Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development最新文献

{"title":"The economic organization of nuclear power construction projects: Organizational models for production and financing","authors":"Ben Wealer","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.2012353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.2012353","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In order to limit the rise in global average temperature to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, international organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest an increasing role for new nuclear power plants. Their pathways entail a large number of new builds by 2050. Given the projected large-scale deployment of new nuclear reactors, it is therefore essential to analyse the existing organizational models. This paper provides an institutional economic analysis of the organizational models for the production and financing of new nuclear power plants. A particular focus is on private sector involvement and competition. In this regard, the paper looks at the division of tasks between state and private actors in financing and production, the governance structures of the companies involved, their market shares, and their degree of vertical integration. The rate of nuclear expansion proposed under the IEA and IPPC scenarios is higher than has ever been achieved in the history of the industry, which has been in decline and contracting since the 1980s. Since the turn of the century, the nuclear sector has been dominated by Russia, while traditional reactor vendors are continually on the brink of bankruptcy and have more or less abandoned reactor exports. Heavy forging capacity for reactor pressure vessels continues to constrain the supply chain, although some new production capacity has been added. Small modular reactors would not alleviate this situation. On the contrary, they would also rely on heavy forges in Russia and Asia. Government support is required for new nuclear power plants (NPPs), be it in liberalized markets or coordinated economies. In liberalized markets support can take the form of federal loans, or power purchase agreements. Countries with regulated markets and a state-owned nuclear industry such as China, Russia or India will probably continue to build NPPs. However, expansion is slowing down even in these countries, while the share of renewables is on the rise.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114195251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond and beneath megaprojects: exploring submerged drivers of nuclear infrastructures","authors":"P. Johnstone, A. Stirling","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.2012351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.2012351","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Nuclear power has long offered an iconic context for addressing risk and controversy surrounding megaprojects – including trends towards cost overruns, management failures, governance challenges, and accountability breaches. Less attention has focused on reasons why countries continue new nuclear construction despite these well-documented problems. Whilst other analysis tends to frame associated issues in terms of energy provision, this paper will explore how civil nuclear infrastructures subsist within wider ‘infrastructure ecologies’ – encompassing ostensibly discrete megaprojects across both civil and military nuclear sectors. Attending closely to the UK case, we show how understandings of megaprojects can move beyond bounded sectoral and time horizons to include infrastructure patterns and rhythms that transcend the usual academic and policy silos. By illuminating strong military-related drivers modulating civil nuclear ‘infrastructure rhythms’ in the UK, key issues arise concerning bounded notions of a ‘megaproject’ in this context – for instance in how costs are calculated around what seems a far more deeply and broadly integrated ‘nuclear complex’. Major undeclared interdependencies between civilian and military nuclear activities raise significant implications for policymaking and wider democracy.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126845764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The discursive construction of the economic sustainability of nuclear energy megaprojects: British, French, and Finnish debates on state support","authors":"Markku Lehtonen","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2022.2057711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2022.2057711","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The state has always in multiple ways supported the implementation of nuclear-sector megaprojects. The desirability, legitimacy and sustainability of such support cannot be judged objectively and out of context. Notions used to justify support, such as ‘market distortions’ and ‘market failures’, are ultimately subject to deliberation and negotiation in the historically shaped context of the country in question. Drawing on illustrative case studies of media debates in France and the UK in 1990-2020, and stakeholder interviews conducted in Finland in 2016, this article explores the ways in which country-specific histories and traditions have shaped the discourses on state support for nuclear energy megaprojects since the 1990s, with particular attention to economic subsidies. The malleability of the notions of state support and subsidies has allowed political actors in the three countries to opportunistically adapt their argumentation. Where the nuclear proponents used to rely on economic arguments, today opponents highlight the economic unviability of nuclear, while supporters call for broadening the criteria to the wider benefits of nuclear megaprojects in fostering sustainable development. The analysis shows the solidity and power of the respective country-specific nuclear regimes in reproducing and shaping discourses according to their own needs and agendas. In the UK, successive governments undertook substantial efforts, particularly since 2008, to redefine the long-standing principle that nuclear new-build should not be subsidised. In France, nuclear proponents reproduced an image juxtaposing affordable nuclear with subsidised renewables within a specific French public-sector electricity-sector model of a ‘monopoly that works’. The dominant Finnish discourse portrayed nuclear as an electricity source that needs no subsidies, and supplies cheap and reliable low-carbon baseload electricity necessary for the country’s vital export industry. This article argues that the extensive controversies over nuclear subsidies – such as those in the UK – can attend to the procedural requirements of sustainable development, by improving the social robustness and sustainability of policies, and helping to even out the multiple types of asymmetries of power between nuclear-sector actors.