robust portfolio optimization for electricity planning an application based on the brazilian electricity mix one of the major challenges of today s policy makers and industry strategists is to achieve an electricity mix that presents a high level of energy security within a range of affordable costs and environmental constraints bearing in mind the planning of a more reliable electricity mix the main contribution of this paper is to consider parameter uncertainties on the electricity portfolio optimization problem we assume that the expected and the covariance matrix of the costs for the different energy technologies such as gas coal nuclear oil biomass wind large and small hydropower are not exactly known we consider that these parameters belong to some uncertainty sets box ellipsoidal lower and upper bounds and convex polytopic three problems are analyzed i finding a energy portfolio of minimum worst case volatility with guaranteed fixed maximum expected energy cost ii finding an energy portfolio of minimum worst case expected cost with guaranteed fixed maximum volatility of the energy cost iii finding a combination of the expected and variance of the cost weighted by a risk aversion parameter these problems are written as quadratic second order cone programming socp and semidefinite programming sdp so that robust optimization tools can be applied these results are illustrated by analyzing the efficient brazilian electricity energy mix considered in losekann et al 2013 assuming possible uncertainties in the vector of expected costs and covariance matrix the results suggest that the robust approach being by nature more conservative can be useful in providing a reasonable electricity energy mix conciliating co2 emission risk and costs under uncertainties on the parameters of the model

relational goods and participation incorporating sociability into a theory of rational action theoretical explanations of why rational individuals would participate in politics remain unsatisfactory this paper addresses the problem by developing and analyzing models which include among citizens payoffs relational goods objectives which depend upon interactions among persons the models predict more participation than do the standard approaches for example under some circumstances persons will be more likely to act if they believe others will act contrary to free rider logic more importantly conditions are identified under which leaders could increase mass activity thus a model is provided of mobilization in terms of the preferences and decisions of a rational individual

the implications of industrial development for diversification of fuels abstract the central role of energy in economic growth and development is substantiated by both theory and data much of the analysis of energy in economics has focused on the study of the aggregate output here we deviate from this approach and study the role of fuel diversification in industrial development we build the energy space describing the space of energy technologies which a country can use in the production of manufacturing goods as countries grow they diversify their industries producing more diverse products over time we show that the process is accompanied by diversification of fuels which countries use in the manufacturing sector in particular countries move in the energy space by adopting novel fuels while their movements can be linked to structural changes in the industry over time countries build unique production capabilities which drives divergence in fuel diversity between countries our results provide insight into the limits of fuel substitution in the manufacturing sector as well as they carry important implications for the assessment of potential reductions in co 2 emissions in the future

investment risks in power generation a comparison of fossil fuel and renewable energy dominated markets abstract due to their high capital intensity weather dependent renewable energies res such as solar and wind face considerable investment risks in power markets in addition their uncertain production volumes also affect the investment risks of other plant types through the impact on power prices and residual demand increasing res shares thus potentially increase overall investment risks in power markets which many analysts consider to be a potential problem against this background this paper compares investment risks of different technologies in markets with increasing shares of variable res it further analyses how generation mixes are affected by these investment risks if the risks are evaluated on a stand alone basis or in a plant portfolio context of a private firm for this purpose a stylized investment and dispatch model is used to conduct monte carlo simulations from which risk measures are derived the results show that capital intensive res face the highest stand alone risks since their profits are most affected by the power price risk however the results further indicate that the stand alone risks of variable res decrease with their share in the market because of a negative correlation of output and price risk in addition res have a risk benefit in firm plant portfolios in terms of constituting a hedge against losses of fossil fuel plants this positive portfolio effect however rapidly decreases and becomes negative with increasing res shares in the market

determinants of child mortality health and nutrition in a developing country abstract child health and nutrition status are important determinants of adult productivities and earnings and thus are an important channel of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility building upon economic models of household behavior we investigate the determinants of child mortality and health and nutrition status in regions defined by the degree of urbanization in the developing country of nicaragua and offer some policy suggestions our estimates suggest that determinants differ significantly across regions income is not an important factor there is an inverse relation with number of siblings and there are positive associations with calorie intake schooling except in the relatively low income rural areas the availability of refrigeration and the quality of sewage systems

