misunderstanding (White 2011) in middle ground formation

Compensating for severe nuclear accidents: An expert elucidation

We present the results of a structured discussion held in London in July 2014 involving a panel of experts drawn from three communities: specialists on aspects of risk and insurance; lawyers concerned with issues of nuclear law; and safety and environmental regulators. The discussions were held on the basis of participant anonymity. The process emphasised three considerations: conceptions of loss arising from a severe nuclear accident; the specifics of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident and what it means for policy and strategy going forward; and the future of liability regimes. We observe some stoicism from those closest to implementation of policies and procedures associated with nuclear risks, but a lower level of certainty and confidence among those concerned with nuclear energy regulation

Gravity and gravity gradient from spherical harmonics, case 310

Explicit and recursive formulas for acceleration and gravity gradient derived from spherical harmonic

Removal of Trace Metal Contaminants from Potable Water by Electrocoagulation

This study investigated the effects of four operational and environmental variables on the removal of trace metal contaminants from drinking water by electrocoagulation (EC). Removal efficiencies for five metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and nickel) were compared under varying combinations of electrode material, post-treatment, water composition and pH. Iron electrodes out-performed aluminum electrodes in removing chromium and arsenic. At pH 6.5, aluminum electrodes were slightly more effective at removing nickel and cadmium, while at pH 8.5, iron electrodes were more effective for these metals. Regardless of electrode, cadmium and nickel removal efficiencies were higher at pH 8.5 than at pH 6.5. Post-EC treatment using membrane filtration (0.45 μm) enhanced contaminant removal for all metals but nickel. With the exception of lead, all metals exhibited poorer removal efficiencies as the ionic strength of the background electrolyte increased, particularly in the very high-solids synthetic groundwaters. Residual aluminum concentrations were lowest at pH 6.5, while iron residuals were lowest in low ionic strength waters. Both aluminum and iron residuals required post-treatment filtration to meet drinking water standards. EC with post-treatment filtration appears to effectively remove trace metal contaminants to potable water standards, but both reactor and source water parameters critically impact removal efficiency

Challenges to the Aarhus convention: Public participation in the energy planning process in the United Kingdom

This article examines the tension between the democratic right of public participation on specific environmental issues, guaranteed by European Law, and the degree to which it is being challenged in the UK as a consequence of recent approaches to energy infrastructure planning. Recent trends in UK government policy frameworks seem both to threaten effective public participation and challenge EU planning strategy, in particular those outlined in the Aarhus convention. The research outlined in this study involves an assessment of the changing context of planning and energy policy, in addition to recent changes in legislation formulation in the UK. The research findings, derived from an extensive interview process of elite stakeholders engaged in policy and legislation formulation in the UK and the EU provide a new categorisation system of stakeholders in energy policy that can be utilised in future research. The article concludes with a second order analysis of the interviewee data and provides solutions to increase public participation in the planning of energy infrastructure that emerge from the different perspectives

The application of distributive justice to energy taxation utilising sovereign wealth funds

The energy sector is characterized by inequality and this is part due to the lack of distributive justice applied to energy resource tax revenue. This paper advances one solution to this problem which is for such countries to establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund. There is limited literature on ensuring that distributive justice is a key policy goal of energy taxation and this research aims to contribute to that literature as well as the emerging literature on Sovereign Wealth Funds. Too often as identified in the research, energy taxation policy is developed in isolation and a more holistic perspective is needed which incorporates the entire tax system. A focus on distributive justice as an over-arching energy taxation policy goal is particularly important as a retention of the current status quo will continue to see countries lose the majority of the benefits of their own energy resources to foreign markets and consumers. A Sovereign Wealth Fund, at its core a legal construct with a financial purpose can not only contribute to increased distributive justice but can also ensure increased accountability, transparency and governance in their energy sector.</p