policy implications of potential conflicts between short term and long term efficiency in co2 emissions abatement abstract this paper shows that under certain conditions including path dependence and lock in policies and measures leading to a cost effective ghg emissions mitigation in the short term may not allow reaching long term emissions targets at the lowest possible cost that is they might not be cost effective in the long term the reason is that in a situation where currently expensive technologies have a large potential for cost reductions through learning effects and r d investments the implementation of incentive based mitigation policies such as taxes or tradable permits will encourage the adoption and diffusion of currently low cost abatement technologies but might not be enough to make attractive the diffusion of expensive ones which is a necessary condition for these technologies to realise their cost reduction potential through the aforementioned effects a simple model and a numerical simulation are provided to show this possible conflict between static and dynamic efficiency which points out to the need to combine different instruments some aiming at short term cost efficiency such as incentive based environmental policy and others at encouraging dynamic cost reductions such as technology innovation policy

why does the combination of the european union emissions trading scheme and a renewable energy target makes economic sense abstract the european climate and energy mix of targets and policies has been criticised by many economists in particular it is often argued that the renewable energy targets do not make economic sense because they represent an expensive option to reduce co2 emissions within a cap and trade scheme such as the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets in addition it has also been claimed that support for renewable electricity deployment negatively interacts with the eu ets having a dampening effect on the co2 price which favours the dirtiest technologies and is detrimental for the greener ones in this article we argue that this mainstream economic view is short sighted and that a multidisciplinary economic analysis of the climate and energy policy mix is required mainstream economic analysis is based on a narrow approach for the assessment of instrument combinations and neglects relevant insights from several economic disciplines including innovation economics and political economy approaches in reality economic theory supports the combination of an ets and renewable energy targets the existence of different policy goals and market failures the demand pull influence of renewable energy policies on innovation a political economy approach and the different risk exposure of renewable energy technologies call for a policy mix although policy combinations are not a panacea and bring problems on their own the aforementioned negative interaction between renewable energy deployment and the carbon price in the eu ets can be mitigated through appropriate coordination and or instrument choice and design

the innovation impact of the eu emission trading system findings of company case studies in the german power sector abstract this paper provides a detailed analysis of how the european emission trading system eu ets as the core climate policy instrument of the european union has impacted innovation towards this end we investigate the impact of the eu ets on research development and demonstration rd d adoption and organizational change in doing so we pay particular attention to the relative influences of context factors policy mix market factors and public acceptance and firm characteristics value chain position technology portfolio size and vision empirically our qualitative analysis is based on multiple case studies with 19 power generators technology providers and project developers in the german power sector which were conducted in 2008 09 we find that the innovation impact of the eu ets has remained limited so far because of the scheme s initial lack of stringency and predictability and the relatively greater importance of context factors additionally the impact varies significantly across technologies firms and innovation dimensions and is most pronounced for rd d on carbon capture technologies and organizational changes our analysis suggests that the eu ets on its own may not provide sufficient incentives for fundamental changes in corporate innovation activities at a level which ensures political long term targets can be achieved

global food balances and food security abstract the major structural imbalance in the current global food scene surpluses in developed countries and deficits in developing countries offers opportunity for substantial progress in assuring food security in both the long and the short run to avail of this opportunity requires an understanding of the close connection between food supplies and purchasing power to purchase food massive investment in rural infrastructure is a major component of long term food security since infrastructure is efficiently produced by labor intensive processes food as a wage good is an important input and the global economy would appear to be under using it from an efficiency point of view in the short run food for work offers opportunity for immediate increase in food security as do food subsidy programs it is essential that a large complex of institutions be developed if the current global scene is to result in increased food security it will take time to develop those structures even though food is available now