an analysis of childhood malnutrition in rural india role of gender income and other household characteristics there are controversies regarding the role of individual and household characteristics in childhood nutritional status measured by anthropometric indicators using a nutrition index based on weight for age of children in rural india the paper re examines this issue ordered probit estimates of nutritional status suggest female literacy improves the nutritional status of boys at the cost of girls while higher per capita current income improves that of both boys and girls though the impact is higher for boys however effect of income is not robust when we use instruments of longer run income but more income and literacy give more ways to discriminate between boys and girls

regulation in the european community all governments regulate economic activity in their own countries the single european market will involve a significant transfer of regulatory activity from member states to the european community as well as the initiation of regulatory activity in certain areas that have not previously been subject to regulation at all including the activities of member states themselves as in taxation or the provision of subsidies to industry why should governments wish to make such a transfer of powers what do they have to gain

quantifying the supplier portfolio diversity of embodied energy strategic implications for strengthening energy resilience this paper investigates energy resilience of countries by quantifying the supplier diversification of both direct and embodied energy import in particular we quantify two approaches to diversify a country s supplier portfolio by lowering the dependency on each supplier portfolio diversification and by having embodied energy suppliers that are different from its direct energy suppliers portfolio differentiation we examine possibilities for strategic utilization of embodied energy trade to compensate for low diversity of direct energy trade for three types of fossil resources coal oil and gas we find that the diversity of embodied energy import is much greater than that of direct energy import of the three energy resources coal enables countries to adopt portfolio diversification and portfolio differentiation more than gas and oil our results suggest embodied energy can be considered as a transfer of energy resources across national borders that can directly benefit from the diversity of the world energy production by skipping the limited diversity of the world energy export

redistribution effects of energy and climate policy the electricity market abstract energy and climate policies are usually seen as measures to internalize externalities however as a side effect the introduction of these policies redistributes wealth between consumers and producers and within these groups while redistribution is seldom the focus of the academic literature in energy economics it plays a central role in public debates and policy decisions this paper compares the distributional effects of two major electricity policies support schemes for renewable energy sources and co2 pricing we find that the redistribution effects of both policies are large and they work in opposed directions while renewables support transfers wealth from producers to consumers carbon pricing does the opposite more specifically we show that moderate amounts of wind subsidies can increase consumer surplus even if consumers bear the subsidy costs co2 pricing in contrast increases aggregated producer surplus even without free allocation of emission allowances however not all types of producers benefit these findings are derived from an analytical model of electricity markets and a calibrated numerical model of northwestern europe our findings imply that if policy makers want to avoid large redistribution they might prefer a mix of policies even if co2 pricing alone is the first best climate policy in terms of allocative efficiency

establishing the role that wind generation may have in future generation portfolios assessing the correct future mix in generation portfolios has become more difficult given the introduction of emission trading schemes the recent fuel price rises and the increasing competitiveness of wind energy this paper combines analysis of generation economics load and wind generation characteristics generation adequacy and plant utilization to gain insight into the role of wind generation in desirable generation portfolios the unique characteristics of wind generation are accounted for in the analysis and sensitivity analysis is carried out with respect to discount rates carbon taxes and various fuel price scenarios results show that for a large range of future scenarios wind generation has a significant role to play in future generation portfolios in ireland mean variance portfolio theory is applied to examine the benefits of portfolio diversification in terms of avoiding exposure to volatile fuel prices analysis shows that wind generation has a further role to play in generation portfolios in this respect

bru u u uce the simple economics of mob goods this paper provides a pure economic rationale for chronic excess demand for tickets to events like rock concerts the model focuses on mob goods which are consumed jointly with crowd reaction or noise whereas the primary commodity is provided by the seller the joint product is provided collectively by buyers if propensities to make noise are inversely correlated with reservation prices and a capacity constraint applies excess demand queuing is a necessary condition for profit maximization one important implication is that anti scalping laws may be welfare increasing the paper explores other applications in professional sports restaurants and on stage theatre

