residual load renewable surplus generation and storage requirements in germany abstract i examine the effects of increasing amounts of fluctuating renewable energy on residual load which is defined as the difference between actual power demand and the feed in of non dispatchable and inflexible generators i draw on policy relevant scenarios for germany and make use of extensive sensitivity analyses whereas yearly renewable surplus energy is low in most scenarios analyzed peak surplus power can become very high decreasing thermal must run requirements and increasing biomass flexibility substantially reduce surpluses i use an optimization model to determine the storage capacities required for taking up renewable surpluses allowing curtailment of 1 of the yearly feed in of non dispatchable renewables would render storage investments largely obsolete until 2032 under the assumption of a flexible power system further restrictions of curtailment as well as lower system flexibility strongly increase storage requirements by 2050 at least 10 gw of storage are required for surplus integration of which a sizeable share is seasonal storage results suggest that policy makers should work toward avoiding surplus generation in particular by decreasing the must run of thermal generators concerns about surpluses should not be regarded as an obstacle to further renewable expansion the findings are also relevant for other countries that shift toward fluctuating renewables

measuring the efficiency of china s carbon market a comparison between efficient and fractal market hypotheses abstract in this study variance ratio test and detrended fluctuation analysis are adopted to measure the efficiencies of beijing guangdong hubei shanghai shenzhen tianjin and chongqing seven carbon markets in china the empirical results indicate that on the basis of efficient market hypothesis adopts variance ratio test hubei and guangdong markets are weak efficient beijing shenzhen and shanghai markets are inefficient and the efficiencies of tianjin and chongqing are uncertain under daily returns all seven carbon markets are weak efficient under weekly returns on the basis of fractal market hypothesis hurst exponents are obtained by detrended fluctuation analysis shanghai guangdong and hubei markets are weak efficient the other four markets are inefficient under daily returns beijing and hubei markets are weak efficient and the other five markets are inefficient under weekly returns on the whole the efficiencies of china s carbon markets are generally low combining the empirical results with the reality of china s carbon markets it s proved that the results of fractal market hypothesis are more convincing in comparison to efficient market hypothesis fractal market hypothesis can more effectively measure the efficiency of carbon market

renewable resource management with environmental prediction variations in environmental conditions affect renewable resource growth the ability to predict such variations is improving providing scope for improved management we generalize a common stochastic stock recruitment model to explore how optimal management changes with environmental prediction we obtain three main results first while it might seem that a prediction of adverse future conditions should lead to more conservative management the opposite may be true second optimal management requires only a one period ahead forecast suggesting forecast accuracy is more important than forecast lead time finally we derive conditions on environmental fluctuations guaranteeing positive optimal harvest in every period gestion d une ressource renouvelable quand on predit les conditions futures de l environnement les variations dans les conditions de l environnement affectent la croissance de la ressource renouvelable la capacitea prevoir ces variations s ameliore et ouvre la possibilite d ameliorer la gestion de la ressource les auteurs utilisent un modele de ressource renouvelable avec croissance stochastique et obtiennent trois resultats d abord alors qu il peut sembler que des previsions pessimistes de conditions difficiles dans l avenir peuvent conduire a une gestion plus conservatrice le contraire peut etre vrai ensuite la gestion optimale requiert seulement une prediction pour la prochaine periode voila qui suggere qu il est plus important d avoir une prevision exacte que d avoir des previsions a plus long terme enfin on developpe les conditions pour les fluctuations de l environnement qui garantissent une recolte positive optimale a chaque periode

uncertainty in the theory of renewable resource markets the natural growth rate of most renewable resource stocks is in part stochastic this paper examines the implications of such ecological uncertainty for competitive equilibrium in a market with property rights we show that stochastic fluctuations add a risk premium to the rate of return required to keep a unit of stock in situ and we examine the effects of fluctuations on resource rent examples are used to show that extraction can increase decrease or be left unchanged as the variance of the fluctuations increases depending on the extent of market self correction regulatory implications are also discussed renewable resource economics has traditionally been concerned with the study of dynamically optimal harvesting policies given a deterministic function for the natural growth of the resource stock issues have included the existence and characteristics of steady state equilibria for the optimally managed resource the need for and design of regulatory policies to prevent over exploitation and conditions under which as a social optimum or otherwise the resource will be exploited to extinction 1 much of this work has been based on the assumption of a fixed and exogenous price for the harvested resource typically resulting in bang bang solutions for the harvesting policy however some recent papers make price endogenous and thereby describe how the extraction rate and the rate of return and asset value of the resource behave in a competitive market with property rights 2