do deployment policies pick technologies by not picking applications a simulation of investment decisions in technologies with multiple applications abstract the role of deployment policies that aim to foster technological change has grown considerably especially in the fields of energy and climate however recent research has shown that the adoption of deployment policies carries the potential of locking in the technology that is most cost effective at the point of policy introduction but may be inefficient in the long term the present paper contributes to the emerging literature on the role of deployment policies in creating path dependency and eventually technology lock in while previous studies focused on the relationship between lock in and the technology specificity of deployment policies this paper introduces a new factor the existence of multiple applications for a technology we argue that this factor is highly relevant for technological lock in and should be considered by policy makers to support our argument we simulate the competition among four stationary battery technologies across energy system applications in an investment simulation model this simulation shows that the degree of competition among technologies differs strongly across applications which corresponds with a highly varying lock in probability hence selecting applications in deployment policies very likely corresponds to selecting technologies we discuss the implications of these results for both policy makers and for the academic debate on deployment policies and technological lock in as well as on technology assessment and governance more generally based on the notion that policies can have different technology specificity levels we develop the idea of the application specificity of policies and provide examples of currently enacted deployment policies that vary in terms of their technology and application specificity

measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes an empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes balance and design features in nine countries abstract complex societal or environmental problems require fast and substantial socio technical transitions for instance in the case of climate change these transitions need to take place in the energy transport and several industry sectors to induce and accelerate such transitions numerous policy interventions are required which interact with each other in policy mixes while several conceptual studies on policy mixes have been published recently there is very little empirical research apart from single case or small n studies it has been prominently argued that the debate about policy mixes has reached an impasse partly due to this lack of empirical work this paper addresses this gap by providing a first analysis of the temporal dynamics of complex policy mixes to do so we develop a conceptualization and measurement of policy mix balance across instrument types as well as policy mix design features in the form of intensity as a general and technology specificity as a technology focused design feature this allows us to answer the question how temporal dynamics of policy mixes differ between countries regarding their balance and design features our measurement approach is developed bottom up i e policies are assessed individually and then aggregated systematically at the policy mix level this enables overcoming the dependent variable problem in the study of policy change i e the problem of measuring policy output more specifically we develop a comparative dataset of 522 renewable energy policies in nine oecd countries our analysis shows that countries policy mix dynamics vary strongly regarding some variables e g technology specificity but less regarding others e g balance as a validity check we also test the effects of these mix dynamics on policy outcome in the form of renewable energy technology diffusion we reflect our findings in light of the theoretical debates around policy mixes and policy design and discuss how our results provoke an agenda for the new generation of research on policy mixes we specifically discuss avenues for future research with a particular focus on the politics of policy mixes

rationales for technology specific res support and their relevance for german policy in order to achieve cost effective res e deployment it is often argued that technology neutral support schemes for renewables are indispensable against this background res e support policies making widely use of technology differentiation in remuneration settings e g across the eu are frequently criticized from a theoretical point of view however in this paper we provide a systematic critique of the technology neutrality concept as a foundation for designing policy support schemes in the res e technology field specifically the main objective of the paper is to scrutinize the arguments for technology neutrality and discuss three conceptual arguments for why technology specific support schemes could in fact help minimize the societal costs of reaching future res e targets we also briefly address different political economy concerns which could constrain the choice of cost effective policy support schemes and that have to be taken into account for economic policy advice for empirical illustration of the key arguments we refer to the case of german res e policy making the central conclusion from this paper is that technology specific res e support schemes may generate significant economic benefits particularly if technology markets work imperfectly and in second best policy settings with additional non internalized market failures

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

decarbonising the power sector via technological change differing contributions from heterogeneous firms abstract in the power sector technological change is a key lever to address the decarbonisation needed to avoid dangerous climate change policy makers aim to accelerate and redirect technological change by targeting relevant firms via climate policy e g the european union emissions trading system eu ets and climate relevant technology policies e g feed in tariffs changes in firm s behaviour i e their research and development r d as well as diffusion activities are at the heart of technological change however firms are heterogeneous actors with varying attributes which perceive policy differently hence they can be expected to react very heterogeneously to these new policies based on an original dataset of 201 firms we perform a cluster analysis grouping firms along their r d and diffusion activity changes we then compare these clusters with regards to the characteristics of the contained firms our analysis results in seven clusters showing very diverse contributions to low carbon technological change suggesting potential for policy to become more effective a comparison of the firms characteristics allows us to derive indicative recommendations on how to adjust the policy mix in order to induce contributions from most firms in the power sector

