Power-optimal scheduling for a green base station with delay constraints

We consider a power optimization problem with average delay constraint on the downlink of a Green Base-station. A Green Base-station is powered by both renewable energy such as solar or wind energy as well as conventional sources like diesel generators or the power grid. We try to minimize the energy drawn from conventional energy sources and utilize the harvested energy to the maximum extent. Each user also has an average delay constraint for its data. The optimal action consists of scheduling the users and allocating the optimal transmission rate for the chosen user. In this paper, we formulate the problem as a Markov Decision Problem and show the existence of a stationary average-cost optimal policy. We also derive some structural results for the optimal policy.

Interim report on the hydrologic features of the Green Swamp area in Central Florida

The Green Swamp area in central Florida is another area where man is developing agricultural land from marginal land. Though the area is by no means as extensive as that of the Everglades, the present efforts for its development are similar to the early efforts for developing the Everglades in that many miles of canals and ditches have been constructed to improve the drainage. Lest the early mistakes of the Everglades be repeated, the Florida Department of Water Resources considered that an appraisal of the physical and hydrologic features of the area was needed to determine the broad effects of draining and developing the swamp. This reconnaissance provides information required by the State of Florida for determining its responsibility and policy in regard to the Green Swamp area and for formulating future plans for water management of the area. Some of the features that have been determined are: the amount of rainfall on the area; the pattern of surfacewater drainage; the amount and direction of surface-water runoff; the direction of ground-water movement; the interrelationship of rainfall, surface water, and ground water; the effects of improved drainage facilities'; and the effects of the hydrologic environment on the chemical quality of water of the area.(PDF contains 106 pages.)

International Climate Finance and its Influence on Fairness and Policy

27 p.

City versus national energy use: implications for urban energy policy and strategies

The global trend towards urbanization means that over half of the world's population now lives in cities. Cities use energy in different proportions to national energy use averages, typically corresponding to whether a country is industrialized or developing. Cities in industrialized countries tend to use less energy per capita than the national average while cities in developing countries use more. This paper looks at existing World Bank data in respect to urban energy consumption, the emissions inventory work done by New York City, and discusses how this data highlights the need for a focus on: energy policy for buildings in industrialized cities; masterplanning and new construction standards in developing cities; and how urban energy policy can become more effective in reducing urban greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond the Orange and the Green. The Diversification of the Qualitative Social Research Landscape in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland conflict has been described as one of the most over-researched conflicts in the world. However, this is a relatively recent development. For many years, when the conflict was most intense, social scientists in Northern Ireland were silent and not vocal. The sectarian violence that dominated the life in Northern Ireland as well as the fact that the country was a fundamentally unjust society contributed to this silence. However, since the peace process began in the mid 1990s, a growing number of qualitative studies have been published, utilising one-to-one interviews and focus group discussions, in order to "make people's voices heard" and deal with the consequences of the so-called "Troubles". This paper looks into the emergence of a qualitative social research landscape in Northern Ireland beyond the conflict and explores issues so far neglected. It is argued that a number of factors have contributed to this, among them the availability of research funding to voluntary and community sector organisations that use their data to influence policy-making and equality legislation in a country which is still deeply divided along socio-religious lines.

‘It ain’t easy being green’: Sustainable Development between Environment and Economy in Northern Ireland’

Given the relative lack of research on sustainable development in Northern Ireland, this paper focuses on the tensions between environmental governance and regulation on the one hand, and the ‘post-conflict’ imperative for Northern Ireland to compete and grow as a regional economy without continued British state subvention and subsidisation. The paper outlines how this ‘trade-off’ between ‘environment’ and ‘economy’ is essentially misplaced. It argues that this trade-off can be avoided if there is a shift in focus from an ‘environment versus the economy’ policy position to one in which the ‘triple bottom line’ (social, economic and environmental) of sustainable development becomes the over-arching policy agenda. Sustainable development, unlike either orthodox environmental or economic policy, also connects centrally with the unique ‘post-conflict transformation’ agenda of Northern Ireland. For example, promoting a human rights civic culture, tackling socioeconomic inequality and social exclusion, and building a shared future based on supporting sustainable communities and an innovative model of a ‘green(ing) economy’ goes beyond orthodox economic growth. However, it is clear from the Executive’s Programme for Government, failure to support the creation of an independent Environment Protection Agency, and above all the prioritisation of orthodox economic growth based on foreign direct investment that neither environmental protection nor sustainable development is or will be high on the political or policy agenda in Northern Ireland.

The journey of a ‘green’ micro-enterprise – The Green Planet

This teaching case explores the longitudinal evolution of a small environmental micro-enterprise, The Green Planet retail store. Exploring two decades of business history it analyses the development of this business as sustainability issues and greener consumer goods mainstreamed in society. The case presents one of the first explorations of the individual trade-offs that owners make between economic, environmental and social criteria, alongside an exploration of the role that the personal values of the owner played in the evolution of this business. Also presented is a sample of other environmental enterprises profiled alongside The Green Planet in the early 1990s. This additional dataset provides a rich resource for readers, and a number of indicative discussion themes are identified. Readers interested in topics such as marketing, business strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility and environmental management will find this case a valuable addition to their teaching resources.