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

new problem formulation of emission constrained generation mix this paper proposes an enhanced optimization formulation to help determine the type of power generation mix that can meet a given carbon emission target at the minimum cost compared to the previous studies the model proposed in this paper takes account of the emission cost at operational level and explores its impacts on the long term emission target oriented generation planning innovatively meanwhile the model is able to take account of the integer variables and nonlinearity of the operational cost together with network constraints and renewable generation expansion in one long term generation planning model the problem is solved by an innovative discrete gradient search method and a new concept emission reduction cost erc is developed which helps determine which generation technology is the most cost efficient in emission reduction during different stages of generation expansion a case study on a modified ieee 30 bus system is presented to demonstrate the application of this model and the value of considering short term emission costs and the network constraints on the long term generation expansion the results and sensitivity analysis are provided to show that a higher short term financial pressure can help realize the emission target at a lower total cost investment and operational costs optimization without considering it may overestimate the total cost required for the generation mix restructuring additionally a comparative study shows that optimization without considering network constraints may underestimate the total cost required for realizing the specified emission reduction target

determining the impact of wind on system costs via the temporal patterns of load and wind generation ambitious targets have been set for expanding electricity generation from renewable sources including wind expanding wind power impacts needs for other electricity generating resources as states plan for increasing levels of wind generation in their portfolio of generation resources it is important to consider how this intermittent resource impacts the need for other generation resources a case study for indiana estimates the value of wind capacity and demonstrates how to optimize its level and the levels of other generation resources changes are driven by temporal patterns of wind power output and load system wide impacts are calculated for energy capacity and costs under multiple wind expansion scenarios which highlight the geographic characteristics of a systems portfolio of wind generation the impacts of carbon prices as proposed in the bingaman bill are considered finally calculations showing the effect increasing levels of wind generation will have on end use indiana retail rates are included

stochastic optimization model to study the operational impacts of high wind penetrations in ireland a stochastic mixed integer linear optimization scheduling model minimizing system operation costs and treating load and wind power production as stochastic inputs is presented the schedules are updated in a rolling manner as more up to date information becomes available this is a fundamental change relative to day ahead unit commitment approaches the need for reserves dependent on forecast horizon and share of wind power has been estimated with a statistical model combining load and wind power forecast errors with scenarios of forced outages the model is used to study operational impacts of future high wind penetrations for the island of ireland results show that at least 6000 mw of wind 34 of energy demand can be integrated into the island of ireland without significant curtailment and reliability problems

the effects of wind generation capacity on electricity prices and generation costs a monte carlo analysis abstractwe use monte carlo analysis to examine the potential of increased renewable generation to provide a hedge against variability in energy prices and costs fuel costs electricity demand and wind generation are allowed to vary and a unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithm is employed to produce cost minimizing generation schedules under different levels of installed wind capacity increased wind capacity reduces the mean and the variance of production costs but only the variance of electricity prices wind generators see their market revenues increase while consumer payments and fossil generator profits do not considerably vary as wind capacity increases risk aversion is captured by considering the conditional value at risk for both consumers and producers the optimal level of wind generation increases as risk aversion increases due to the potential of wind to act as a hedge against very high electricity prices in high fuel price scenarios

looking for boy girl discrimination in household expenditure data the ability to test for discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls is hampered by a lack of data on intrahousehold distribution the analysis presented here allows inferences about intrahousehold allocation to be made from householdlevel expenditure data for a given level of income families with children will spend less on adult goods in order to purchase children s goods if household purchasing favors boys over girls smaller expenditures on adult goods would be made by families with boys as compared with those with girls a method for determining adult goods is described and the procedure for detecting gender bias is applied to data from c6te d lvoire and thailand the data show no evidence of discriminatio n between boys and girls in c6te d lvoire and a small and statistically insignificant bias in favor of boys in thailand how commodities are allocated among the members of a household has recently occasioned a good deal of interest assessments of poverty and income distribution based on household incomes or expenditures will be misleading if allocation within the household is unequal the position of women and girls has been of particular concern and there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence much of it from the indian subcontinent that documents discrimination against females see in particular bhagwati 1973 sen 1984 sen and sengupta 1983 miller 1981 bardhan 1982 and kynch and sen 1983 as well as survey papers by behrman 1987 and harriss 1987 much of the evidence is concerned with measurements of nutritional outcomes mortality and health status rather than with the direct allocation of goods by gender the difficulty in trying to determine the intrahousehold allocation of goods is that household budget surveys the obvious source of data record consumption not of individuals but of households and while attempts can be made to the author is a professor of public affairs and of economics and international affairs at princeton university and is a consultant to the population and human resources department of the world bank the author thanks dwayne benjamin who provided for excellent research assistance he is grateful to him and to members of the economic growth center at yale university for helpful comments this is a revised and shortened version of living standards measurement study working paper 39 the allocation of goods within the household adults children and gender june 1987 the results from thailand were not included in the working paper 1989 the international bank for reconstruction and development the world bank

