This PDF document was made available as a public service of the RAND Corporation.This research assesses the opportunities and risks that the government of Israel faces in shifting to an energy mix increasingly dominated by domestic and imported natural gas. The analysis seeks to help the Israeli...

An analysis of whether Israel can shift toward natural gas to meet future electricity demand showed that controlling demand is critical. There are then strategies for Israel to build an energy infrastructure in which natural gas provides up to 40 percent of base-load electric-power generating...

Climate regulation of the electricity sector is one of the most important growing — and rapidly changing — areas of law and policy today. This is both because of the critical role that electricity plays in modern society, acting as economic lifeblood, and because of electricity's part in...

A Circular Economy is based on efficiency in natural resource consumption. Reduction in solid and liquid pollution and emissions are built into the new and efficient production processes. To reduce solid and liquid waste, circular economy design is modifying the production process in many...

Deploying a ‘bottom up' asset-level methodology, we analysed the exposure of all of Japan's current and planned coal-fired power stations to environment-related risk. Planned coal capacity greatly exceeds that required for replacement - by 191%. This may result in overcapacity and combined...

Between 2005 and 2008 EU utilities were determined to embark on a major coal-plant construction programme. They announced plans to build 49 GW of new coal-fired power capacity, about 6.3% of total EU installed generating capacity. The majority of proposed coal plants were located in Germany (20...

Gasoline taxes vary widely among industrialized countries, as does support for the United Nations' effort to curtail the use of fossil fuels to address the climate change problem. We argue that malapportionment of the electoral system affects both the rate at which governments tax gasoline and...

Canada's natural capital — its resources, ecosystems and wildlife — are indispensable to the productivity of industry. Despite this, both the public and private sectors have failed to adequately factor in the consequences of production and consumption on the natural environment. There is a...

The Pennsylvania Constitution contains a unique Environmental Rights Amendment (“ERA”) creating an individual right to “clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.” The ERA also includes a public trust element...

The Scandinavian region – Denmark, Norway and Sweden – is a world-leading example of a rapid energy transition as a result of high rates of electrification. These three countries, along with Finland and Iceland, aim to be mostly ‘fossil free’ by 2050; Denmark, Sweden and Norway have some of...