多维邻近性视域下大北极国家能源贸易网络的演进动力研究

气候变化引致北极海冰消融，世界大国的北极能源竞争愈发激烈。厘清各国能源贸易关系，寻求各方利益最大公约数，积极推动“冰上丝绸之路”建设是避免北极地区出现“公地悲剧”的重要路径。本文结合大北极国家概念，运用复杂网络分析方法探究大北极国家能源贸易网络的演进过程及其多维邻近性动力机制，主要结论如下：①网络总体趋向稠密化，其供应重心向西偏移，消费重心向东转移，产销空间高度分离。②网络表现出典型的“核心—边缘”结构，逐步形成以美加俄为主导的“三极”格局。③网络的三大子群日益显现，中国在网络中的地位不断攀升。④网络演进过程受多维邻近性动力驱动，经济差异是主要内生性动力，地理邻近性是重要自然基础，组织邻近性是主要推动力，文化邻近性的作用趋向弱化，制度邻近性的作用愈加凸显。中国需抓住大北极能源贸易网络消费重心东移的契机，加速推进“冰上丝绸之路”建设，与大北极国家建立“三环”能源合作体系和高效稳定的能源合作机制。     

European Green Deal necropolitics: Exploring ‘green’ energy transition,degrowth & infrastructural colonization

This article critically examines the GND (Green New Deal) platform by exploring the reality of energy development under the European Green Deal (EGD). Taking a special interest in degrowth positions on energy development, the article argues that the European Green Deal is an exercise in necropolitics; intensifying market relationships, extraction, and infrastructural colonization. The article proceeds by reviewing and discussing recent environmental justice and degrowth positions on energy infrastructural development. The methodology outlines desk-based research on resource extraction as well as on the European energy markets. This accompanies multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, charting environmental conflicts along a 400kv high-tension power line. This line goes across France, Catalonia and Southern Spain, stretching into Morocco and occupied Western Sahara. Unconventional research techniques, such as hitchhiking, enabled mobility and expanding the informal interview pool. Outlining the objectives of the EGD, the next section examines three aspects of its necropolitics. First, necropolitical economy reveals the reality of energy market liberalization under the EGD. Second, necropolitical extraction examines the expansion of mining and mineral processing, which are necessary for the EGD and ‘mainstream’ GNDs. Third, necropolitical operation reveal the reality of ‘a rapid rollout of renewable energy deployment’ by examining infrastructure conflicts along a 400kv power line between France and Spain. The process of infrastructural colonization is detailed, which also introduces different land defender perspectives on degrowth. Affirming the argument that the EGD is an exercise in necropolitics, the conclusion discusses important ways to expand degrowth, energy ecologies and real energy transition.     

The Green Economy Research Centre – positioning geographical research in Aberdeen to address the challenges of green economy transitions

ABSTRACT

The necessity to address climate change has resulted in a widespread debate about the need for a transition to a ‘greener’ economy. How such an economy emerges, by what drivers and at what scale is a significant source of speculation amongst the geographical research community. In the context of longstanding contributions to environmental geography from scholars working at Aberdeen University, this paper outlines a novel research agenda for the Green Economy Research Centre (GERC). The contours of the green economy are examined in the context of economic sectors of food production, tourism, energy and the blue economy. Cross-cutting themes of green transitions, governance, people and place and ecosystem services inform our academic contribution to this evolving and controversial societal issue.     

Envisioning a Green Energy Future in Canada and the United States: Constructing a Sustainable Future in the Context of New Regionalisms?

A variety of actors in Canada and the United States are actively constructing a vision of a greener society that includes an environmentally sustainable energy future. Canadian provinces and states in the United States share environmental management, corporations collaborate to drive green development and implement local energy projects, and activists on both sides of the border share environmental protest strategies and mobilization frames. A transition to regionalism of greener energy resources along the Vermont–Canadian border is indicative of a larger “new regionalism” of sustainable identity, despite very concrete and pressing external pressures and energy challenges concerning global climate change, resource depletion, and energy sustainability challenges within the larger nations of both Canada and the United States. In this article, we aim to characterize this green visioning of a sustainable energy future, by focusing especially on the Vermont–Canadian border region, and additionally point to the benefits and contradictions that result.     