region division of china s carbon market based on the provincial municipal carbon intensity abstract the difference of carbon trading prices among emission trading scheme pilots may hinder the unified carbon market that china s government plans to establish in 2017 to achieve this goal this study develops a regional carbon market mode based on the similarity of thirty provinces municipalities carbon intensity by the aid of logarithmic mean divisia index autoregressive and dynamic time warping models according to the dynamic clustering result we divide these provinces municipalities into three sub markets that are the western eastern and central markets furthermore we propose the carbon emission modes corresponding to each sub market namely the energy dependence mode western market sustainable economy mode eastern market and industrial upgrading mode central market briefly we suggest that the unified market should be firstly divided into some sub markets finally we propose some critical routes as well as corresponding managerial implications for establishing such unified market

renewable resource management with stochastic recharge and environmental threats abstract exploitation diminishes the capacity of renewable resources to withstand environmental stress increasing their vulnerability to extreme conditions that may trigger abrupt changes the onset of such events depends on the coincidence of extreme environmental conditions and on the resource state determining its resilience when the former is uncertain and the latter evolves stochastically the uncertainty regarding the event occurrence is the result of the combined effect of these two uncertain components we study optimal management in this setting the environmental threat renders the single period discount factor policy dependent and as a result the compound discount factor becomes history dependent existence of an optimal markovian deterministic stationary policy is established and the optimal state process is shown to converge to a steady state distribution

simulating the effects of environmental and market variability on fishing industry structure abstract an agent based model comprising a fish stock a fishing fleet and a fish market is used to investigate the combined effects of environmental and market variability on the structure of a fishery over 15 year simulations agents make daily fishing decisions and annual entry exit and investment decisions based on the fishery s past economic outcomes and their individual risk preferences and opportunity costs e g an alternative source of income environmental variability is simulated through fishing success variability while market variability is simulated through changes in the elasticity of the demand curve i e the responsiveness of market prices to changes in daily landings our findings indicate that changes in variability lead to changes in economic and biological conditions of the fishery by influencing the composition of risk preferences within the fleet counter to expectations market stability did not dampen the negative impacts of environmental variability but rather stimulated over investment and increased harvesting by a small number of risk seeking fishers results from this research suggest that climate driven increases in fisheries variability coupled with increases in market integration that act to reduce local price signals may lead to inefficient investments and reduced fishery resources

least cost 100 renewable electricity scenarios in the australian national electricity market least cost options are presented for supplying the australian national electricity market nem with 100 renewable electricity using wind photovoltaics concentrating solar thermal cst with storage hydroelectricity and biofuelled gas turbines we use a genetic algorithm and an existing simulation tool to identify the lowest cost investment and operating scenarios of renewable technologies and locations for nem regional hourly demand and observed weather in 2010 using projected technology costs for 2030 these scenarios maintain the nem reliability standard limit hydroelectricity generation to available rainfall and limit bioenergy consumption the lowest cost scenarios are dominated by wind power with smaller contributions from photovoltaics and dispatchable generation cst hydro and gas turbines the annual cost of a simplied transmission network to balance supply and demand across nem regions is a small proportion of the annual cost of the generating system annual costs are compared with a scenario where fossil fuelled power stations in the nem today are replaced with modern fossil substitutes at projected 2030 costs and a carbon price is paid on all emissions at moderate carbon prices which appear required to address climate change 100 renewable electricity would be cheaper on an annual basis than the replacement scenario

can renewables etc solve the greenhouse problem the negative case abstract virtually all current discussion of climate change and energy problems proceeds on the assumption that technical solutions are possible within basically affluent consumer societies there is however a substantial case that this assumption is mistaken this case derives from a consideration of the scale of the tasks and of the limits of non carbon energy sources focusing especially on the need for redundant capacity in winter the first line of argument is to do with the extremely high capital cost of the supply system that would be required and the second is to do with the problems set by the intermittency of renewable sources it is concluded that the general climate change and energy problem cannot be solved without large scale reductions in rates of economic production and consumption and therefore without transition to fundamentally different social structures and systems

risk and sustainability assessing fishery management strategies we develop a theoretical framework to assess the sustainability of fishery management strategies when the bioeconomic dynamics are marked by uncertainty and several conflicting objectives have to be accounted for stochastic viability ranks management strategies according to their probability to sustain economic and ecological outcomes over time the approach is extended to build stochastic sustainable production possibility frontiers representing the trade offs between sustainability objectives at any risk level given the current state of the fishery this framework is applied to a chilean fishery faced with el nino uncertainty we study the viability of effort and quota strategies when catch and biomass levels have to be sustained we show that 1 for these sustainability objectives whatever the level of the outcomes to be sustained quota based management results in a better viability probability than effort based management and 2 the fishery s historical quota levels were not sustainable given the stock levels in the early 2000s

private property and economic efficiency a study of a common pool resource abstract the british columbia halibut fishery provides a natural experiment of the effects of privatizing the commons using firm level data from the fishery 2 years before private harvesting rights were introduced the year they were implemented and 3 years afterward a stochastic frontier is estimated to test for changes in technical allocative and economic efficiency the study indicates that 1 the short run efficiency gains from privatization may take several years to materialize and can be compromised by restrictions on transferability duration and divisibility of the property right 2 substantial long run gains in efficiency can be jeopardized by preexisting regulations and the bundling of the property right to the capital stock and 3 the gains from privatization are not just in terms of cost efficiency but include important benefits in revenue and product form

