Browsing by Subject "Progress"
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Item Open Access A Financial and Policy Analysis of Small Photovoltaic Ownership for Investor-Owned Utility Customers in North Carolina(2013-04-24) Kataoka, GeorgeAs a source of clean distributed generation, small solar photovoltaic (PV) systems for residential investor-owned utility (IOU) customers can yield significant benefits to their owners along with a cleaner energy mix, strengthened economy, and improved environment for all citizens of North Carolina. However, the major barriers to small PV investments on a larger scale remain the high upfront costs and poor return on investment. Yet, North Carolina has significant drivers, including declining costs and strong policy, that may make such investments more attractive in the future. This Master’s Project is split into two parts. Part I investigates the current policies and incentives that impact small PV investment decisions for IOU customers in North Carolina. Part II builds off the research gained from Part I in order to quantify the financial attractiveness of such investments for an average Duke and Progress Energy customer. Part II additionally performs scenario and sensitivity analyses to assess if and when certain factors can significantly alter investment decisions. The results of this project indicate that despite effective policies and incentives in North Carolina, small PV ownership is still a financially unattractive investment—the reference cases yield a net present value (NPV) of less than -$6,000 and -$8,000 for the Progress and Duke customer, respectively. Yet, the impact that such policies and incentives—namely the state and federal investment tax credits—have on these respective NPVs should not be overlooked as they effectively increase the NPVs more than twofold. At the same time, there are many opportunities to further improve the financial attractiveness of such investments, including improvements in net metering policies, the state’s Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard requirements, and demand for Solar Renewable Energy Credits. In such manner, this report does not offer specific policy or financial recommendations. Rather, it is an in-depth analysis of existing policies and economic factors intended to provide both qualitative and quantitative insight for the benefit of small PV investors, the PV industry, and decision makers in North Carolina.Item Open Access The Fullness of Time: Christological Interventions into Scientific Modernity(2018) Slade, KaraAs a work of Christian dogmatic theology, this dissertation proceeds from the primary theological claim that human existence in time is determined by the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. It also examines how the predominant accounts of time in the modern West have been affected by, and produced by, claims of scientific authority. The implications of these accounts are not only a matter of abstract doctrinal and philosophical reflection. Instead, they have had, and continue to have, concrete ramifications for human life together. They have been death-dealing rather than life-giving, characterized by a set of temporal pathologies that participate at the deepest level in marking some lives as expendable.
There are four particular pathologies that this project addresses in turn. The first is the mystification of theology by questions of human origins, especially as those questions are addressed by figures of scientific authority. The second is the problem of progress and politicized eschatology, in which securing a desired vision of the future becomes a human project. The third is temporal distancing, in which some human beings are marked as temporally retrograde or outside of history. The fourth, and final, problem addressed is the Hegelian perspective outside of time from which time is evaluated.
This dissertation offers a set of Christological temporal recalibrations through a reading of Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, highlighting the ways that both figures rejected an approach to time that is not coincidentally intertwined with a racialized account of history, and with the co-opting of Christianity by the modern Western state. It also suggests how the liturgical calendar may, and may not, provide Christians with the formational resources to think differently about their own time, and about their neighbors.