creative destruction or mere niche support innovation policy mixes for sustainability transitions recently there has been an increasing interest in policy mixes in innovation studies while it has long been acknowledged that the stimulation of innovation and technological change involves different types of policy instruments how such instruments form policy mixes has only recently become of interest we argue that an area in which policy mixes are particularly important is the field of sustainability transitions transitions imply not only the development of disruptive innovations but also of policies aiming for wider change in socio technical systems we propose that ideally policy mixes for transitions include elements of creative destruction involving both policies aiming for the creation of new and for destabilising the old we develop a novel analytical framework including the two policy mix dimensions creation and destruction by broadening the technological innovation system functions approach and specifically by expanding the concept of motors of innovation to motors of creative destruction we test this framework by analysing low energy policy mixes in finland and the uk we find that both countries have diverse policy mixes to support energy efficiency and reduce energy demand with instruments to cover all functions on the creation side despite the demonstrated need for such policies unsurprisingly destabilising functions are addressed by fewer policies but there are empirical examples of such policies in both countries the concept of motors of creative destruction is introduced to expand innovation and technology policy debates to go beyond policy mixes consisting of technology push and demand pull instruments and to consider a wider range of policy instruments combined in a suitable mix which may contribute to sustainability transitions

drought transfer entitlements and income distribution the botswana experience abstract using 1974 75 and 1985 86 income distribution survey data with the latter supplemented by drought relief data this paper presents an analysis of intertemporal rural household income distribution in botswana despite the fact that the 1974 75 survey was conducted during one of the best agricultural production periods on record and the 1985 86 survey was conducted in the midst of one of the worst after the rural income economy had been weakened by a severe and prolonged drought botswana s rural income inequality did not appear to have increased significantly there was no marked reduction in rural household real incomes the explanation for this outcome is found to lie in the income maintenance strategy pursued by rural households with strong support from transfer entitlement guarantees from private and public sources supplementing rural household incomes

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

scaling up finance for off grid renewable energy the role of aggregation and spatial diversification in derisking investments in mini grids for rural electrification in india abstract today about 1 1 billion people lack access to electricity worldwide it is estimated that annual investments of 48 billion usd are required to meet the target of the sustainable development goals of providing universal electricity access by 2030 the need for private investments to meet this target is evident but small scale electrification projects are often unattractive for private investors due to unfavourable risk return profiles and small investment volumes both issues can potentially be addressed by aggregating projects into diversified portfolios an approach commonly used by investors in several contexts but little investigated in the context of rural electrification this paper addresses the question of how spatial diversity in a portfolio can be used to reduce investment risks and increase investment volumes through a mixed method approach involving three steps i identification and classification of investment risks for renewable energy mini grid projects ii qualitative analysis of the correlations between investment risks for different projects through interviews and iii quantitative estimation of the cost of capital and derisking effects of spatial diversification strategies for an experimental portfolio in india we discuss the implications for policymakers in promoting and facilitating the ability of private sector investors to aggregate small scale electrification investments

assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed in tariffs in european union countries in the last two decades feed in tariffs fit have emerged as one of the most popular policies for supporting renewable electricity res e generation a few studies have assessed the effectiveness of res e policies but most ignore policy design features and market characteristics e g electricity price and production cost that influence policy strength we employ 1992 2008 panel data to conduct the first econometric analysis of the effectiveness of fit policies in promoting solar photovoltaic pv and onshore wind power development in 26 european union countries we develop a new indicator for fit strength that captures variability in tariff size contract duration digression rate and electricity price and production cost to estimate the resulting return on investment we regress this indicator on added res e capacity using a fixed effects specification and find that fit policies have driven solar pv development in the eu however this effect is overstated without controlling for country characteristics and is concealed without accounting for policy design we do not find robust evidence that fit policies have driven wind power development overall we show that the interaction of policy design electricity price and electricity production cost is a more important determinant of res e development than policy enactment alone