resilience and electricity systems a comparative analysis electricity systems have generally evolved based on the natural resources available locally few metrics exist to compare the security of electricity supply of different countries despite the increasing likelihood of potential shocks to the power system like energy price increases and carbon price regulation this paper seeks to calculate a robust measure of national power system resilience by analysing each step in the process of transformation from raw energy to consumed electricity countries with sizeable deposits of mineral resources are used for comparison because of the need for electricity intensive metals processing we find that shifts in electricity intensive industry can be predicted based on countries power system resilience

the european low carbon mix for 2030 the role of renewable energy sources in an environmentally and socially efficient approach abstract the european union s commitment to increase the presence of renewable energy sources in its portfolio has resulted in better levels of security of supply competitiveness and environmental sustainability this proposed work reviews european legislation regarding the promotion of renewable energy sources as well as the bibliography that applies portfolio theory methodology to energy policy this double revision gives rise to the question whether the share limits of renewable energy technologies anticipated for the european power mix in 2020 and 2030 are actually efficient the optimization model corrects for the attractiveness of renewable energy sources as opposed to conventional sources in terms of costs risks and pollutant gas emissions this model successfully and explicitly identifies the positive effect on the environment that is represented by the inclusion of renewable energy sources in the portfolio the goal is to minimize the cost and risk that society must bear to produce electricity in addition to compliance with european pollutant gas co2 so2 nox and pm objectives the results for 2020 indicate that the eu would not be able to reach its emissions reduction goals with the anticipated shares of renewable energy sources in 2030 achieving a lower emissions portfolio would not mean taking on greater costs although it would be necessary to assume a greater level of risk the anticipated shares of renewable energy sources 5 and fossil fuel technologies 15 would be overdimensioned in the forecasts analyzed in terms of technologies both nuclear and wind energy stand out both with shares above 20 on the contrary biomass and solar photovoltaic energies would be unnecessary in order to reach efficiency in any case one thing is clear the eu would be the master of its energy future if it prioritizes the importance of renewable energy sources in its efficient portfolio

capital budgeting under uncertainty an extended goal programming approach mathematical programming techniques have long been recognized as the most suitable approach to the complex problem of capital budgeting in corporations this is because contrary to conventional single project appraisal techniques such as the net present value method financial planners do not normally engage in project by project analysis to determine the projects that would be included in capital budgets in addition the existing chance constrained both single and multiple objectives models developed to deal with the problem of uncertainty in capital budgeting are grossly defective since they indeed address the problem of risk rather than uncertainty this paper presents an extended goal programming methodology to address the problem of capital budgeting under uncertainty to overcome the defects of chance constrained capital budgeting models in particular since financial planners frequently deal with the complex problem of capital budgeting by aggregating large numbers of small investment proposals into families of large projects the paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions for the acceptance of a set of investment projects by a business enterprise the results indicate that under uncertainty firms faced with capital rationing are less economically efficient than others that are not so faced also the results show that optimal allocation policy under uncertainty requires the actual discount rate to be greater than the market cost of capital a finding which is consistent with corporate finance practice

cvar constrained planning of renewable generation with consideration of system inertial response reserve services and demand participation abstract integration of renewable generation can lead to both diversification of energy sources which can improve the overall economic performance of the power sector and cost increase due to the need for further resources to provide flexibility and thus secure operation from unpredictable variable and asynchronous generation in this context we propose a cost risk model that can properly plan generation and determine efficient technology portfolios through balancing the benefits of energy source diversification and cost of security of supply through the provision of various generation frequency control and demand side services including preservation of system inertia levels we do so through a scenario based cost minimization framework where the conditional value at risk cvar associated with costs under extreme scenarios of fossil fuel prices combined with hydrological inflows is constrained the model can tackle problems with large data sets e g 8760 hours and 1000 scenarios since we use linear programming and propose a benders based method adapted to deal with cvar constraints in the master problem through several analyses including the chilean main electricity system we demonstrate the effects of renewables on hedging both fossil fuel and hydrological risks effects of security of supply on costs risks and renewable investment and the importance of demand side services in limiting risk exposure of generation portfolios through encouraging risk mitigating renewable generation investment

