In the aftermath of the Paris Agreements, many countries around the globe have pledged to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere. To do so, it is important that the amount of renewable energy in the electricity grid increases, though there are worries of the capacity of the grid to cope with intermittent energy sources. To assess the feasibility of a 100% renewable energy system in Japan, the authors conducted an hourly simulation of future electricity production based on wind, solar and tidal data in Japan. The system was shown to be stable, and the authors calculated the required capacity of electrical batteries that would be necessary to balance such a system.

As many universities in non-Anglophone countries have committed to internationalising their academic programmes, more content courses in Arts and Sciences are being taught in English. When content courses are taught in English in a country where English is not the first language, this is called English Medium Instruction (EMI). Using specific country cases, previous studies have confirmed that an EMI course can pose many challenges to the learning of course content by students. To date, there have been few attempts to examine these challenges through a large-scale qualitative prism, which would be useful for gaining new insights in order to inform policy as well as classroom interventions. In this systematic thematic synthesis we have aimed to identify the obstacles to implementing learner-centred pedagogy in EMI tertiary programmes, focusing on student perspectives. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) and Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies (COREQ) were used to appraise and synthesise 40 empirical articles. The articles included 1769 participants in 20 non-Anglophone countries and jurisdictions. The participants were both local and international non-native English-speaking students enrolled in EMI courses. The synthesis yielded 46 descriptive themes stratified into six analytical domains. The suggested domains are meta/linguistic, instructional, meta/cognitive, socio-cultural, affective, and institutional obstacles. They suggest that students in different regions faced quite similar challenges in their EMI courses. The challenges consist of inadequate use of English by students and lecturers, and a lack of student-centred pedagogy, particularly in teacher–student and student–student interactions. The findings of most learner-centred EMI studies revealed that the main challenges came from English comprehension (the first three suggested domains); fewer studies included factors related to the learning environment (the last three domains). This review can inform university administrators, teaching staff and researchers engaged in internationalising higher education and aid in designing appropriate EMI programmes that offer better learner-centred educational experiences.

This paper focuses on the articulated intentions andregistered projects of emerging developmental government in Uzbekistanvis-a-vis Russia, China, South Korea and Japan in the areas of Energy andTransport Infrastructure Development. By thematically analyzing the cooperationroadmaps for 2017–2019, this paper offers insights into how Uzbekistaninternalizes energy and infrastructure-related projects with these countries inits re-opening to the international community in post-Karimov era. This paperclaims that Uzbekistan looks beyond the connectivity rhetoric in its foreignpartners’ interest in energy and transportation and seeks to capitalize on therelated projects to position itself as an industrial and transportation hub forother CA countries and Afghanistan. In addition, for Uzbekistan, theinfrastructure and energy-related initiatives are part of its de-colonizationagenda aiming to shift its economy from being resource-based to being based onthe export of value-added products.

Uzbekistan is an emerging economy in the heart of Central Asia. Due to the country’s diverse geographic and climatic conditions the population is unevenly distributed among its regions. This fact makes some small settlements in remote areas prone to electricity supply disruption, sometimes caused by outdated infrastructure and high transmission losses, which can cause system failures during peaks in power demand. As a result people in such regions become socialy and economically isolated. Given this situation, some remote villages opt to use diesel generators and other fuel alternatives which have a significant environmental footprint. This paper uses the case study of Uzbekistan, as an example of a developing post-Socialist country undergoing an economic transition from planned to market economy to analyse if hybrid wind or solar energy systems are economically viable, compared to diesel run systems. In order to do so authors fed real meteorological data for six selected regions in Uzbekistan into the HOMER software. Further, the authors investigate changes in monetary policy recently taking place in the country and question the consistency of such changes with the course taken towards increasing the share of renewables in power generation. The paper concludes that although renewables appear to be economically viable (even in a fossil-fuel rich country), the government needs to synchronise different policy tools in orderto build an efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable energy system. Uzbekistan is an emerging economy. Keywords: distributed hybrid energy systems; feasibility study; HOMER; developing country; energy economics;Central Asia.

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