renewable electric energy integration quantifying the value of design of markets for international transmission capacity abstract integrating large quantities of variable renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge one of the main obstacles in europe to installing at least 200 gws of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns we model the current methodology for controlling congestion at international borders and compare its results under varying penetrations of wind power with models that simulate an integrated european network using nodal localised marginal pricing the nodal pricing simulations illustrate that congestion and price patterns vary considerably between wind scenarios and within countries and that a nodal price regime could make better use of existing network capacity introducing substantial operational cost savings and reducing marginal power prices in the majority of european countries

on the economics of electrical storage for variable renewable energy sources abstract the use of renewable energy sources is a major strategy to mitigate climate change yet sinn 2017 argues that excessive electrical storage requirements limit the further expansion of variable wind and solar energy we question and alter strong implicit assumptions of sinn s approach and find that storage needs are considerably lower up to two orders of magnitude first we move away from corner solutions by allowing for combinations of storage and renewable curtailment second we specify a parsimonious optimization model that explicitly considers an economic efficiency perspective we conclude that electrical storage is unlikely to limit the transition to renewable energy

can europe run on renewable energy a negative case the possibility of 100 renewable supply of european energy is analysed in terms of the amount of redundant plant required to cope with the intermittency of wind and solar energy and the limited biomass potential it is concluded that the capital cost would be unaffordable and that biomass resources are insufficient

some inconvenient theses there is a strong tendency for energy technologists and policy analysts to believe that energy demand can be met and associated problems including climate change can be solved and to focus attention on finding the best technologies to achieve these goals they tend not to be comfortable with any suggestion that there might be insurmountable limits and insoluble problems or that the problems they are working on require social solutions rather than technical solutions various contributions to this special edition provide illustrations this paper explores some challenges to the dominant promethian world view these include a consideration of the magnitude of the energy and other problems the possibility that renewable energy cannot solve them the significance of energy and of declining eroi for economic growth and the possible effects of rising resource input costs and unstable capital markets for energy investment finally the ultimate heresy is considered the possibility that access to abundant energy would not be good for us in summary it is suggested that coercive limits to growth are being encountered and that the resulting problems cannot be solved by action on the supply side but will require a radical rethinking of social goals systems and values

buyback programs in commercial fisheries effciency versus transfers a cournot model of investment is used to characterize the pre and post buyback investment equilibrium for vessels operating in a total allowable catch regulated fishery welfare effects the net welfare gains or losses and the distributional e ects that may be expected from vessel buyback programs are identifed net welfare effects depend on the ability of remaining vessels to replace buyback capital the speed of capital replacement and capital investment irreversibility net welfare effects are likely to be positive only under exceptional technological and capital market conditions a brief review of the british columbia pacific salmon revitalization plan is presented to anchor the theoretical model jel classification q28 d24 les auteurs utilisent un modele d qgainvestissement a la cournot pour analyser la situation d qga equilibre d investissement avant et apres le rachat de vaisseaux operant dans des peches ou le total des prises permises est reglemente les effets de bien etre les effets nets de gains ou de pertes et les effets de redistribution qu qgaon peut anticiper de programmes de rachats de vaisseaux sont identifies les effets nets de bien etre dependent de la capacite des vaisseaux qui restent en service a remplacer le capital rachete de la vitesse avec laquelle le capital est remplace et de l irreversibilite de la capitalisation les effets nets de bien etre sont susceptibles d etre positifs seulement dans des conditions exceptionnelles sur le plan technologique et pour ce qui est du marche du capital les auteurs examinent le plan de revitalisation du saumon du pacifique de la colombie britannique pour donner un point d qgaancrage au modele theorique

on the economics of renewable energy sources abstract with the global expansion of renewable energy re technologies the provision of optimal re policy packages becomes an important task we review pivotal aspects regarding the economics of renewables that are relevant to the design of an optimal re policy many of which are to date unresolved we do so from three interrelated perspectives that a meaningful public policy framework for inquiry must take into account first we explore different social objectives justifying the deployment of re technologies and review model based estimates of the economic potential of re technologies i e their socially optimal deployment level second we address pivotal market failures that arise in the course of implementing the economic potential of re sources in decentralized markets third we discuss multiple policy instruments curing these market failures our framework reveals the requirements for an assessment of the relevant options for real world decision makers in the field of re policies this review makes it clear that there are remaining white areas on the knowledge map concerning consistent and socially optimal re policies