energy security and improvements in the function of diversity indices taiwan energy supply structure case study abstract facing the risk and uncertainty inherent in social and economic development many countries have adopted an energy supply diversification strategy in their energy security policy to control the energy import risk and cost to ensure that sufficient energy can be obtained at an affordable price level diversification helps the energy system respond to external changes and shocks diversification can also lessen the vulnerability of a single energy source to supply shocks and the market power of various energy supply sources this study develops the diversity reliability index and co vary diversity reliability index based on the hirschman herfindahl and shannon wiener indices investigates the contribution of different energy sources to the energy system and analyzes the covariance between various energies and their impacts on energy security to determine the impact of energy diversity in reducing the risk of energy supply shortages and cost fluctuations

food value chain transformations in developing countries selected hypotheses on nutritional implications we examine how the transformation of food value chains fvcs influence the triple malnutrition burden undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition in developing countries we propose a fvc typology modern traditional modern to traditional and traditional to modern that takes into account the participants the target market and the products offered next we propose selected hypotheses on the relationship between each fvc category and elements of the triple malnutrition burden the primary finding is that the transformation of fvcs creates challenges and opportunities for nutrition in developing countries for example modern fvcs may increase over nutrition problems and alleviate micronutrient deficiencies for urban people with relatively high incomes however they have little nutritional impacts among rural residents and urban poor people who primarily depend on traditional fvcs to access adequate quantities of calories and micronutrients in addition modern food manufacturers are leveraging traditional distribution networks modern to traditional fvcs substantially increasing access to low priced processed packaged foods in rural areas and low income urban neighbors with mixed impacts on the triple burden of malnutrition further research should focus on the influence of fvc transformation on reduction of micronutrient deficiencies on modeling demand substitution effects across food categories and the attendant policy implications for malnutrition

assessing the value of wind generation in future carbon constrained electricity industries this paper employs a novel monte carlo based generation portfolio assessment tool to explore the implications of increasing wind penetration and carbon prices within future electricity generation portfolios under considerable uncertainty this tool combines optimal generation mix techniques with monte carlo simulation and portfolio analysis methods to determine expected overall generation costs associated cost uncertainty and expected co2 emissions for different possible generation portfolios a case study of an electricity industry with coal combined cycle gas turbines ccgt open cycle gas turbines ocgt and wind generation options that faces uncertain future fossil fuel prices carbon pricing electricity demand and plant construction costs is presented to illustrate some of the key issues associated with growing wind penetrations the case study uses half hourly demand and wind generation data from south eastern australia and regional estimates of new build plant costs and characteristics results suggest that although wind generation generally increases overall industry costs it reduces associated cost uncertainties and co2 emissions however there are some cases in which wind generation can reduce the overall costs of generation portfolios the extent to which wind penetration affects industry expected costs and uncertainties depends on the level of carbon price and the conventional technology mix in the portfolios

threshold models of interpersonal effects in consumer demand abstract whether one buys may be determined in part by how many others have when the correlation is positive we refer to bandwagon effects and when negative reverse bandwagons we construct demand schedules in the presence of such effects and with simple assumptions about supply investigate the existence of and approach to equilibrium stable price quantity equilibria exist but for many plausible parameter values equilibria are asymptotically unstable and system trajectories consist of cycles that can move with slight parameter changes via successive bifurcations into what has been called chaotic dynamics essentially indistinguishable from random noise these conditions occur despite assumptions of erfect information profit maximizing firms and utility maximizing individuals

risk return incentives in liberalised electricity markets we employ monte carlo analysis to determine the distribution of returns for various electricity generation technologies costs and revenues for each technology are calculated by means of a unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithm at hourly resolution this represents a considerable contribution to the literature as costs and revenues are determined endogenously which in turn allows the returns of midmerit and peaking plant to be examined market entry is determined on the basis of a heuristic while market exit is according to a predetermined retirement schedule the results show that ccgt is the investment technology of choice for baseload only portfolios while ocgt proves optimal when all technologies are considered the high capital costs of baseload generation reduce incentives to invest the methodology can be expanded to consider random outages revenues from scarcity prices capacity markets and ancillary service payments

determinants of child morbidity and factors governing utilization of child health care evidence from rural india prevention as well as effective treatment of respiratory infections and diarrhoea depends on several individual household and community level factors the objective of this article is to estimate the role played by such factors in determining the occurrence of such diseases and utilization of formal health care for children under the age of three in india the major findings are briefly enlisted as follows first a woman with greater educational qualification and autonomy in terms of her power to take decisions on her own control over household resources and complete freedom to move beyond the confines of her household exerts a significant influence on the probability of seeking care in addition to this formal care is more likely to be sought for children whose mothers are more exposed to the media programmes devised to enhance utilization of formal health care for children should be targeted to catering for the needs of the vulnerable group i e female child predominantly residing in households b