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

sadcc food security strategies evolution and role abstract over the last seven years the scope of strategies promoted by the sadcc food security program has broadened steadily at first there was an almost complete preoccupation with food production the program now includes projects related to cereal market stabilization regional trade and food aid most recently consumption objectives have been made an explicit concern of the program this paper traces the evolution of policy underlying this expansion of interest cooperation between sadcc member states rests on the principle that more can be achieved by joint effort than by individual states acting alone however experience to date suggests that it is easier to define the benefits of regional collaboration than to capture them the sadcc food security program requires technical and financial capacity in order to pursue its objectives but the success of collaborative ventures rests to a more critical extent on the level of confidence which exists among member states

reconceptualising the policy mix for innovation abstract recent years have seen the emergence take up and use of the term policy mix by innovation policy makers and by policy analysts and scholars alike imported from economic policy debates the term implies a focus on the interactions and interdependencies between different policies as they affect the extent to which intended policy outcomes are achieved however the meaning of the term remains ambiguous nonetheless we argue that the emergence of the policy mix concept into common use in the field of innovation policy studies provides us with a window of opportunity to reconsider some basic and often hidden assumptions in order to better deal with a messy and complex multi level multi actor reality we draw upon a range of literatures to re conceptualise the basic building blocks of innovation policy studies in order to arrive at a useful definition of policy mix tensions and interactions of different kinds across a series of dimensions we suggest that this reconceptualisation has important implications for the future scope and focus of prescriptive and analytical innovation policy studies

policy mixes for sustainability transitions an extended concept and framework for analysis reaching a better understanding of the policies and politics of transitions presents a main agenda item in the emerging field of sustainability transitions one important requirement for these transitions such as the move towards a decarbonized energy system is the redirection and acceleration of technological change for which policies play a key role in this regard several studies have argued for the need to combine different policy instruments in so called policy mixes however existing policy mix studies often fall short of reflecting the complexity and dynamics of actual policy mixes the underlying politics and the evaluation of their impacts in this paper we take a first step towards an extended interdisciplinary policy mix concept based on a review of the bodies of literature on innovation studies environmental economics and policy analysis the concept introduces a clear terminology and consists of the three building blocks elements policy processes and characteristics which can be delineated by several dimensions based on this we discuss its application as analytical framework for empirical studies analyzing the impact of the policy mix on technological change throughout the paper we illustrate the proposed concept by using the example of the policy mix for fostering the transition of the german energy system to renewable power generation technologies finally we derive policy implications and suggest avenues for future research

dynamic public goods provision with coalitional manipulation abstract we study dynamic procedures for the provision of an efficient level of a public good with time dependent surplus distribution in general such procedures are prone to manipulation via pre play communication among coalitions of agents we begin with a generalization of truchon s econometrica 1984 52 1179 1190 elegant non myopic mdp procedure and provide a new procedure that exhibits finite monotone convergence to pareto efficiency in subgame perfect coalitionproof equilibrium this procedure also implements any regular surplus distribution rule that is dependent on the public good level the solution concept of subgame perfect coalition proof equilibrium is also new it is an extension of the semistability characterizations of coalition proof equilibrium for infinite strategy games due to kahn and mookherjee games and economic behavior 1992 4 101 121 the coalition proofing device given is more generally applicable

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

famine incomes and employment has botswana anything to teach africa abstract this paper analyzes the objectives structure and success of the botswana drought relief program between 1982 and 1985 in terms of its impact on lost income and employment the design of botswana s famine containment strategy was directed towards the replacement of lost income and the preservation of productive assets it was successful in reaching all of its stated objectives however the paper argues that underlying rural unemployment both precipitated the crisis and was aggravated by it the paper therefore proposes that famine management should be based on an employment as well as an incomes theory of famine this is the main lesson botswana s experience has to offer

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

endogenous technological change in climate change modelling this article investigates the impact on optimal co2 abatement and carbon tax levels of introducing endogenous technological change in a macroeconomic model of climate change we analyse technological change as a function of cumulative capacity as incorporated recently in energy systems models our calculations confirm that including endogenous innovation implies earlier emission reduction to meet atmospheric carbon concentration constraints however the effect is stronger than suggested in the literature moreover the development of non fossil energy technologies constitutes the most important opportunity for emission reductions optimal carbon tax levels reducing fossil energy use are lower than usually advocated