does the optimal size of a fish stock increase with environmental uncertainties we analyze the effect of environmental uncertainties on optimal fishery management in a bio economic fishery model unlike most of the literature on resource economics but in line with ecological models we allow the different biological processes of survival and recruitment to be affected differently by environmental uncertainties we show that the overall effect of uncertainty on the optimal size of a fish stock is ambiguous depending on the prudence of the value function for the case of a risk neutral fishery manager the overall effect depends on the relative magnitude of two opposing effects the convex cost effect and the gambling effect we apply the analysis to the baltic cod and the north sea herring fisheries concluding that for risk neutral agents the net effect of environmental uncertainties on the optimal size of these fish stocks is negative albeit small in absolute value under risk aversion the effect on optimal stock size is positive for sufficiently high coefficients of constant relative risk aversion

toward a more complete model of individual transferable fishing quotas implications of incorporating the processing sector abstract economic analyses of individual transferable quota itq fisheries management traditionally have focused on the harvesting sector however harvester decisions impact the economic performance of co dependent processing firms this paper incorporates both sectors in an analysis of the effect of itqs on commercial fisheries results show that as a consequence of season elongation under a harvester only allocation of fishing rights capital nonmalleability implies that processor quasi rents will be redistributed to harvesters these losses could promote political gridlock and jeopardize adoption of an itq policy unless they are fully compensated or unless redistribution is avoided by a policy superior initial allocation of rights to both harvesters and processors

on uncertain renewable resource stocks optimal harvest policies and the value of stock surveys abstract annual harvest quotas are commonly employed in the management of renewable resource stocks commercial fisheries being a prime example such resource stocks often undergo quite significant natural fluctuations to which quotas must be adapted a further complication arises from the fact that estimates of stock abundance are often highly uncertain in this paper a bayesian approach is used to model optimal quota decisions for an uncertain fluctuating renewable resource stock

assessing the design of three carbon trading pilot programs in china abstract to help overcome the challenge of growing co2 emissions china is experimenting with market based instruments including pilot co2 emissions trading systems etss in seven regions that serve as precursors of a national co2 ets implementing an ets in a rapidly growing economy in which government authorities exercise significant control over markets poses many challenges this study assesses how well three of the most developed pilot etss in guangdong shanghai and shenzhen have adapted carbon emissions trading to china s economic and political context we base our study on new information gathered through interviews with local pilot ets regulators and experts analysis of recent trading data and extensive legal and literature reviews we point out instances in which pilot regulators have deftly tailored carbon emissions trading to china s unique context and instances in which designs are insufficient to ensure smooth operation we also indicate areas in which broader institutional reforms of china s political economy may be required for carbon emissions trading to operate successfully we make nine recommendations to improve the design and operation of the pilot programs and to inform the construction of a national co2 ets

fishery management under multiple uncertainty abstract among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse roughgarden and smith proc natl acad sci 93 1996 5078 argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management variability in fish dynamics inaccurate stock size estimates and inaccurate implementation of harvest quotas we develop a bioeconomic model with these three sources of uncertainty and solve for optimal escapement based on measurements of fish stock in a discrete time model among other results we find 1 when uncertainties are high we generally reject the constant escapement rule advocated in much of the existing literature 2 inaccurate stock estimation affects policy in a fundamentally different way than the other sources of uncertainty and 3 the optimal policy leads to significantly higher commercial profits and lower extinction risk than the optimal constant escapement policy by 42 and 56 respectively

fisheries management under cyclical population dynamics cycles in environmental conditions e g sea surface temperature directly impact fish growth this paper extends the classical gordon schaefer fishery model by replacing the constant growth rate with a cyclical growth rate the optimal harvest rate is shown to fluctuate but the cycle of the harvest rate lags the cycle of the biological growth function with the highest harvest rate occurring after biological conditions start to decline simulations contrast various fishing policies and illustrate the proclivity to crash a fishery if it is wrongfully managed as if there is a constant growth rate with i i d environmental shocks finally we show that small cyclical fluctuations in one species can result in large fluctuations in the optimal harvest rate of another species if the fish species are interlinked through predator prey relationships

buffering volatility a study on the limits of germany s energy revolution squaring hourly demand and wind solar production data for germany and a number of neighbouring countries with the results of the eu s estorage project this paper studies the limits of germany s energy revolution in view of the volatility of wind and solar power in addition to pumped storage it considers double structure buffering demand management norwegian hydro dam buffering and international diversification via grid expansion if germany operated in autarchy and tried to handle the volatility of wind solar production without using stores while replacing all nuclear and fossil fuel in power production on average 61 and at the margin 94 of wind solar production would have to be wasted given the current level of other renewables to avoid any waste the wind solar market share in an autarchic solution must not be expanded to more than 30 by using norway s hydro plants the share could be expanded to 36 if norway were to build all the pumped storage plants the estorage study deems feasible germany s wind solar market share could be expanded by another 24 percentage points to about 60 which corresponds to 48 of the combined german and norwegian markets additionally expanding the market to switzerland austria and denmark and building the maximal number of pumped stores would increase the combined wind solar market share for all five countries to nearly 50 c 2017 the author s published by elsevier b v