the assessment the new energy paradigm during the 1980s and 1990s energy policy concentrated on privatization liberalization and competition in response to the underlying conditions of excess supply and low fossil fuels these conditions changed around 2000 in response to the coincidence of a structural upward shift in oil prices the aging of the assets network failures and greater import dependency the focus moved from asset sweating towards investment and has been accompanied by a paradigm shift in the objectives of energy policy towards security of supply and climate change this article sets out the implications for the choice of instruments and institutions in the context of liberalized markets in respect of security of supply and climate change market based instruments are advanced in the former capacity markets and in the latter carbon taxes and permits finally consideration is given to the case for a single integrated energy agency both to enhance credibility and to ensure consistency copyright 2005 oxford university press

maternal empowerment and child malnutrition in bangladesh abstractthe study examines the importance of maternal empowerment in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in bangladesh maternal empowerment is measured by a composite index based on four

the determinants of nutrient intake results from western india abstract this paper presents and tests a model of the determinants of nutrient intake the model is based on an identity whereby calorie intake per adult equivalent can be expressed as a function of total expenditure the share of food in the budget a unit value index an expenditure efficiency index and household composition these endogenous variables are in turn expressed as a function of exogenous variables such as assets demographic factors and agricultural technology the results help to explain the large variance in calorie intake at a given level of income and suggest that interesting compensatory behavior occurs by households

nutrition health birth order and seasonality intrahousehold allocation among children in rural india abstract nutrients available to children are determined largely by intrahousehold allocations there are a number of reasons why birth order may affect these allocations a model is developed to estimate critical parameters of parental preferences regarding the allocation of nutrients among their children latent variable estimates for rural south india indicate that parental preferences have productivity equity tradeoffs and parents favor older children the productivity equity tradeoff however is much less for the lean season therefore when food is scarcest parents follow more closely a pure investment strategy exposing their more vulnerable children to greater malnutrition tisk

diversity and ignorance in electricity supply investment addressing the solution rather than the problem the need for diversity has been cited as a rationale for important recent investment decisions in the uk electricity supply sector it is invoked as the principal argument for continuing major government intervention yet there exists no formal analytical basis for the concept why is diversity good what is meant by diversification what is it that must be diversified what trade off should be struck between diversity and other measures of performance the resulting ambiguity causes confusion and is vulnerable to special pleading despite this this paper argues that diversification offers a superior alternative to probabilistic approaches towards uncertainty and ignorance in electricity supply investments and proposes a formal analytical approach a quantitative index of diversity is borrowed from information theory and used to derive a value for the government s implicit willingness to pay for diversity in the uk electricity supply mix this is then applied in a pilot exercise to the problem of optimizing the diversity and financial performance of the supply portfolio although provisional the results are relevant to the government s forthcoming nuclear review particularly in assessing the relative levels of support for nuclear power and renewable energy

diversification of fuel costs accounting for load variation a practical mathematical programming model for the strategic fuel diversification problem is presented the model is designed to consider the tradeoffs between the expected costs of investments in capacity operating and maintenance costs average fuel costs and the variability of fuel costs in addition the model is designed to take the load curve into account at a high degree of resolution while keeping the computational burden at a practical level the model is illustrated with a case study for indiana s power generation system the model reveals that an effective means of reducing the volatility of the system level fuel costs is through the reduction of dependence on coal fired generation with an attendant shift towards nuclear generation model results indicate that about a 25 reduction in the standard deviation of the generation costs can be achieved with about a 20 25 increase in average fuel costs scenarios that incorporate costs for carbon dioxide emissions or a moratorium on nuclear capacity additions are also presented

multicriteria methods for resource planning an experimental comparison multicriteria decision making mcdm methods are widely used for comparing alternatives when there are multiple objectives for instance utilities use them for resource bidding externality quantification facility siting and resource planning there are many alternative methods differing in their ease of use validity results and appropriateness to resource planning several mcdm methods are compared in an experiment involving the choice of resource portfolio for seattle city light planners and interest group representatives applied direct weight assessment tradeoff weight assessment additive value functions and goal programming most of the participants concluded that mcdm methods could promote insight and confidence in decision making however the authors also confirmed the existence of method biases previously identified by psychologists no single method emerged as best thus application of two or more methods as consistency checks is recommended to guard against bias and to stimulate insight