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"15 12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127519417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indispensable, safe and sustainable? How the European parliament debated nuclear energy megaprojects in the 1970s energy transition","authors":"Jan-Henrik Meyer","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2022.2031524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2022.2031524","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Present-day energy systems are shaped by past decisions, which were informed by contemporary considerations about different energy sources and visions of the future. Hence, today, at a time when a new energy transition is on the agenda, it is important to understand those past rationales that account for previous energy transitions, notably the introduction of large-scale nuclear power in the 1970s. This article argues that in the debates in the European Parliament, representatives of West European mainstream parties specialising in energy and environmental policy used arguments that reflect the key components of what we today call sustainability. The analysis of the debate on nuclear energy megaprojects in the European Parliament in the mid-1970s examines the arguments used, reflecting expectations about the future that shaped long-term energy planning. Transnational protests at the building sites of nuclear power plants of the mid-1970s were viewed as a threat to what most European policymakers at the time considered an indispensable energy transition. The debate thus offers unique insights into the arguments that underpinned the planned transition to nuclear energy and nuclear megaprojects and attempts to improve popular acceptability, including via better information and participation. The article highlights that those advocating a transition to nuclear power used arguments surprisingly similar to those mobilised in current debates about energy transitions and megaprojects, including the search for nuclear waste disposal sites.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128320568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sustainability assessment of two Australian hydro megaprojects","authors":"G. Currie, J. Black, C. Duffield","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1930970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1930970","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper comprises comparative sustainability assessments of the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project and the Snowy 1.0 hydro project. The compliance of these two projects is studied using the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP). The method for Snowy 1.0, built between 1949 and 1974, was an ex-post analysis using historical documents. The method for Snowy 2.0, recently approved for construction and due for completion in 2024, was to review government documents and interview key stakeholders. These stakeholders included people with intimate knowledge of Snowy 2.0 and other megaproject experts per se. Transcripts of these interviews were analyzed, and summary arguments developed. The interview questions were structured around the Early Stage and Preparation phases in the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol. The conclusion is that Snowy 1.0 performed well on the sustainability assessment but that Snowy 2.0 fails to meet the Protocol's technical, economic, governance and environmental measures.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114606256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Imagine ahead - plan backwards”: melding critical infrastructure planning with strategic foresight","authors":"J. Ratcliffe","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1951485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1951485","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper does not purport to be a scientific paper in the normally accepted academic sense, but is more of an essay cum commentary on how the strategic foresight process can be employed with advantage in the planning and development of mega infrastructure projects. The long-term time horizons of critical infrastructure planning and development demand a robust methodology to allow for risk, uncertainty and change. This is “Strategic Foresight”. Drawing on the author’s considerable experience, the paper seeks to provide a practical and applied description of how this can be achieved and, to this end, it details and critiques the six-stage process deployed by the Futures Academy (The Futures Academy is an applied research and strategic consultancy organisation that was established to provide a creative approach towards strategic planning by providing professional guidance to those concerned with making long-term planning and investment decisions. It was established in January 2003 and located in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.) to describe the methodology’s practical application. Because key stakeholder engagement is so fundamental to the process, it necessarily embodies concern with a prevailing public policy agenda that is preoccupied with the ramifications of climate change and its implications for sustainable development, although this is not discussed in any great detail.