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on Regulation |
| By: | Pablo del Rio (IPP-CSIC); Pere Mir-Artigues (UdL & Energy Sustainability Research Group (UB)); Elisa Trujillo-Baute (University of Warwick & Barcelona Institute of Economics,Chair of Energy Sustainability) |
| Abstract: | Retail electricity prices have substantially increased in the last decade in the European Union (EU) as a result of different regulations, raising the concern of policy makers. The growth in the support costs for electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) has often been singled out as a main driver of these prices. The aim of this paper is to analyse the degree of influence of RES-E promotion costs on the evolution of the retail price of electricity in the EU Member States. The analysis is carried out for households as well as for industry, with the help of a panel data econometric model. Our results show that the impact of renewable energy promotion costs on the retail electricity prices is positive and statistically significant, although relatively small. Differences across consumer types can be observed. An increase of 1% in those costs induces an average increase of only 0.023% in industrial retail prices and 0.008% in the residential retail prices. This impact on retail prices is mediated by the type of support scheme being adopted, with price-based support instruments showing a greater effect than quantity-based ones. |
| Keywords: | Electricity prices, renewable energy, public support |
| JEL: | L11 Q41 C24 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2016-19&r=reg |
| By: | German Bersalli (GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes) |
| Abstract: | The production and consumption of electricity in Latin America has grown strongly in recent decades (about 4% per year) with an increasing share coming from fossil fuels, which has led to an increase in the carbon intensity of the electricity production. Large hydro still represents a substantial part of the electricity mix in most Latin-American countries. However, the construction of new dams has slowed mainly due to their local environmental consequences. In the last decade, most of these countries showed a growing interest in developing renewable energy technologies (RETs) for power generation, especially wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and small hydroelectric dams. This interest is explained primarily by the need of diversifying the power mix and increase security of supply. Additionally, other policy objectives have been considered, such as the electrification of isolated rural areas, the decrease of energy imports, the creation of new jobs and the reduction of GHG emissions. The latter goal became especially important after the COP21 (Paris, 2015), in which most countries agreed to follow decarbonisation pathways for their economies which means, among other measures, an increased effort to develop green energy. In this context, governments have set relatively ambitious targets and implemented public policies to encourage investment in RETs and thus take advantage of the great potential available. Different policy instruments have been implemented: tax exemptions, feed-in tariffs, feed-in premium, auction systems, tradable certificates, etc. However, even though many years of government effort and public resources have been invested in order to speed up the development, diffusion and implementation of RETs, experiences in different countries show that this is a very slow process. The current share of RETs is still low (or extremely low depending on the country), especially when compared to the ambitions of policy objectives. Support policies for RETs in Argentina is an interesting case to analyse the effectiveness of incentive mechanisms in a context of high risk perception. Recent experience in the electricity sector shows that the application of several theoretically effectives instruments did not produce the expected results despite the large potential available. Could it be explained by a failure in the design and implementation of the main promotion tools or by one unfavorable economic and institutional context and the related barriers? |
| Keywords: | Electricity Market,Renewable energies integration,Argentine |
| Date: | 2016–06–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01338856&r=reg |
| By: | Claire Nicolas; Stéphane Tchung-Ming; Emmanuel Hache |
| Abstract: | To improve energy security and ensure the compliance with stringent climate goals, the European Union is willing to step up its efforts to accelerate the development and deployment of electrification, and in general, of alternative fuels and propulsion methods. Yet, the costs and benefits of imposing norms on vehicle or biofuel mandates should be assessed in light of the uncertainties surrounding these pathways, in terms of e.g. cost of these new technologies. By using robust optimization, we are able to introduce uncertainty simultaneously on a high number of cost parameters without notably impacting the computing time of our model (a French TIMES paradigm model). To account for the different nature of the uncertain parameters we model two kinds of uncertainty propagation with time. We then apply this formal setting to French energy system under carbon constraint. As uncertainty increases, as does technology diversification to hedge against it. In the transportation sector, low-carbon alternatives (CNG, electricity) appear consistently as hedges against cost variations, along with biofuels. Policy implications of diversification strategies are of importance; in that sense, the work undertaken here is a step towards the design of robust technology-oriented energy policies. |
| Keywords: | Robust optimization; Climate change; Energy transition; Transportation policy. |
| JEL: | C61 O33 Q47 R40 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2016-29&r=reg |
| By: | Verdolini, Elena; Vona, Francesco; Popp, David |
