Industries

Renewable energy has made strong advances in the power generation fuel mix in many developed and developing nations in the past decade. Energy-hungry nations are increasingly turning to renewables in order to meet their rapidly increasing demand. While some better established sources of renewable power, such as small hydro, biomass, wind, and incre...

Following the Kyoto Protocol, countries in the Asia-Pacific region are motivated to adopt ‘green’ measures and reduce CO2 emission from automobiles and industries. One of the key focuses is to have 20.0 percent of total vehicles on road to be electrical vehicles by 2020. EVs are ’zero’ emission vehicles. Hence, the EV charging infrastructur...

Meeting energy needs while achieving security of supply and minimising carbon emissions are key challenges facing most countries. Although nuclear is gaining support in Europe, its significance varies among European countries. While some states are not willing to take risks and are opposed to nuclear (such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium...

The United States is a major security and military partner of the GCC. Between 2000 and 2010, the diversification trends among the GCC economies helped to promote bilateral trade with the United States in areas such as crude oil and natural gas production, exploration, construction, and financial services. The long-term cyclical correlation between...

Russia has long awaited the outcome of its accession process. The implications of accession will have both a positive and negative impact on Russia and its trade partners. The major consensus of this analysis, however, points to important long-term gains that are evident to the Russian economy and certain opportunities that accession will give trad...

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have grouped themselves as a bloc and have met at the BRICS Summits since 2009. The Fourth Summit held in 2012 in New Delhi was perhaps the most important meeting of the bloc for 2012. The Summit came up with declarations aimed at strengthening and insulating the member countries from the global economi...

This study defines and discusses mega trends that would influence energy demand in China. An overview and analyses are provided concerning the energy consumption, the installed energy capacity, and the key power generation stations in China. Based on the current installed capacity, plans for future power generation infrastructures and future power ...

The past 2-3 years have witnessed an increasing interest in smart grids and smart energy. Smart meters are considered to be the first step towards smart grid implementation. The smart meter rollout in Europe is well underway, boosted by the European Union legislation to achieve 80 percent coverage by 2020. Sweden and Italy had full scale penetratio...

A growing population and improved economic conditions in the United States will raise energy consumption during the next decade. The U.S. goal of energy independence, the concern for unmet energy demand, and the growing awareness of the environmental impact of high consumption are the leading drivers behind growing interest in net-zero buildings an...