nuclear and intermittent renewables two compatible supply options the case of the french power mix abstract the complementary features of low carbon power sources are a central issue in designing energy transition policies the french current electricity mix is characterised by a high share of nuclear power which equalled 76 of the total electric production in 2015 with the increase in intermittent renewable sources nuclear flexibility is examined as part of the solution to balance electricity supply and demand our proposed methodology involves designing scenarios with nuclear and intermittent renewable penetration levels and developing residual load duration curves in each case the load modulation impact on the nuclear production cost is estimated this article shows to which extent the nuclear annual energy production will decrease with high shares of intermittent renewables down to load factors of 40 for proactive assumptions however the production cost increase could be compensated by progressively replacing the plants moreover incentives are necessary if nuclear is to compete with combined cycle gas turbines as its alternative back up option in order to reconcile the social planner with plant operator goals the solution could be to find new outlets rather than reducing nuclear load factors nuclear flexibility could then be considered in terms of using its power to produce heat or hydrogen

investigating the determinants of household welfare in cote d ivoire to predict the effect of economic policies on household welfare one should first understand which characteristics of households and of the localities in which they live enable them to raise their welfare levels this paper outlines a simple procedure for investigating the determinants of household welfare and demonstrates its use with recent data from cote d ivoire despite the relative simplicity much information is obtained from its use on cross sectional survey data results specific to cote d ivoire include high low returns to education in urban rural areas high benefits from cocoa land relative to coffee land a significant impact on economic welfare from the availability of medical services and no apparent benefits from agricultural extension services

estimating the electricity prices generation costs and co2 emissions of large scale wind energy exports from ireland to great britain abstract the share of wind generation in the irish and british electricity markets is set to increase by 2020 due to renewable energy re targets the united kingdom uk and ireland have set ambitious targets which require 30 and 40 of electricity demand to come from re mainly wind by 2020 respectively ireland has sufficient indigenous onshore wind energy resources to exceed the re target while the uk faces uncertainty in achieving its target a possible solution for the uk is to import re directly from large scale onshore and offshore wind energy projects in ireland this possibility has recently been explored by both governments but is currently on hold thus the aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of large scale wind energy in the irish and british electricity markets in terms of wholesale system marginal prices total generation costs and co2 emissions the results indicate when the large scale irish based wind energy projects are connected directly to the uk there is a decrease of 0 6 and 2 in the irish and british wholesale system marginal prices under the uk national grid slow progression scenario respectively

using renewables to hedge against future electricity industry uncertainties an australian case study abstract a generation portfolio modelling was employed to assess the expected costs cost risk and emissions of different generation portfolios in the australian national electricity market nem under highly uncertain gas prices carbon pricing policy and electricity demand outcomes were modelled for 396 possible generation portfolios each with 10 000 simulations of possible fuel and carbon prices and electricity demands in 2030 the lowest expected cost generation portfolio includes 60 renewable energy increasing the renewable proportion to 75 slightly increased expected cost by 0 2 mwh but significantly decreased the standard deviation of cost representing the cost risk increasing the renewable proportion from the present 15 to 75 by 2030 is found to decrease expected wholesale electricity costs by 17 mwh fossil fuel intensive portfolios have substantial cost risk associated with high uncertainty in future gas and carbon prices renewables can effectively mitigate cost risk associated with gas and carbon price uncertainty this is found to be robust to a wide range of carbon pricing assumptions this modelling suggests that policy mechanisms to promote an increase in renewable generation towards a level of 75 by 2030 would minimise costs to consumers and mitigate the risk of extreme electricity prices due to uncertain gas and carbon prices

a monte carlo based decision support tool for assessing generation portfolios in future carbon constrained electricity industries abstract this paper presents a novel decision support tool for assessing future generation portfolios in an increasingly uncertain electricity industry the tool combines optimal generation mix concepts with monte carlo simulation and portfolio analysis techniques to determine expected overall industry costs associated cost uncertainty and expected co 2 emissions for different generation portfolio mixes the tool can incorporate complex and correlated probability distributions for estimated future fossil fuel costs carbon prices plant investment costs and demand including price elasticity impacts the intent of this tool is to facilitate risk weighted generation investment and associated policy decision making given uncertainties facing the electricity industry applications of this tool are demonstrated through a case study of an electricity industry with coal ccgt and ocgt facing future uncertainties results highlight some significant generation investment challenges including the impacts of uncertain and correlated carbon and fossil fuel prices the role of future demand changes in response to electricity prices and the impact of construction cost uncertainties on capital intensive generation the tool can incorporate virtually any type of input probability distribution and support sophisticated risk assessments of different portfolios including downside economic risks it can also assess portfolios against multi criterion objectives such as greenhouse emissions as well as overall industry costs

