Download

Best Practices for Rail Transport of Fuel Ethanol
Renewable Fuels Association. 2009, 11 p.

This document presents general guidelines for the ethanol industry in an effort to promote improved regulatory compliance and to communicate many of the industry best practices for the continued safe transport of ethanol via rail. The information, though believed to be accurate at the time of publication, should not be considered as legal advice or as a substitute for developing specific company operating guidelines or reviewing the pertinent regulations individually.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2010 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

World energy and climate policy: 2009 assessment
World Energy Council (WEC),  2009, 194 p.

WEC believes that relentless improvement of government energy policies and industry practices are needed, and that this can lead to a material advancement in their capabilities to effectively handle these energy transitions. To enable this rapid change, WEC has launched a comprehensive, multi-year Assessment of Energy and Climate Policy, facilitated by the WEC’s unique structure of almost one hundred worldwide national committees.

This report encapsulates assessment results across 88 countries. Identified are top division country performers in energy policy effectiveness, overall and by major objectives, and many examples of country best practices. Countries are grouped into clusters dependent on whether they are energy importers or exporters and the level of income per capita.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Five Alternatives that make more sense than offshore oil
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (US), 2009, 32 p.

Foreign oil currently fuels 55 percent of all transportation in the United States. As it struggles to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, the United States will have to completely rethink its energy policies. Instead of replacing imported oil with domestic oil, extracted at high environmental costs from new rigs offshore and across the western states, the country could opt for cleaner alternatives like higher fuel economy standards, hybrid-electric vehicles, plugin hybrids, cellulosic ethanol, and new commuting patterns. By decreasing demand rather than increasing supply, energy alternatives could reduce or eliminate the need to expand offshore oil production. This paper explores the economic and environmental costs of offshore oil and investigates a range of cleaner energy options.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

2010 Fuel Economy Guide
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA – US) and US Department of Energy (DOE), 2009, 28 p.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) produce the Fuel Economy Guide to help car buyers choose the most fuel efficient vehicle that meets their needs.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Good Practices for Qualification of High Density Low Enriched Uranium Research Reactor Fuels
IAEA Nuclear Energy Series, 2009, 74 p.

The conversion of research and test reactors from the use of fuel containing highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fuel that employs low-enriched uranium (LEU) has become an important issue in many Member States. The IAEA has supported several projects and activities assisting in the reduction of the use of HEU. However, no comprehensive publication addressing the rationale of qualification of these fuels had yet been available. Developed in order to meet this need, the present publication provides good practices and points of reference for the type, quality and completeness of the information to be generated in order to ensure acceptable performance of high density LEU fuels to be used in research reactors. Furthermore, it elaborates on the development and qualification of high density fuels of the type used in most research and test reactors and assesses the different approaches to the qualification process.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Forging the Climate Consensus: Oversight of the Greenhouse Gas Market
National Commission on Energy Policy, Oct. 7, 2009. 16 p.

Cap-and-trade programs are designed to reach an emissions target at the lowest possible cost. NCEP recommendations for greenhouse gas market oversight seek to maximize the benefits of a cap-and-trade program in terms of promoting innovation and cost savings, while minimizing opportunities for market manipulation and fraud.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Technology rules! Can technology-oriented agreements help address climate change?
ECN Policy Studies, 2009, 255 p.