Discussion on applying trombe wall technology for wall conservation and energy saving in modern historic buildings

Previous studies on modern historic buildings protection have been mainly conducted from the view of building history, culture and aesthetic, but rarely focus on the green building technology and energy-saving. With the increasingly serious crises of environment and energy, it is valuable to research how to carry out ecological protection to effectively reduce energy consumption in modern buildings while ensuring the authenticity and readability of building heritage information.

This article describes a new technical scheme to apply Trombe wall technology for wall conservation in modern historic buildings. The feasibility, key construction technologies and operating conditions in different seasons were demonstrated by an actual case in Beijing. Key findings show that the technical scheme not only protects the skin texture of the wall but also makes full use of passive solar energy. Energy consumption simulation results show that saving energy in winter is significant. Compared with the original building, the total energy consumption of the building that adopted the technical scheme was reduced by 10.77%, the heating energy consumption was reduced by 21.86%, and the cooling energy consumption was reduced by 1.02%. The research findings provide new inspiration and reference for studies on the protection of modern historic buildings, and serve as a technical reference for architects.     

Canada–United States Energy Relations: Making a MESS of Energy Policy 1 , 2

Energy policy-making has become ever-more challenging over the last three decades, comprising a larger and more complex set of inter-related dimensions. Energy policy-makers have to deal with energy as a discrete market sector, pursuing competitive, efficient, safe, and affordable energy. They also have to address environmental imperatives, ensuring energy is developed with due regard for sustainability, ecosystems, air quality, climate change, and the like. In addition, energy policy must address security objectives, which themselves have broadened over time. Finally, energy must be developed in ways that are socially acceptable. This article examines how these four policy dimensions—Market, Environment, Security and Social acceptability, the acronym MESS—have come to characterize energy policy-making in the twenty-first century. It then explores what kind of MESS the Canadian and American governments are making of energy policy—both domestically and bilaterally—and offers some proposals for key sectors and activities that could benefit from greater collaboration.     

ENERGY,ENVIRONMENT AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS: THE EBRD'S ACTIVITIES IN THE WESTERN BALKANS

This article examines the relationship between the EBRD's project portfolio in the Western Balkan energy sector, and the region's main energy and environment problems. It argues in favour of geographically centred appraisals of the environmental sustainability of multilateral energy investment. Empirical analyses have been placed within the context of this bank's broader policy mandate to support the reconstruction and development of, among other aspects, energy operations in the post‐socialist states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, while promoting environmental sustainability. The article categorizes the Western Balkans' energy and environment problems into two main groups: the failure to shift away from carbon‐emitting sources of energy, and the inability to introduce efficient technologies in the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy. It investigates the level to which these issues have been represented in the Bank's energy investment activities in the region. The EBRD's ability to fund energy and environment projects has been affected by, among other factors, the decision‐making process within the relevant governments and the Bank itself. These processes are related to the structural legacies of central planning and the organizational cultures embedded within the EBRD at its inception.     

From Coal to Wind

In March 1987, the Brundtland Report –Our Common Future – was published by the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development. The recommendations of the report contributed worldwide to raising awareness of climate change. In particular, the energy sector became the object of anxiety, as production and the use of energy were pinpointed as some of the ‘crooks’ emitting most greenhouse gasses. Shortly after the publication of the report, the Danish government revised its energy planning and opened up for a radical change of the energy sector.

This article delves into this crucial change and, in doing so, suggests a historical answer to the question of why Denmark became one of the leading nations in transforming the energy sector from a power supply based on fossil fuels to a power generation system using a high percentage of renewables.