On Artificial Structural Unemployment

Above market clearing wages are shown to prevail as an outcome of a game in which employers possess and employees lack the ability to coordinate. It is established in a monopolistically competitive framework that it may be optimal for individual firms to coordinate and restrict entry of indirect competitors and thus increase profits by paying above market clearing wages as the higher wage bill need not outweigh the increase in profits due to entry restriction. Resulting unemployment is shown to be socially costly. The paper notes that a tax on revenue of the incumbent firms can be welfare improvingUnemployment, Coordination

Cost overruns – helping to define what they really mean

Civil engineers are often in the firing line for alleged cost overruns, particularly on major publicly funded infrastructure projects. This usually occurs when the final cost of a project is simply compared with the original estimate, even though this was published a long time ago, in different circumstances and for a quite different project to the one carried out. This paper proposes a systematic approach to ensure that cost overruns, should they occur, are more accurately defined in terms of when the initial and end costs are assessed, from which point of view, at which project stage, and including scope changes and financial assumptions. The paper refers to the UK’s £163 billion nuclear decommissioning programme

Sargassum Biomass Movement and Proliferation in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic

Since 2011, pelagic sargassum blooms (S. fluitans and S. natans) have impacted coastal communities, aquaculture, tourism, and biodiversity across the Tropical Atlantic region. Whilst the initial event is generally attributed to an anomalous North Atlantic Oscillation (2009–2010), the drivers of sargassum movement and proliferation remain unclear. This research gap is particularly evident in West Africa, where annual and seasonal sargassum variability is under-researched, and a lack of consensus exists on seasonal and annual trends. This paper addresses these gaps by (1) providing a first attempt at characterising the seasonal and annual trends of sargassum biomass in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic, through using satellite imagery to create a time-series for 2011–2022; and (2) exploring the hypothetical drivers of movement and proliferation of sargassum for this area, through assessing its co-variation with potential drivers including atmospheric, oceanic, and policy, establishing a historical timeline of events. The time-series analysis reveals an annual biomass peak in September and a second peak between March and May. The exploration of potential drivers reveals that alongside sea surface temperature there are multiple factors that could be influencing sargassum biomass, and that further research is necessary to clarify primary and secondary drivers. The results contribute to understanding drivers, impacts, and predictions of sargassum blooms in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic. We anticipate that our findings will enable sargassum-affected areas to better anticipate the size and timing of sargassum events in West Africa and offer researchers a new perspective on possible drivers of proliferation within the wider Tropical Atlantic region

Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios

Radionuclide activity concentrations in food crops and wildlife are most often predicted using empirical concentration ratios (CRs). The CR approach is simple to apply and some data exist with which to parameterise models. However, the parameter is highly variable leading to considerable uncertainty in predictions. Furthermore, for both crops and wildlife we have no, or few, data for many radionuclides and realistically, we are never going to have specific data for every radionuclide - wildlife/crop combination. In this paper, we present an alternative approach using residual maximum likelihood (REML) fitting of a linear mixed effects model; the model output is an estimate of the rank-order of relative values. This methodology gives a less uncertain approach than the CR approach, as it takes into account the effect of site; it also gives a scientifically based extrapolation approach. We demonstrate the approach using the examples of Cs for plants and Pb for terrestrial wildlife. This is the first published application of the REML approach to terrestrial wildlife (previous applications being limited to the consideration of plants). The model presented gives reasonable predictions for a blind test dataset

Perspectives of energy transitions in East and Southeast Asia

© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Energy transitions are designed to improve the resilience, sustainability, and productivity of a country's energy system, and are the key instruments to mitigating the warming climate. Countries and regions have unique circumstances when projecting energy transition pathways. Nonetheless, East Asian economies have shared opportunities and challenges. From the perspective of fuel mix, East Asia had some initial success in renewable energy development accompanied by energy efficiency improvements. Nuclear energy, although controversial, has been well developed and is continuing its advancement in East Asia. However, the dominance of coal in the energy mix has not been sufficiently addressed, mostly because of legacy issues. The region's renewable energy potential is also underdeveloped due to a mismatch between resources and energy demand. Since the region as whole is well endowed with renewable energy resources, the region's advancement in regional energy connectivity presents a valuable institutional asset to further decarbonize East Asian energy sector beyond individual nation's efforts. This article is categorized under: Energy and Climate > Economics and Policy Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy Energy and Development > Economics and Policy