This thesis deals with climate change, technology and reciprocity. Climate change, as an international collective action problem, requires international collaboration in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the vulnerability for climate change impacts is highest in countries which hold little responsibility for the problem, while the cost of mitigating climate change is highest in less affected countries. This distributional characteristic of climate change leads to the central barrier of international collaboration: a specific agreement to reduce emissions is not in the interest of those countries that should most urgently act. Successful international agreements need reciprocity, i.e. a perceived equivalence of benefits between parties to an agreement. Agreements on emission reductions do not offer reciprocity to all parties, so there are weak incen-tives among parties to comply. This became clear as the Kyoto Protocol was implemented. Although agreed despite the distributional characteristics of climate change, the effectiveness of Kyoto was weakened because of the distributional problem structure of climate change as the defecting countries faced high costs of mitigation and had economic interests that prevailed over the need to reduce emissions. For reciprocity, the design of an international regime on climate change should therefore not be based on emission reductions. There is general agreement that the emission reductions required to address climate change will need to be achieved through major investments in a portfolio of low-carbon technologies. Technology is broadly defined: know-how, methods, procedures, experience of successes and failures, physical devices and equipment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This thesis explored whether reciprocity in international climate agreements can be enhanced through international agreements focused on innovation and technology. In particular, the role and potential impacts of technology-oriented agreements from different perspectives were explored. The main result is that technology-oriented agreements can provide more reciprocity than emission reduction targets, a finding that urgently needs to be recognised in the climate negotiations. In addition, a number of recommendations can be made to enable technology-oriented agreements. First, technology-oriented agreements should reflect the characteristics of the tech-nology they address and be aligned with the (vested) technological interests that prevail in the sector, to ensure a positive payback function of the agreements to important parties. Second, a smart combination of market-based and technology-oriented agreements would work best both for climate change in general and for technology transfer to developing countries, if collective ac-tion problems for international market-based instruments can be overcome. Third, if indeed market-based and technology-oriented instruments are combined, their co-existence under one regime is recommended over a fully fragmented regime. This is necessary to prevent problems related to lack of transparency and sketchy accountability that would compromise environmental effectiveness of the climate regime. And last, if technology-oriented agreements are applied as a replacement or as a geographically or functionally complement, they should be designed for technology implementation, to ensure both environmental and technological effectiveness.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Energy Security: A national challenge in a changing world
Department of Energy & Climate Change (UK), August 2009, 130 p.

In October 2008, the Prime Minister asked Malcolm Wicks MP, as his Special Representative on International Energy Issues, to carry out an independent review of international energy security and how developments internationally were likely to affect the UK’s energy security in the coming decades. His report was published on 5 August 2009 and complements the recently published UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, setting out an approach to energy security that will enable the UK to achieve its climate change objectives.

The report focuses on the changing UK and global energy picture, pointing out that even with ambitious climate change targets, the world is still likely to be reliant on coal, oil and gas to meet over two-thirds of its energy needs by 2030.

The report considers how global trends affect the UK’s medium and long term energy security and having concluded that energy independence is unachievable, addresses the UK’s international strategy and how we interact with multilateral agencies. In terms of the UK’s bilateral relationships, it recommends that Norway, Qatar and Saudi Arabia be prioritised as the most significant relationships for our energy security.

The report also considers actions we could take within the UK’s borders to reduce import dependency. It recognises that energy efficiency must be the starting point of all action and welcomes the ambitious proposals set out in the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, in particular the support for households to reduce their energy use. It makes recommendations on maximising the UK Continental Shelf and considerations around gas storage.

In addition, if the UK electrifies much of its transport and heating, demand for electricity in 2050 could be 50 per cent higher than it is today, making it possible that electricity could account for half of our overall energy use; it is within this context that Malcolm Wicks’ review recommends that Government consider setting a higher aspiration for nuclear power generation and keep under review whether further policy instruments may be necessary to direct further investment in capacity towards non-fossil fuel power generation, including wind, tidal and wave.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

UNEP 2008 Annual Report United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), January 2009, 106 p.

This summary of UNEP’s activities in 2008 provides an overview of the organization’s contribution to the fight against climate change in a year in which unequivocal evidence established that global warming is the defining challenge of our era. The report also looks at the broad range of other activities carried out by UNEP as it follows its mandate to provide environmental leadership and promote sustainable development.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre

Download

Bioenergy – a Sustainable and Reliable Energy Source – A review of status and prospects Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), August 2009, 12 p.

This publication is the Executive Summary of a report jointly prepared for IEA Bioenergy by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), E4tech, Chalmers University of Technology, and the Copernicus Institute of the University of Utrecht. The full report ‘Bioenergy – a Sustainable and Reliable Energy Source’ is available on the IEA Bioenergy website (www.ieabioenergy.com) and in hard copy. The purpose of the project was to produce an authoritative review of the entire bioenergy sector aimed at policy and investment decision makers. The brief to the contractors was to provide a global perspective of the potential for bioenergy, the main opportunities for deployment in the short and medium term and the principal issues and challenges facing the development of the sector.

CNEN – Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear
2009 – Boletim de Energia – Acesso livre