fisheries management with stock growth uncertainty and costly capital adjustment we develop a dynamic model of a fishery which simultaneously incorporates random stock growth and costly capital adjustment numerical techniques are used to solve for the resource rent maximizing harvest and capital investment policies capital rigidities bring diminishing marginal returns to the current period harvest and introduce an incentive to smooth the catch over time with density dependent stock growth however catch smoothing increases stock variability resulting in reduced average yields the optimal management policy balances the catch smoothing benefits against yield loss we calibrate the model to the alaskan pacific halibut fishery to demonstrate the main insights

can australia run on renewable energy the negative case abstract the current discussion of climate change and energy problems is generally based on the assumption that technical solutions are possible and that the task is essentially to determine the most effective ways this view relies heavily on the expectation that renewable energy sources can be substituted for fossil fuels australia is more favourably situated regarding renewable sources than almost any other country this discussion attempts to estimate the investment cost that would be involved in deriving australia s total energy supply from renewable sources when provision is made for intermittency and plant redundancy it is concluded that the total investment cost is likely to be unaffordable

degrowth energy descent and low tech living potential pathways for increased resilience in times of crisis the use or misuse of advanced technology is a key factor driving global environmental degradation but advanced technology is also widely assumed to be the solution to many environmental problems in contrast to that dominant approach this paper outlines a variety of what the authors call low tech options such as solar shower bags washing lines alternative heating and cooling methods and cycling and raises questions about the extent to which these types of simple living practices could help increase household resilience in conditions of economic disruption instability or crisis the analysis is framed by an energy descent scenario in which an individual household or community either chooses a reduced energy way of life motivated by climate change mitigation or has such a way of life imposed upon them due to declining fossil fuel availability or economic disruption the authors see such a future as plausible and in some contexts has already arrived or has always been the case hence the relevance of this analysis which has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions furthermore while the focus herein is on low tech living at the household level it is argued that prefiguring a simpler way to live has deeper significance too in that it could help create the cultural conditions needed for a politics and macroeconomics of degrowth to emerge which the authors maintain is a necessary part of any decarbonisation project challenges facing low tech options are also acknowledged including the ever present risk of rebound effects and other indirect impacts

accelerating the transition to sustainable energy systems abstract the slow pace of transition to sustainable energy systems is the result of several factors running in parallel the starting points are very low even 30 per annum increases in rated capacity for wind energy or solar pv for example take many years to make a big impact at the global level policy initiatives are for the most part ineffectual in relation to the urgency and scale of what is required and often fail to address the fundamental causes of this slow progress this reflects a top down approach often accompanied by unrealistic targets and simultaneously undermined by a lack of consistency across policies which reflect a utopian social engineering mentality made worse because the planner s response to failure of previous interventions is to do more intensive and comprehensive interventions as william easterly has put it in short there is little or no accountability this approach has failed to harness the sympathy imagination self interest or sound options of energy users although it may attract developers including those not hitherto noted for renewable energy projects or environmental concern targets are usually too short term and clearly unrealistic especially where fossil fuel use is rising very rapidly and renewable energy use expands modestly government subsidies for traditional energy forms continue insufficient attention is paid to what individuals might achieve in energy efficiency and renewable energy terms if permitted to have or retain in industrialized countries where the burden of taxation is often inhibiting the wherewithal to make the necessary investments subsidy systems often promote renewable energy schemes that are misdirected and buoyed up by grossly exaggerated claims one or two mature renewable energy technologies are pushed nationally with insufficient regard for their costs contribution to electricity generation transportation fuels needs or carbon emission avoidance investors are rewarded excessively under some national schemes for mature technologies that should not require support and that frequently do not make the contribution to renewable energy output or carbon emission avoidance they claim costs to business and domestic electricity consumers through the subsidy payments they make are much greater under some schemes than what other carbon abatement measures would cost higher cost less mature renewable energy technologies that have large potential for meeting global energy needs are not getting the support they warrant this is of grave concern given the minimum 30 50 year lead times required to make a large global contribution without departing from the sense of urgency required to address the pressing needs for sustainable energy systems it is imperative that the involvement of people at the grassroots level is harnessed and sound commercial and technical criteria are applied

an open access fishery with rational expectations explain the evolution of the fish stock and the boat fleet as well as determine their equilibrium levels 2 while the changes in the fish stock are described by a biological rule entry and exit from the fishing industry are determined by how expectations are formed we examine a general model in which entry and exit are proportional to the present value of expected profits and compare two special cases of adaptive myopic expectations and rational expectations although both expectations mechanisms lead to the same equilibrium values they lead to different adjustment paths where expectations solely depend on current values myopic expectations it is well known that boats enter the fishery only when the fish stock is greater than its steady state stock 3 with rational expectations however boats may enter when the fish stock is much lower than its steady state value provided the boat fleet is sufficiently small this difference in adjustment is observable and in principle leads to an obvious test on how agents form expectations section 2 develops a general dynamic model for studying fisheries in section 3 we show that the model standardly used in the literature is equivalent to a myopic adaptive expectations model a rational expectations model is analyzed in section 4 the standard and rational expectations models are compared in section 5 section 6 illustrates this comparison using a simulation based on a schaefer model of the pacific halibut fishery section 7 presents the conclusions

