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The future of modern societies depends on their ability to deal with the challenge of climate change in the coming decades. One essential component is a better understanding of innovation processes in the energy sector. This book focuses on sustainability innovations in renewable energies, combined heat and power, and energy service contracting, and analyses the institutions, actors and functions within the innovation system. Of particular interest is the question of whether the joint effect of EU-driven market liberalization and climate policies will succeed in establishing market forces that will drive actors towards more climate-friendly energy production. A special focus is on the role of local utilities in the electricity sector as opposed to large transmission net operators or regional net operators. The countries covered in the contributions include Germany, Denmark, the UK, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
In its latest Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) projects that without further action the global average surface t- perature would rise by a further 1. 8–4. 0°C until the end of this century. But even if the rise in temperature could be limited to the lower end of this range, irreversible and possibly catastrophic changes are likely to occur. Consequently, the protection of the earth’s atmosphere requires substantial efforts to reduce CO and other green- 2 house gas emissions – especially in countries with very high per capita emissions. To limit the imminent rise in temperature, in the Kyoto-Protocol, the European Union has committed itself ...
This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material.
Why does an entire society believe that there are witches who must be burned? What roles did the emerging 'state', the professions of clerics and jurists, and the public involved play in each case? And how could this project be completed? From a sociological point of view, the findings of recent international research on witches provide a model of a more general, highly ambivalent, 'pastoral' attitude, according to which a shepherd has to care for the welfare of his flock as well as for its erring sheep. The first main part describes the clerical initial situation, which developed the 'Dominican' demonological model of witchcraft on the basis of the still dominant magico-religious mentality ...
The European Commission is already preparing the future framework of not-for-profit organizations which will be available to Europeans. The aim of the European Foundation Project is to develop the legislative draft for the legal form of a European Foundation. A team of experts in comparative law from across Europe, commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Compagnia di San Paolo, and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius, has undertaken feasibility research, and developed a proposal. The resulting draft legislation is clearly presented here in a way which makes it easy for the reader to locate information on specific legal issues. The draft is supported by comprehensive explanatory chapters, as well as comparative chapters on each issue which cover European countries, the USA and China. This book lays the groundwork for policy and advocacy initiatives in the European foundation and the not-for-profit sector.
Throughout the European Union, national income tax systems support charitable activities by way of preferential treatment. However, a number of Member States operate relief regimes which appear to trigger the question of compatibility with Union law with respect to the fundamental freedoms. In this first study to examine charity and donor taxation regimes across a wide range of Member States, the author focuses on compatibility with EU non-discrimination law. She examines twenty national regimes, both comparatively and from the perspective of overarching EU law. The countries covered are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania...
In the last decades it has become more and more imperative for our societies, and for decision makers in all areas of society, to understand the dynamics through which innovation systems develop and through which socio-technical systems transform themselves. As both innovation and transformation are strongly intertwined, it has equally become imperative to analyse their dynamics as well as their interplay. This open access volume reflects on the research fields that have developed in the last five decades to do exactly that. It defines and delineates research on systems and innovation as encompassing the scientific study of, first, the conditions, dynamics and impacts associated with the gen...
This anthology is based on a symposium which had as its key issue a critical discussion of different theories of modernisation from the perspective of people's activities in local manorial societies. Modernisation can be studied in terms of changing values, norms and social relationships. From a theoretical point of view the book makes use of the possibility to change main macro-conceptions of the modernisation process, using dichotomies such as feudal/capitalist and individual/collective, and it also tries to integrate tradition and continuity perspective.