Energy consumption trends and their linkages with renewable energy policies in East and Southeast Asian countries: Challenges and opportunities

Global warming is one of today's most critical environmental issues, caused largely by emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels. Emissions of carbon dioxide vary throughout countries in Asia. It is increasingly recognised that countries must act to promote the greater use of renewable energy resources as part of actions seeking to mitigate climate change. This paper presents a review of the energy demand scenario in China, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia and the growth of non-fossil energy in these countries. Energy scenarios within these countries are investigated to identify the opportunities and challenges that exist in developing renewable energy. Energy production among the four countries was analysed. In 2014, China made the highest use of renewables for primary energy production, while Malaysia used them the least. However, fossil energy still constitutes the primary energy source in each country where coal dominates in China (77%) and Indonesia (70%), oil in Japan (28%) and natural gas in Malaysia (61%). In addition, renewable energy policies have been introduced and established based on the energy needs and development status of renewables in each country. This study analyses and compares strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis of these countries based on their renewable energy policies. It identifies the challenges for renewable energy development and highlights the necessity of enhanced multilevel governance processes and increased cooperation between the four countries to strengthen their renewable energy sectors and better compete in the global energy market

How benchmarking can support the selection, planning and delivery of nuclear decommissioning projects

Nuclear Decommissioning Projects and Programmes (NDPs) are jeopardized by several risks, long schedule and cost estimates that lay in the range of hundreds of billions of pounds. Moreover, in some countries, these estimates keep increasing and key stakeholders have a limited understanding of the determinants that engender this phenomena. Benchmarking refers to the process of comparing projects in order to identify best practices and generate ideas for improvement. However, even if it is the envisaged approach to tackle the decommissioning challenges (and due to the NDPs’ uniqueness), until now, benchmarking has been only partially used. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to benchmark decommissioning projects, both from the nuclear and non-nuclear industry, within the UK and worldwide. From this cross-sectorial and cross-country analysis, it is possible to gather a list of key NDPs’ characteristic and statistically test their correlation with the project performance. The ultimate aim of the research underpinning this paper is to investigate the possible causation between the NDPs’ characteristics and the NDPs’ performance and to develop guidelines to improve the selection, planning and delivery of future NDPs

Developing policies for the end-of-life of energy infrastructure: Coming to terms with the challenges of decommissioning

Energy sector policies have focused historically on the planning, design and construction of energy infrastructures, while typically overlooking the processes required for the management of their end-of-life, and particularly their decommissioning. However, decommissioning of existing and future energy infrastructures is constrained by a plethora of technical, economic, social and environmental challenges that must be understood and addressed if such infrastructures are to make a net-positive contribution over their whole life. Here, we introduce the magnitude and variety of these challenges to raise awareness and stimulate debate on the development of reasonable policies for current and future decommissioning projects. Focusing on power plants, the paper provides the foundations for the interdisciplinary thinking required to deliver an integrated decommissioning policy that incorporates circular economy principles to maximise value throughout the lifecycle of energy infrastructures. We conclude by suggesting new research paths that will promote more sustainable management of energy infrastructures at the end of their life

An exploration of the relationship between nuclear decommissioning projects characteristics and cost performance

Nuclear Decommissioning Projects and Programmes (NDPs) are characterized by high complexity and variety, and a schedule that can take decades. Moreover, NDPs estimates at completion can reach billions of Euro and (for many of these projects) keep increasing, while there is a limited understanding of why this happens. To address this knowledge gap, this paper describes how to statistically test the association between the NDP characteristics and the NDP cost performance. The implementation of statistics on a pool of European NDPs highlights the significance of several country-specific and site-specific characteristics (e.g. respectively, the governance system and the availability of facilities to deal with radioactive material on site). Hence, the original contribution of this paper consists in (i) the selection of statistical tests suitable for analysing small sample sizes (i.e. NDPs) and (ii) the presentation of the results from the implementation of these tests on a pool of 24 European NDPs with an illustrative purpose