‘Towards a Concrete Utopian Model of Green Political Economy’

Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or ‘business as usual’ approaches. This article suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the UK and other ‘developed’ Northern polities and most corporate/business interests, and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable development’ policy documents from the UK Government. While critical of the reformist ‘policy telos’ of ecological modernisation, supporters of a more radical version of sustainable development need to also be aware of the strategic opportunities of this policy discourse. In particular, the article suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’, which can be attached to a radicalised notion of ecological modernisation, ought to be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outlining aspects of a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development.

Telling stories of 21st Century welfare: the UK Coalition Government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency’ Critical Social Policy

Policy documents are a useful source for understanding the privileging of particular ideological and policy preferences (Scrase and Ockwell, 2010) and how the language and imagery may help to construct society’s assumptions, values and beliefs. This article examines how the UK Coalition government’s 2010 Green Paper, 21st Century Welfare, and the White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, assist in constructing a discourse about social security that favours a renewal and deepening of neo-liberalization in the context of threats to its hegemony. The documents marginalize the structural aspects of persistent unemployment and poverty by transforming these into individual pathologies of benefit dependency and worklessness. The consequence is that familiar neo-liberal policy measures favouring the intensification of punitive conditionality and economic rationality can be portrayed as new and innovative solutions to address Britain’s supposedly broken society and restore economic competitiveness.

Effects of a green tax reform in Portugal: a general equilibrium analysis

Do ponto de vista da política económica, existe a possibilidade de utilizar a receita dos impostos ambientais para baixar os impostos sobre o trabalho, promovendo assim o emprego. Esta oportunidade surge na literatura como forma dos países industrializados responderem a um duplo desafio: um crescente nível de poluição e um decrescente nível de emprego. Alguns países tomaram já decisões no sentido de alcançar o “duplo dividendo”: melhorias ambientais e diminuição do desemprego. Os resultados teóricos, na sua maioria cépticos em relação à verificação do segundo dividendo, são substancialmente contrariados por uma série de estudos que utilizam modelos de equilíbrio geral. Pretendese com este trabalho fazer uma simulação para a economia portuguesa de uma reforma fiscal ambiental com as características referidas e a verificação da existência do “duplo dividendo”, através de um modelo computacional de equilíbrio geral. Para além disso, é feita uma análise dos impactos do Mercado Europeu de Licenças de Emissão, ao nível sectorial e regional, em Portugal, utilizando dados microeconómicos, com o objectivo de estudar as consequências ao nível das trasacções entre sectores e efeitos distributivos entre regiões.

Renaturing cities using a regionally-focused biodiversity-led multifunctional benefits approach to urban green infrastructure

If a ‘Renaturing of Cities’ strategy is to maximise the ecosystem service provision of urban green infrastructure (UGI), then detailed consideration of a habitat services, biodiversity-led approach and multifunctionality are necessary rather than relying on the assumed benefits of UGI per se. The paper presents preliminary data from three case studies, two in England and one in Germany, that explore how multifunctionality can be achieved, the stakeholders required, the usefulness of an experimental approach for demonstrating transformation, and how this can be fed back into policy. We argue that incorporating locally contextualised biodiversity-led UGI design into the planning and policy spheres contributes to the functioning and resilience of the city and provides the adaptability to respond to locally contextualised challenges, such as overheating, flooding, air pollution, health and wellbeing as well as biodiversity loss. Framing our research to encompass both the science of biodiversity-led UGI and co-developing methods for incorporating a strategic approach to implementation of biodiversity-led UGI by planners and developers addresses a gap in current knowledge and begins to address barriers to UGI implementation. By combining scientific with policy learning and defined urban environmental targets with community needs, our research to date has begun to demonstrate how nature-based solutions to building resilience and adaptive governance can be strategically incorporated within cities through UGI.

The green economy and sustainable development: an uneasy balance?

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (or Rio+20) was conceived at a time of great concern for the health of the world economy. In this atmosphere ‘green economy’ was chosen as one of two central themes for the conference, building on a burgeoning body of literature on the green economy and growth. This research examines the relationship and influence between the double crisis and the rise of ‘greening’ as part of the solution. The aim is to understand what defines and distinguishes the proposals contained in twenty-four sources on the green economy (including policy documents by international agencies and think tanks, and research papers), and what is the meaning and implication of the rising greening agenda for sustainable development as it enters the 21st century. Through a systematic qualitative analysis of textual material, three categories of discourse that can illuminate the meaning and implication of greening are identified: ‘almost business as usual’, ‘greening’, and ‘all change’. An analysis of their relationship with Dryzek's classification of environmental discourse leads to the identification of three interrelated patterns: (1) scarcity and limits, (2) means and ends, and (3) reductionism and unity—which deepen our understanding of the tensions between emerging propositions. The patterns help explain the meaning and implications of greening for sustainable development, revealing an economisation and polarisation of discourses, the persisting weak interpretation of sustainable development, and a tension between the fixing or shifting of dominant socioeconomic paradigms that underpin its conceptualisation.