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122340384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Remaking Berlin: A History of the City through Infrastructure, 1920–2020","authors":"T. Usón","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1980311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1980311","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116133639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fat tails and climate change: the case for a new approach to major infrastructure appraisal","authors":"M. Hurst","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1980272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1980272","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Conventional project appraisal techniques such as net present value and P50/90 have a strong assumption of symmetric ‘bell curve’ probability distributions and rely heavily on ‘comparative static’ approaches assuming past trends can be extrapolated into the future. For long term mega infrastructure, or portfolios of, projects, these are probably not acceptable assumptions. The case for abandoning normal distribution approaches is strengthened by the presence of ‘disruptors’ (e.g., COVID-19) and tipping points/non-linearities. Among these, climate change is typified by highly asymmetric probability distributions with great uncertainty about the probability of, for example, higher temperature change and sea level rise. Furthermore, the consequences of the events at the top end of the probability distribution are not only very high but also extremely uncertain in themselves. Recent UK guidance accepts that conventional approaches to project appraisal may be sub-optimal here. Moves to reduce carbon emissions impose an extra uncertainty on many infrastructure projects in terms of technological development and the related pathways to net zero. So, distributions even if symmetric may display ‘fat tails’ with higher-than-Normal probability of extreme outcomes. Probability distributions will also be ‘skewed’: with a much higher than conventionally assumed probability of adverse consequences. But the more extreme, ‘regression to the tail’ concept needs further exploration before it can be used in practice. While there remains a place for NPV approaches, practitioners need to rebalance towards scenario analysis, adaptive pathways/more continuous assurance and non-monetised approaches. More work is also required to identify how and how far it is reasonable to adapt NPVs to skewed probability distributions.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122154337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"COVID-19 lessons for climate change","authors":"B. Field","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1987148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1987148","url":null,"abstract":"Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak being declared a global pandemic, climate change was at the forefront of political and academic discourse. To protect the future of the planet, climate scientists and environmentalists were calling on policy makers for urgent and decisive action on a massive and global scale to control greenhouse gas emissions, not only highlighting the important role of mega infrastructure projects in delivering on climate-change mitigation but also bringing into sharp focus the need for significant investment in adaptation initiatives to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure going forward. As the public health crisis took hold, however, the world’s spotlight moved away from climate concerns to focus on the pandemic and its ramifications. The latter has since taken a terrible toll in both lives lost and those incapacitated by serious infection, as well as on-going suffering occasioned by long-COVID. It has affected all aspects of everyday life and work, and has had a major detrimental impact on the global economy. Despite initial hesitation in many countries on how to deal with the unfolding threat to public health, the urgency with which the global community has since responded to the crisis and managed to contain its destructive powers has been impressive. This is in sharp contrast to the prevarication and relatively slow response to the threats posed by climate change, in spite of a number of similarities between the two crises. Against this backdrop, the various successes and failures of the COVID-19 policy response offer unprecedented insights into how the global climate crisis could and perhaps should also be managed. There are many parallels between the current public health crisis and what we can expect from the impending global climate emergency, not least because highly infectious diseases such COVID-19 and anthropogenically induced global warming are both classic examples of what economists call negative externalities, i.e. situations where production and consumption behaviour results in costs to third parties that normal markets struggle to internalise and cannot therefore manage. Economic actors, for example, do not directly bear the climate-change related costs associated with the emissions that they can dump free of charge into the atmosphere, in the same way that asymptomatic COVID carriers who sneeze without a face-mask do not bear the costs of any infection that they may have transmitted inadvertently. Such market failure necessitates public intervention to redress the situation in order to achieve more economically efficient outcomes, and is the rationale for government intervention in even the most laissez-faire capitalist economies. But for the pandemic and climate change, even action by individual national governments is not enough. Both are global externalities that call for global intervention, and clearly face similar challenges in addressing governance, institutional and societal barriers again","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"134 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121686638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How do NDC and UN’s sustainable development goals introduce new meaning of sustainability within mega transport project appraisals?","authors":"C. Mukhopadhyay, Darshini Mahadevia","doi":"10.1080/24724718.2021.1930946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24724718.2021.1930946","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the cities of two million or more population in India, with expected high rates of urbanisation, fifty urban metro-rail projects are planned to meet the large latent demand for mobility. The debates about mass transit projects in India have compared the appropriateness of rail-based versus bus-based city-wide public transport systems. The national government formulated Metro Rail Policy in 2017 with partial national government funding. It is important to assess such mega-transport projects in order to understand their contribution to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the context of the Paris Agreement of 2015, and Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this paper we propose an expansion of a published project appraisal checklist on three rationales, i.e., the potential for realistic climate change mitigation, five relevant SDGs at the target level, and effective input from multiple stakeholders and actors across multiple stages of the life cycle of a project.","PeriodicalId":143411,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115212577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}