balancing power and variable renewables three links abstract balancing power is used to quickly restore the supply demand balance in power systems the need for this tends to be increased by the use of variable renewable energy sources vre such as wind and solar power this paper reviews three channels through which vre and balancing systems interact the impact of vre forecast errors on balancing reserve requirements the supply of balancing services by vre generators and the incentives to improve forecasting provided by imbalance charges the paper reviews the literature provides stylized facts from german market data and suggests policy options surprisingly while german wind and solar capacity has tripled since 2008 balancing reserves have been reduced by 15 and costs by 50

ecosystem maintenance energy and the need for a green eroi abstract a number of official energy forecasts including those compatible with the aspirational 1 5 c paris accord global temperature rise limit see both global primary and net energy use continuing to rise even out to 2100 various technologies including greatly increased use of renewable and nuclear energy negative emission technologies such as direct air capture and geoengineering are proposed as approaches for meeting the 1 5 c target in contrast we argue that meeting this target and avoiding significant increases in extreme weather events will require marked reductions in future energy demand we argue that the combined fossil fuel and renewable net green energy production will fall in the coming decades after subtraction of various energy costs essential for ecosystems maintenance including those needed to stabilise climate at best nuclear energy will only fractionally increase its global energy share because of its high capital costs and political opposition arising from accident risks waste disposal and proliferation concerns geoengineering will not solve fossil fuel depletion and has serious known and perhaps unknown risks we conclude that global net energy produced in an ecologically sustainable manner will start falling in a decade or so and suggest the need to account for this at a policy level by introduction of a green eroi eroig

further considerations to energy return on energy invested eroei for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation abstract a paper by ferroni and hopkirk 2016 provided evidence that presently available pv systems in regions of moderate insolation like switzerland and countries north of the swiss alps act as net energy sink these findings were disputed in a paper raugei et al 2017 additional clarifications in support of our conclusions are explained including mention of weak points in the argumentation by raugei et al our study is based on the concept of the extended eroei eroeiext for pv systems knowing that this is not the mainstream concept in the life cycle assessment lca applying the process based life cycle assessment the concept of the eroeiext considers many possible energy contributions needed for assessing the envisioned transition from fossil fuel to other types of energy sources and here in particular to photovoltaics in regions of moderate insolation the conclusions of our original study remain unchanged any attempt to adopt an energy transition strategy by substitution of intermittent for base load power generation in countries like switzerland or further north will result in unavoidable net energy loss this applies both to the technologies considered to the available data from the original study and to newer data from recent studies

a critical analysis of the 2014 ipcc report on capital cost of mitigation and of renewable energy abstract the report by the ipcc working group 3 on mitigation has been widely reported as showing that a 430 480 ppm emissions target can be achieved at a low investment cost in relation to gdp however there are several reasons why the report cannot be regarded as having established these claims mainly to do with the very few sources referred to on the crucial cost issues the problems evident in those sources and difficulties encountered when investment sums allocated to various sectors are examined an exploration of the possible investment required by the renewable energy sector indicates that the costs associated with achieving desired emissions targets would be very high this strengthens the case that effective policies for dealing with climate and other global problems cannot be achieved unless there is transition from consumer societies committed to affluence and growth

the massetti et al criticisms of trainer s critique of the 2014 ipcc report on renewable energy a reply by trainer abstract the criticism massetti et al 2017 make is essentially that my analysis of the 2014 ipcc report trainer 2017 is mistaken because it confuses the macroeconomic or reduction in gdp cost of mitigation which is focal in chapter 6 with the investment or capital cost which is considered in chapter 16 this claim is stated but no space is given to showing what the confusion is supposed to be or to explaining how it invalidates my analysis the following brief notes make clear that these two issues were not confused in my analysis and that the comments from massetti et al do not cast doubt on my critique of the ipcc report

leverage analysis of carbon market price fluctuation in china abstract china s carbon market has become increasingly active in recent years and thus it is of great significance to study the characteristics of the carbon allowance price fluctuation for the healthy and steady development of this market as leverage is common in asset prices in general financial markets this paper adopts the leverage stochastic volatility sv l model to characterize the price volatility of the five pilot carbon markets in china we first make a bayesian inference for the sv model then construct a monte carlo calculation process based on gibbs sampling for empirical analysis and finally compare the sv l model with the normal stochastic volatility sv n model the results show that the carbon price fluctuations of the five pilot markets are quite different among them shenzhen guangdong shanghai and beijing have a positive leverage effect and hubei has an anti leverage effect through comparative analysis we find that the sv l model is superior to the sv n model in terms of the degree of data fitting and simulation ability finally we offer suggestions on the development of china s unified carbon market

