Chapter 4 - Political–Economic Governance of Renewable Energy Systems: The Key to Create Sustainable Communities

Abstract

A Green Industrial Revolution (GIR) consisting of renewable energy, smart green sustainable communities, water, and waste along advanced technologies has started in China and the European Union but taken the United States by surprise. The European Union, South Korea, and Japan had started a GIR over twodecades ago as Clark and Cooke (2013) make the point in their book on the topic. The GIR is a significant paradigm change from the fossil fuels and nuclear power plants of the Second Industrial Revolution (2IR), which has dominated global economics since the late 1890s, to renewable energy in the late 1990s and is growing at an extraordinarily rapid rate into the 21st century. Energy is then a key energy factor as Clark and Cooke make the point in their new book Global Energy Innovation (2011) on GIR, which is now translated into Chinese (see Chapter 2). While the United States had invented and even began to commercialize many of the new technologies developed into mass markets by the European Union and Japan, it failed in the last twodecades to move ahead of corporate interests, while at the same time recognizing the growing importance of climate change for the future (Chomsky, 2012).