Socioecology Research Today

Today, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced 66 cutting-edge research projects selected by the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) to receive a total of $130 million in funding through its “OPEN 2012” program. ARPA-E seeks out transformational, breakthrough technologies that show fundamental technical promise but are too early for private-sector investment. These [...]

► We re-conducted a survey among clean-tech private equity and venture capital investors. ► We compare their preference for renewable energy and climate market-pull policies with survey results from 2006. ► We found a significant decrease in popularity for those policies such as subsidies and trade related schemes. ► Especially the preferences for renewable energy [...]

A World Bank sponsored project to restore water levels in the Dead Sea while also providing desalinated water and hydropower to the region received a final environmental approval and construction is slated to begin in June. Final Report (pdf)

The top 20 banks invested almost £150bn in the coal industry between 2005-2010, a big increase from previous years, says a study published today by German green group Urgewal. According to the Bankrolling Climate Change report, the biggest ‘climate killers’ are JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America. Continued investment in coal fired power [...]

Clean technology is central to climate cooperation. How can countries promote the development and adoption of new clean technologies? In this article, I examine the strategic benefits of establishing an international technology fund. A game-theoretic analysis shows that a technology fund with a dual mandate of rewarding technology development and subsidizing subsequent adoption can contribute [...]

One of the thorniest regulatory issues these days is how to pay for necessary clean-ups and remediations. CERCLA includes provisions for recovery of these costs, but often, responsible parties are long defunct or insolvent. The Chevron oil spill litigation in Peru is another example of how difficult it is to assign responsibility for and then [...]

This paper analyses the performance of the Dutch “Green Funds Scheme”. This scheme is a policy instrument to advance green projects. The scheme relies on tax compensation for private investors who save or invest in green institutions below market returns. The green institutions select and monitor certified green projects and pass through part of the [...]

Asset-backed securities We expect that the most effective, efficient vehicle for financing bioenergy at scale will be asset-backed securities. These are securities:“whose value and income payments are derived from and collateralized (or “backed”) by a specified pool of underlying assets…Pooling the assets into financial instruments allows them to be sold to general investors, a process [...]

Northeast and mid-Atlantic states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) held their 10th auction of carbon dioxide (CO2) allowances, and New York State’s share of the total proceeds was approximately $16.9 million. Since September 2008, proceeds from all 10 RGGI auctions have totaled approximately $777 million, about $282 million of which is New [...]

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