what energy levels can the earth sustain abstract several official reports on future global primary energy production and use develop scenarios which suggest that the high energy growth rates of the 20th century will continue unabated until 2050 and even beyond in this paper we examine whether any combination of fossil nuclear and renewable energy sources can deliver such levels of primary energy around 1000 ej in 2050 we find that too much emphasis has been placed on whether or not reserves in the case of fossil and nuclear energy or technical potential in the case of renewable energy can support the levels of energy use forecast in contrast our analysis stresses the crucial importance of the interaction of technical potentials for annual production with environmental factors social political and economic concerns and limited time frames for implementation in heavily constraining the real energy options for the future together these constraints suggest that future energy consumption will be significantly lower than the present level

burden of proof a comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100 renewable electricity systems an effective response to climate change demands rapid replacement of fossil carbon energy sources this must occur concurrently with an ongoing rise in total global energy consumption while many modelled scenarios have been published claiming to show that a 100 renewable electricity system is achievable there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible of the studies published to date 24 have forecast regional national or global energy requirements at sufficient detail to be considered potentially credible we critically review these studies using four novel feasibility criteria for reliable electricity systems needed to meet electricity demand this century these criteria are 1 consistency with mainstream energy demand forecasts 2 simulating supply to meet demand reliably at hourly half hourly and five minute timescales with resilience to extreme climate events 3 identifying necessary transmission and distribution requirements and 4 maintaining the provision of essential ancillary services evaluated against these objective criteria none of the 24 studies provides convincing evidence that these basic feasibility criteria can be met of a maximum possible unweighted feasibility score of seven the highest score for any one study was four eight of 24 scenarios 33 provided no form of system simulation twelve 50 relied on unrealistic forecasts of energy demand while four studies 17 all regional articulated transmission requirements only two scenarios drawn from the same study addressed ancillary service requirements in addition to feasibility issues the heavy reliance on exploitation of hydroelectricity and biomass raises concerns regarding environmental sustainability and social justice strong empirical evidence of feasibility must be demonstrated for any study that attempts to construct or model a low carbon energy future based on any combination of low carbon technology on the basis of this review efforts to date seem to have substantially underestimated the challenge and delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways

optimal capital accumulation in a fishery a nonlinear irreversible investment model abstract a nonlinear two state variable two control variable model of a fishery with irreversible investment and harvest capacity constraints is examined the model relaxes assumptions of linearity in investment costs and variable harvest profits in an earlier model by c w clark f h clarke and g r munro econometrica 47 25 47 1979 in both the linear and nonlinear models the optimal capital accumulation paths in new fisheries is characterized by a period in which the physical capital stock level exceeds its long run sustainable equilibrium however unlike the linear model periods of positive net but declining gross investment are optimal in the nonlinear model this accords with observed capital accumulation paths from a number of fisheries the paper also finds different effects in optimal harvest policy depending upon whether the linearity appears in the variable profits function or the investment cost function

eroi of different fuels and the implications for society abstract all forms of economic production and exchange involve the use of energy directly and in the transformation of materials until recently cheap and seemingly limitless fossil energy has allowed most of society to ignore the importance of contributions to the economic process from the biophysical world as well as the potential limits to growth this paper centers on assessing the energy costs of modern day society and its relation to gdp our most important focus is the characteristics of our major energy sources including each fuel s energy return on investment eroi the eroi of our most important fuels is declining and most renewable and non conventional energy alternatives have substantially lower eroi values than traditional conventional fossil fuels at the societal level declining eroi means that an increasing proportion of energy output and economic activity must be diverted to attaining the energy needed to run an economy leaving less discretionary funds available for non essential purchases which often drive growth the declining eroi of traditional fossil fuel energy sources and the effect of that on the world economy are likely to result in a myriad of consequences most of which will not be perceived as good

can renewable energy power the future fossil fuels face resource depletion supply security and climate change problems renewable energy re may offer the best prospects for their long term replacement however re sources differ in many important ways from fossil fuels particularly in that they are energy flows rather than stocks the most important re sources wind and solar energy are also intermittent necessitating major energy storage as these sources increase their share of total energy supply we show that estimates for the technical potential of re vary by two orders of magnitude and argue that values at the lower end of the range must be seriously considered both because their energy return on energy invested falls and environmental costs rise with cumulative output finally most future re output will be electric necessitating radical reconfiguration of existing grids to function with intermittent re

an adjustment restriction on fish quota resource rents overcapacity and recovery of fish stock management objectives of the european union for north sea fish stocks are shifting towards considering both biological sustainability and economic benefits as part of multiannual management plans an adjustment restriction on fish quota has been introduced its objective is to obtain an efficient fish stock and to reduce overcapacity for the fishing industry we develop and apply a bi level stochastic dynamic programming model to study the effect of a quota adjustment restriction on the net present value of resource rents overcapacity and fish stock when the system is recovering from a downward environmental shock at level one a policy maker sets the quota considering fishermen behavior stochastic fish stock dynamics capital stock dynamics and a quota adjustment restriction at level two fishermen harvest myopically and make long term investment decisions assuming that fish stock and quota do not change over time the two levels are linked by the quota which is optimized by the policy maker at level one and becomes a restriction for myopic harvest and long term investment decisions of fishermen at level two our analysis suggests that in the long run overcapacity can be reduced by 54 at modest costs namely at a 1 reduction in the net present value of resource rents long and short run sustainability of the fish stock is not affected

assessing the operational performance and maturity of the carbon trading pilot program the case study of beijing s carbon market on november 28 2013 beijing s carbon emissions trading opened on beijing s environmental exchange as one of the pilot cities beijing has been pursuing low carbon development strategies under state intervention and market regulation this paper chooses the carbon market a medium through which beijing manages emission reduction as the object of study firstly we compare the basic construction circumstances of beijing with other pilot cities then we qualitatively analyze the development of beijing s carbon market from the perspective of transaction status execution of the contract and improvement of the policies and regulations finally we use the topsis model to develop a comprehensive evaluation system of beijing s carbon market it is used to quantitatively evaluate the operational performance and maturity of the mechanism the results show that beijing s carbon market has good comprehensive capabilities ranking second place among seven pilot markets but the maturity of beijing s carbon market is relatively poor for insufficient market liquidity its operations are well managed but economic efficiency still need to be improved the depth of transaction and the effect of reduction in emissions make it meaningful therefore in order to improve the construction of beijing s carbon market measures should be taken as follows 1 strengthening the quota management and increasing carbon trading activity to avoid poor market liquidity 2 accelerating emission reduction actions and encouraging technology innovation such as carrying out several policies and measures supporting new energy and energy saving emission reduction and increasing investment and subsidy in research and development for the technology innovation of firms etc 3 improving regulatory mechanism and enhancing the disclosure of carbon trading such as drawing lessons from the eu emission trading scheme ets about measuring reporting and verification system mrv

bioeconomies of scope and the discard problem in multiple species fisheries abstract we consider the problem of multi species fisheries management when targeting individual species is costly and at sea discards of fish by fishermen are unobserved by the regulator stock conditions ecosystem interaction technological specification and relative prices under which at sea discards are acute are identified a dynamic model is developed to balance ecological interdependencies among multiple fish species and scope economies implicit in a costly targeting technology three regulatory regimes species specific harvest quotas landing taxes and revenue quotas are contrasted against a hypothetical sole owner problem an optimal plan under all regimes precludes discarding for both very low and very high levels of targeting costs first best welfare is close to that achieved through any of the regulatory regimes in general however landing taxes welfare dominate species specific quota regulation a revenue quota fares the worst

harvest efficiency and fishery discards under harvest uncertainty and trading restrictions abstract we study harvesting efficiency and the problem of discards under harvest uncertainty in a fishery that is managed with quotas with only idiosyncratic harvest uncertainty we show that frictionless post harvest quota trade can achieve full efficiency and eliminate quota overage discards completely in the absence of such trade we deduce an ad valorem tax subsidy that eliminates discards while delivering a desired aggregate harvest target alternatively we show that a hybrid policy i e a combined quota and landings fee can implement a manager s aggregate target harvest level efficiently and without discards when harvest shocks in addition have a fishery wide common component post harvest quota trading per se cannot eliminate discards policy intervention in the form of either landing taxes or a hybrid scheme is needed given the prevalence of trading restrictions in many quota managed fisheries worldwide our paper offers important policy advice

measuring the maturity of carbon market in china an entropy based topsis approach abstract in this study we construct an evaluation index system in terms of three dimensions including internal external and interface factors we propose an entropy based topsis model to measure the maturity of carbon market the proposed model uses the entropy method to objectively weight the indicators and the topsis method to measure the maturity of carbon market taking china s seven pilot carbon markets from 2013 to 2017 as an example the empirical results are that the overall maturity of china s pilot carbon markets is relatively low for the sake of small market size low market effectiveness low market activeness and high price volatility moreover due to the difference in the quotas transaction volume market liquidity and market supporting facilities there are obvious differences in maturities among china s seven pilot carbon markets in 2017 the maturity of hubei market is the highest reaching 0 6146 the maturity of guangdong shenzhen beijing shanghai and tianjin reaches 0 6108 0 5022 0 4351 0 4267 and 0 3888 respectively the maturity of chongqing market is the only 0 3633 at the lowest level what s more from the perspective of maturity evolution trend hubei guangdong and shenzhen fluctuate upward from the market opening to 2017 and steadily rank in the top three shanghai and tianjin show a u shaped growth trend declining from 2013 to 2015 and continuing to rise from 2015 to 2017 beijing shows a fluctuating downward trend from 2013 to 2017 while ranking fourth chongqing ranks relatively low but it shows an escalating trend finally several targeted policy implications are put forward to enhance the maturities of carbon markets