| Abstract: | The diffusion of renewable energy in the power system implies high supply variability. Lacking economically viable storage options, renewable energy integration has so far been possible thanks to the presence of fast-reacting mid-merit fossil-based technologies, which act as back-up capacity. This paper discusses the role of fossil-based power generation technologies in supporting renewable energy investments. We study the deployment of these two technologies conditional on all other drivers in 26 OECD countries between 1990 and 2013. We show that a 1% percent increase in the share of fast-reacting fossil generation capacity is associated with a 0.88% percent increase in renewable in the long run. These results are robust to various modifications in our empirical strategy, and most notably to the use of system-GMM techniques to account for the interdependence of renewable and fast-reacting fossil investment decisions. Our analysis points to the substantial indirect costs of renewable energy integration and highlights the complementarity of investments in different generation technologies for a successful decarbonization process. |
| Keywords: | Renewable Energy Investments, Fossil Energy Investments, Complementarity, Energy and Environmental Policy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q42, Q48, Q55, O33, |
| Date: | 2016–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemmi:244327&r=reg |
| By: | Zwart, Gijsbert; Willems, Bert (Groningen University) |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gro:rugsom:16007-eef&r=reg |
| By: | Neuteleers, Stijn; Mulder, Machiel; Hindriks, Frank (Groningen University) |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gro:rugsom:16014-eef&r=reg |
| By: | Virginie Svenningsen (CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Eva Boxenbaum (Copenhagen Business School - CBS - Copenhagen Business School [Copenhagen], CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - MINES ParisTech - École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris - PSL - PSL Research University - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Davide Ravasi (Cass Business School - City University London) |
| Abstract: | The present article examines how employees cope with an organizational setting that is institutionally complex. The empirical setting is a French energy corporation that simultaneously pursues a logic of science and a logic of market through multiple research partnerships with public and private actors engaged in the energy transition. We draw on the literature on institutional logics and hybrid organizations to examine how employees of this French energy corporation deal with this institutionally complex environment. Our findings point to three strategies that individuals use to cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting: aggregating, selective coupling and compartmentalizing. Each individual uses only one strategy. The findings further suggest three psychological factors that seem to explain which of these strategies a given individual adopts for coping with institutional complexity: tolerance for ambiguity, preference for holism, and preference for reductionism. We integrate these findings into a two-dimensional model. These findings contribute to illuminating how individuals cope with institutional complexity in their organizational setting, an insight that can help shed light on why organizations respond somewhat differently to the same institutionally complex field. |
| Keywords: | energy transition., hybrid organizations,Institutional complexity, multiple institutional logics |
| Date: | 2016–07–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01336318&r=reg |
| By: | Chenyu Yang (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor); Ying Fan (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | We develop and estimate a structural model of the U.S. smartphone market. Based on the estimates, we study (1) whether there are too few or too many products in the market from a welfare point of view; and (2) how competition affects product offerings in the market. We find that there are too few products and a reduction in competition further decreases the product offerings. These results suggest that merger policies should be stricter when we take into account the effect of merger on firms' product choices in addition to its effect on prices. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed016:758&r=reg |
| By: | Anna Alberini (University of Maryland,USA); Markus Bareit (ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Adan Martinez-Cruz (ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Massimo Filippini (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) |
| Abstract: | Many countries have adopted policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions from road vehicles. Taxes linked to the CO2 emissions rate or the fuel economy of a vehicle (which is inversely related to its CO2 emissions rate) are examples of such policies. These taxes are usually imposed on new vehicles, and previous evaluations have estimated the increases in the shares or sales of new and fuel-efficient vehicles associated with such taxes. In contrast, we ask whether taxes on new cars that penalize high emitters induce changes in the retirement of used and inefficient vehicles. We exploit natural experiment conditions in Switzerland to analyze the impact of two different “bonus”/“malus” schemes implemented at the cantonal level. In both schemes, the bonus rewards new efficient vehicles. The malus is retroactive in canton Obwalden, in the sense that it is charged on both new and existing high-emitting cars, but it is only applied prospectively to new cars in Geneva. We use a difference-in-difference design within a survival analysis setting. We find that a bonus/malus accelerates the retirement of existing high-emitting vehicles in Obwalden, shortening the expected lifetime of the three most popular make-models by 7 to 11 months. The effect is the opposite in Geneva, where we estimate that the expected lifetime of these three popular models is extended by 5 to 8 months. These findings have important implications about the desirability of bonus/malus schemes and on their design, as well as on old car scrappage programs. |
| Keywords: | Vehicle retirement, Emissions-based taxes, bonus/malus, difference-in-difference, survival analysis, Switzerland |
| JEL: | L62 Q4 Q5 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eth:wpswif:16-257&r=reg |