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

energy planning and modern portfolio theory a review abstract modern portfolio theory mpt stands as a widely accepted methodology to meet the challenges associated with the definition of energy planning for a particular territory or region energy planning is thus framed as an investment selection problem mpt is characterized by having a wider capacity and conceptual richness than the other previously used methodologies such as the individual least cost alternative the portfolio approach is based on solving for an objective function that seeks to minimize either the cost or the risk of the portfolio subject to different constraints considering that real electricity generation assets can be defined in terms of cost or return and economic risk for each alternative technology the relevant portfolios are the result of solving the optimization model to determine the efficient cost risk frontier the work presented here consists of an exhaustive review of the literature in relation to the application of mpt methodology to the field of energy planning and electricity production a new classification is proposed from a financial perspective of the selection of investments from the preceding studies it delves deeper into the explanation of the limits to the methodology and into the concept of risk which is key from both a financial and an energy perspective the main methodological contributions found in the literature are examined that are aimed at improving the capacity of the model and adjusting it to the reality of the electricity market finally conclusions are provided from the works analyzed in terms of renewable technologies and the policy implications derived from them in most studies a preference has been shown for the inclusion of renewable technologies in the efficient portfolios however in order to implement the decision to increase the share of renewable technologies greater flexibility in the interconnection capacity between states and in storage capacity is needed

optimal pooling of renewable energy sources with a risk averse approach implications for us energy portfolio abstract tapping into a large amount of renewable generation considering the inherent variability of renewable energy sources res can greatly increase the risk of supply and demand imbalances in electric power delivery one of the major components of this risk is the intermittency of both wind and solar power generation in this paper we show that by strategically planning for geographical and technological diversification of renewable generation capacity it is possible to reduce such risk in a res only us energy portfolio we consider wind and solar as the sole sources of generation and use risk averse stochastic optimization with conditional value at risk cvar to optimize energy generation locations and capacities in an idealized case study the optimal res portfolios demonstrate a significant improvement in generation profile compared to non pooled or non optimized alternatives this confirms that with smart policy planning one can push the limits of the risk of imbalances in res only portfolios within continental united states and highlights the need for system wide thinking when designing a large scale energy portfolio

prices infrastructure household characteristics and child height household survey data from brazil matched with information collected at the municipio county level are used to examine the relation between parental characteristics primarily education community infrastructure and services and child height data are drawn from 2 sources informacoes basicas municipais 1974 is a periodic survey of 4000 municipios on infrastructure health and education services estudo nacional da despesa familiar 1974 75 is a household survey covering 37000 children under age 8 on income expenditure anthropometry and socio demographic characteristics local food price indices were derived from these data child height is significantly affected by local infrastructure particularly modern sewerage and piped water in urban areas and electricity in rural settings these effects are stronger for children over 2 those of better educated mothers and those in households spending more higher prices for dairy products and sugar are linked to lower urban child height and higher fish prices to lower rural child height significantly for children of illiterate mothers higher prices for meat and rice are associated with taller height possible because men usually eat these foods mothers with elementary schooling can counteract the effects of food prices on child height number of teachers is positively related to height in rural children numbers of nurses and of hospital beds is associated with shorter children suggesting that large hospitals locate in poor urban areas this study has succeeded in identifying some public investments that affect child health

wind power reliability valuation in a hydro dominated power market the colombian case abstract the design of market mechanisms that remunerates the reliability provided by a generator in a power market is a task that aims to ensure the normal operation of the system for the case of a hydro dominated system when wind power is introduced and operated under the merit order effect it is possible to assess the effect of the displacement of hydro generation due to wind generation over the system s reliability in terms of firm energy taking this into account a model that valuates the firm energy provided by wind power in a hydro dominated system is proposed this model considers the effect of wind power over the system s reservoirs and the market price of electricity and valuates the firm energy as the net savings of the system related to the increase in the firm energy of the system when wind power is introduced the results show that wind power under merit order effect increases the firm energy of the system and decreases the market price of electricity being the net savings in comparison to the corresponding hydro only system the reliability income that should be perceived by the wind power generator

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity