renewable energy investment and job creation a cross sectoral assessment for the czech republic with reference to eu benchmarks the development of renewable energy sources has been primarily justified on the ground of environmental policies and energy security but new jobs opportunities and establishment of new economy sectors may be equally important co benefits from investments in this sector the main goal of this paper is to assess the employment benefits of investments in renewable energy in the czech republic we examine the level and rate of the development of the renewable energy sector in the czech republic in terms of green job creation for the period 2008 2013 in comparison to data from other eu countries including germany as a leading early investor in renewables whilst the deployment of renewable energy in the czech republic has succeeded to create a significant number of jobs more than 20 000 employees in 2010 our analysis illustrates a strong dependency of job creation on the continuation of financial incentives we also find that biomass and waste energy processing offer the highest employment per mwh which benefits employment in economically fragile rural areas we discuss the question of competitiveness of a country that was not amongst the early adopters of renewables arguing that the technical skills of the labour force in the czech republic provide a potential for more sustained investments in the sector

material flows vs natural capital what makes an economy sustainable abstract in the discourse about sustainable development constant natural capital is frequently referred to as a criterion for ecological sustainability but what is natural capital the concept will be analyzed by presenting arguments in favour of using the term and different versions of sustainability strong and weak subsequently a critique of the natural capital concept is brought forward from an ecological as well as from an economic perspective following this critique the use of material inputs and the material input per unit of service mips as a measure for the environmental impact potential is suggested dematerialisation is understood to be an alternative management rule for sustainability in conclusion a change of perspective is proposed due to the conceptual and measurement problems associated with the constant natural capital criterion which refers to a stock it seems more reasonable from a scientific as well as from a practical perspective to add flows i e material inputs to a decision criterion for whether a development is sustainable or not

employment impacts of eu biofuels policy combining bottom up technology information and sectoral market simulations in an input output framework this paper analyses the employment consequences of policies aimed to support biofuels in the european union the promotion of biofuel use has been advocated as a means to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions originating from transport activities on the one hand and to reduce dependence on imported oil and thereby increase security of the european energy supply on the other hand the employment impacts of increasing biofuels shares are calculated by taking into account a set of elements comprising the demand for capital goods required to produce biofuels the additional demand for agricultural feedstock higher fuel prices or reduced household budget in the case of price subsidisation price effects ensuing from a hypothetical world oil price reduction linked to substitution in the eu market and price impacts on agro food commodities the calculations refer to scenarios for the year 2020 targets as set out by the recent renewable energy roadmap employment effects are assessed in an input output framework taking into account bottom up technology information to specify biofuels activities and linked to partial equilibrium models for the agricultural and energy sectors the simulations suggest that biofuels targets on the order of 10 15 could be achieved without adverse net employment effects

individual and collective socio psychological patterns of photovoltaic investment under diverging policy regimes of austria and italy abstract photovoltaic policies show the primary effect of encouraging photovoltaic investments but also secondary effects of crowding in out individuals with specific socio psychological patterns to enhance our understanding of such crowding effects we investigated two comparative study cases with contrasting state support for photovoltaic investments high financial support in the province of bolzano south tyrol italy versus lower financial support in the province of styria austria we surveyed individual and collective investors and as a control group households who had not invested in photovoltaics at the time of data collection we first compared crowding effects of diverging pv policies and afterwards individual and collective socio psychological patterns to grasp their role for photovoltaic adoption in general protecting the environment was found to be the strongest driver for photovoltaic investments generous state support in italy widened demographics crowded in economic considerations and persons with an anthropocentric relationship towards nature however italy s high incentivized photovoltaic policy crowded out the motivations for collective energy projects and could not sufficiently encourage a sustainable diffusion of photovoltaics as investments collapsed once state funding was stopped

assessing the regional economic impacts of renewable energy sources a literature review abstract the transition of the global energy system is one of the main trends that offers opportunities as well as challenges for the economy most literature evaluates the impact of that transition at a national level that view is broadened towards a regional scale due to the lower energy density of many renewable energy sources renewable energy generation will be more decentralised leading to potentially significant changes in the regional economy when transitioning to a renewable energy system in this paper the current literature and methods of assessing regional economic impacts of a transition to renewable energy generation is reviewed the findings suggest an overall need to clearly define the topics such as technologies that are assessed and the evaluated time period a guideline for a regional impact assessment is provided focusing on the suitability of applied impact assessment methods employment ratios supply chain analyses input output models and computable general equilibrium models

valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

multi criteria revision of the hungarian renewable energy utilization action plan review of the aspect of economy abstract in 2012 the hungarian government has decided to revise the country s national renewable action plan mostly due to the experienced changes of the economic environment and the continuously decreasing cost of renewable energy technologies present paper introduces the methodology and the most important results of this revision process carried out by the centre for energy research of the hungarian academy of sciences first the results of hungarian initiatives aiming the increase of the share of renewable were examined then by analysis of technological and economic trends of recent years new scenarios were set to reach the targets set by adopting the 2009 28 ec directive 1 a multiple criteria decision analysis mcda of all potential renewable technologies and their respective fuels served as a basis for the most competitive scenarios the authors focused on five aspects economy environment climate job creation and innovation due to coverage constraints present paper dominantly focuses on the review of the economical aspect but in addition to those mentioned further aspects may also be considered in the optimisation process the results of the revision highlight that by 2020 hungary will still mostly be using bioenergy in its renewable portfolio which also allows the country to exploit its significant potential

u s comparative advantage in bioenergy a heckscher ohlin ricardian approach much of the current literature on trade in biofuels is focused on the partial equilibrium welfare effects in the u s ethanol sector of potentially distorting policy instruments such as tax credits to blenders and import tariffs see elobeid and tokgoz 2006 de gorter and just 2007 however recent studies by the oecd 2006 and the world bank kojima mitchell and ward 2007 have expanded the analysis to consider the future prospects for trade in both ethanol and biodiesel paying particular attention to current production costs across countries and the connection between thresh old prices for crude oil prices and biofuel pro duction costs as well as the land requirements needed to meet the types of biofuel production mandates being implemented in the united states the european union eu and else where two key stylized facts can be gleaned from these latter studies while increasing crude oil prices have improved the economic viability of say u s corn based ethanol brazil continues to have a significant comparative advantage in producing ethanol from sugarcane oecd 2006 kojima mitchell and ward 2007 sec ond the land requirements necessary to meet targets being set for the proportion of biofu els used in transport fuel consumption show that again brazil has a clear comparative ad vantage for example brazil only requires 3 of its agricultural land to meet a 10 share of biofuels in domestic transport fuel consump tion compared to 30 36 and 72 re spectively in the united states canada and the e u oecd 2006 this all seems to point to a simple but rather predictable story of trade in biofuels in the absence of trade distorting policy instru ments brazil currently has a comparative and maybe even an absolute advantage in produc ing biofuels based on lower ethanol feedstock costs and relative abundance of agricultural land even in the presence of trade distortions brazil exported 20 of its production during the 2006 7 harvest season kojima mitchell and ward 2007 and this would increase sub stantially if the united states removed its ethanol import tariff of 54 cents per gallon elobeid and tokgoz 2006 however the mar gin for competitiveness in biofuels is rather narrow only 10 of production being traded internationally of which brazil accounts for 50 kojima mitchell and ward 2007 this is a static story though based on cur rent crop yields as well as existing biofuel production technologies consequently in try ing to analyze the potential for united states comparative advantage in biofuels production it is important to account for technological innovation that may occur within the next decade notably in the production of ethanol from cellulosic material to that end a styl ized trade model is set out in the first part of this article which allows for the possibil ity that the united states could become a fu ture exporter of biofuels the model draws on a heckscher ohlin ricardo approach origi nally due to davis 1995 as well as analysis of trade in the presence of external economies helpman and krugman 1985 given this analysis the second part of the article is con cerned with the possibility that current u s policy toward corn based ethanol production may actually stymie the potential for future exports drawing on recent literature analyz ing the infant industry argument for protec tion saure 2007

solar energy market developments in india abstract considering india s ambition to ensure energy security renewable energy sources like solar wind biomass and small hydro can play crucial role in the energy mix of the country solar has been identified as one of the key renewable sources to supplement the conventional energy sources and reduce carbon footprint in india authors review solar energy potential market developments capacity additions actual production and component manufacturing industry trade status and economics of solar energy in the country recently the government revised target for solar power capacity installation from 20 gw to100 gw by 2022 however the solar industry faces a significant level of challenges in the areas of grid connectivity and evacuation infrastructure regulatory policy developments capacity utilization initial capital investment lack of innovative financing models consumer awareness and acceptance authors suggest that by taking key strategic steps like creating attracting investment climate making easy access to financing developing transmission and distribution infrastructure skill development and developing domestic component manufacturing industry the challenges can be addressed such progressive steps would enable india to achieve the objective of industrialization through clean energy

promoting biofuels use in spain a cost benefit analysis abstract public support for renewable energy is usually justified in terms of its contribution to reducing energy dependency an improvement in environmental quality and a stimulation of economic activity and employment in the case of biofuels greenhouse gas emissions reduction has received significant attention nevertheless nowadays there is a lively debate surrounding the convenience of biofuels this is a consequence of the potentially negative impacts revealed from their production on a large scale the aim of the present work is to analyse the potential contribution of biofuels to the main impact categories identified all those impacts categories have been measured in economic terms with the aim of conducting a very simple cost benefit analysis to assess the suitability of biofuel promotion policies in spain since the scope of the analysis is the national level the study seeks to cover three main impact categories i the environmental impact including not only the greenhouse gases but also other kind of regional and local pollutants ii the economic impact or potential stimulus for the national economic activity derived from a new productive sector and iii the potential consequences on the economy derived from using biofuels to reduce the spanish energy dependency results confirm that consuming biofuels has a positive impact on environmental quality mainly due to the reduction of greenhouse gases so2 and particulate matter emissions in contrast analyzing the whole effect on the economy the use of biofuels is displacing income from other economic sectors resulting in a net negative impact in terms of energy dependency biofuels do not significantly contribute to reduce the risk of supply disruptions nor the impact on the economy derived from increases in fuel prices concluding the study shows that the introduction of mandatory targets of biofuel consumption along the timeframe of 2008 2020 in spain could result in a welfare loss for the spanish society

employment factors for wind and solar energy technologies a literature review abstract in this paper we present an up to date literature review on employment opportunities associated with the deployment of renewable energy technology we identified approximately 70 studies and data sources published over the past decade that report analysed or observed employment impacts of renewable energy growth these publications cover many different countries and several technology options and present widely varying results derived from distinct methodological approaches our first overall conclusion is that there is clear lack of authenticity of findings in this literature since recursive referencing abounds and relatively few studies yield truly original research when we omit non authentic analyses as well as those that aggregate results in a way that does not allow us to calculate employment factors defined as the number of jobs or amount of work generated per unit of electricity production capacity the total list of references is brought to 31 independent items of these only 14 references provide separate estimates of the employment factors for the stages of manufacturing and installation respectively as opposed to employment factors for these two activities combined a total of 23 items provide values for operation and maintenance o m employment factors we observe significant uncertainties in quoted figures for job creation both across and within publications

using tax expenditures to achieve energy policy goals tax expenditures are a major source of support for energy related activities in the federal budget exceeding direct budget support for energy by a factor of nearly six focusing on the policy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption i find these tax expenditures highly cost ineffective at best and counterproductive at worse the tax credit for ethanol is an example of a cost ineffective subsidy the cost of reducing co2 emissions through this subsidy exceeded 1 000 per ton of co2 avoided in 2006 a change in the way the subsidy is administered provides an opportunity to measure its incidence i find that the entire subsidy is passed backward to ethanol producers and possibly farmers consideration of market structure suggests that farmers receive little of the subsidy

which factors influence the expansion of bioenergy an empirical study of the investment behaviours of german farmers the german government is planning to increase the share of renewable energy sources in this context it is important to understand the decision making behaviour of farmers regarding investments in renewable energy systems that generate energy from biomass and farmers reactions to investment support measures to study this behaviour we conduct a survey and confront farmers with a hypothetical opportunity to invest in a biogas plant our findings reveal that farmers have heterogeneous investment thresholds their investment decisions are mainly driven by capital costs and the subjective perception of the risk resulting from the investment other decision parameters like sustainability and non monetary objectives that are also examined in this paper play only minor roles however bounded rationality is an important factor moreover the influence of an investment subsidy was analysed only about half of the amount of the subsidy as expected according to normative forecast models is reflected in an increased willingness to invest furthermore farmers who have previously invested in bioenergy plants show lower investment thresholds and have stronger reactions to the subsidy regarding the expansion of renewable energies these findings are meaningful for policy impact analysis

assessing employment in renewable energy technologies a case study for wind power in brazil abstract environmental concerns and the search for climate change mitigation have led to the deployment of renewable energy technologies ret in several countries the adoption of incentive policies especially those based on heavy subsides has motivated the discussion of social and economic benefits brought about by these technologies mainly on the impact on employment rates in this context several studies have been conducted to quantify job creation by ret concluding that the latter are more labor intensive than traditional fossil fueled technologies however results for different assessments vary largely due to distinct methodological approaches and are frequently highly aggregated thus results are not comparable or applicable to other contexts previous studies have failed to quantify the effects of imports and exports of ret equipment in total employment usually associating employment and installed capacity in the year studied this study has aimed to address these issues creating an index for employment quantification based on production instead of installed capacity we have estimated both direct jobs in manufacture construction and operation and management and indirect jobs both in the upstream supply chains of materials and inputs to manufacture of wind turbines and construction of wind farms we have also performed an assessment of jobs created in wind energy projects which are expected to begin operation in brazil until 2017 the resulting job potential in brazil corresponds to13 5 persons year equivalent for each mw installed between manufacture and first year of operation of a wind power plant and 24 5 persons year equivalent over the wind farm lifetime results show that major contribution from wind power for job creation are in the construction stage and despite of the low amount of jobs created in operation and maintenance relative to new installed capacity those stable jobs stand out as they persist over the entire wind farm s life time

are green hopes too rosy employment and welfare impacts of renewable energy promotion in view of pressing unemployment problems policy makers across all parties jump on the prospects of renewable energy promotion as a job creation engine which can boost economic well being our analytical model shows that initial labor market rigidities in theory provide some scope for such a double dividend however the practical outcome of renewable energy promotion might be sobering our computable general equilibrium analysis of subsidized electricity production from renewable energy sources res e in germany suggests that the prospects for employment and welfare gains are quite limited and hinge crucially on the level of the subsidy rate and the financing mechanism if res e subsidies are financed by labor taxes welfare and employment effects are strictly negative for a broad range of subsidy rates the use of an electricity tax to fund res e subsidies generates minor benefits for small subsidy rates but these benefits quickly turn into significant losses as the subsidy rate exceeds some threshold value

adoption of organic farming in germany and austria an integrative dynamic investment perspective farm level adaptation to changing economic environments is often slower than expected technological innovations for instance are frequently adopted at a later date than the net present value of investment suggests this can be explained by a model of investment under uncertainty which consistently accounts for uncertainty sunk costs and the flexibility of investment timing its essential conclusion is that due to temporal opportunity costs critical incremental cash flows that trigger investments might be higher than those needed for simple cost recovery this accounts for an ostensible reluctance to invest economic hysteresis in this article we demonstrate how slow conversion to organic farming in general and the different rates of conversion in germany and austria in particular can be explained by the new investment theory

market clearing with stochastic security part ii case studies this paper analyzes the market clearing formulation with stochastic security developed in its companion paper through two case studies solved using mixed integer linear programming techniques the generation and reserve schedules as well as the nodal prices of energy and security are assessed under various conditions such as a line flow limits b when nonspinning reserve is excluded from the formulation c demand side valuation of energy not served d generator ramping limits and e the set of pre selected contingencies

macroeconomic impact of the german energy transition and its distribution by sectors and regions abstract macroeconomic impacts such as changes in economic structures and employment are very important when evaluating the energy transition in societal terms we employ a macroeconomic model that accounts for regional economic and sectoral features the model results show how the overall positive net impacts of the energy transition in germany energy efficiency and renewable energies on economic growth and employment up to 2030 are distributed across sectors and regions the biggest relative increases in value added occur in construction real estate and electricity generation the biggest decrease is in mining of lignite significant effects mainly result from changes in the heat and transport sectors while the transition in the electricity sector entails smaller impacts the latter are however relevant to the regional distribution the model results suggest that especially northern and eastern german federal states will benefit economically from the energy transition because they offer attractive locations for investments at the same time these states are less affected by decreasing conventional energy generation moreover the impact of rising electricity prices is less negative here than in the other federal states because of their lower electricity intensity in production in summary the energy transition represents an opportunity for these regions to strengthen their economies

option values to conservation and agricultural price policy application to terrace construction in kenya policy reforms to liberalize agricultural markets in developing countries are likely to influence both the level and the variability of prices while considerable attention has been given to the impact of changes in price level on soil and water conservation there has been relatively little analysis of the role of price variability in conservation decisions we present a model of investment under uncertainty to analyze the effect of both level and variability of prices on the decision to invest in conservation the model is applied to adoption of fanya juu terraces in eastern kenya

the role of rare earth prices in renewable energy consumption the actual driver for a renewable energy world abstract this study examines for the first time in the energy issues literature the long run relationship between rare earth prices and the consumption of energy from renewables the study applies standard time series econometric methodologies and monthly data in relevance to regional and income classification groups of countries spanning the period 2004 2016 the empirical findings indicate the presence of a long run relationship between these variables but for certain rare earths and regions the findings survive a multivariate robustness test while they are expected to be of substantial importance for the world community given that a few countries have control of those materials the importance is lying on the need to establish a global green energy environment

time to build option value and investment decisions a comment abstract we correct the analysis of the model of time to build in majd and pindyck 1987 journal of financial economics 18 7 27 for the omission of an essential optimality condition our analysis reveals an additional insight long times to build reduce the effects of increased project value volatility i e higher investment thresholds in comparison to standard real option models of investment under uncertainty where investment is instantaneous thus a naive npv rule can sometimes be an appropriate initial guide to investment

assessing the impact of renewable energy deployment on local sustainability towards a theoretical framework renewable energy sources res have a large potential to contribute to the sustainable development sd of specific territories by providing them with a wide variety of socioeconomic and environmental benefits however the existing literature has put much emphasis on the environmental benefits including the reduction of global and local pollutants while socioeconomic impacts have not received a comparable attention these include diversification of energy supply enhanced regional and rural development opportunities creation of a domestic industry and employment opportunities with the exception of the diversification and security of energy supply these benefits have usually been mentioned but their analysis has been too general i e mostly at the national level and a focus on the regional and even more so the local level has been lacking at most studies provide scattered evidence of some of those regional and local benefits but without an integrated conceptual framework to analyse them this paper tries to make a contribution in this regard by developing an integrated theoretical framework which allows a comprehensive analysis of the impact of renewable energy on local sustainability and which can be empirically applied to identify these benefits in different territories

employment creation potential of renewable power generation technologies a life cycle approach abstract the present study analyses the employment characteristics of nine different renewable power generation technologies two types of solar photovoltaic wind small scale hydro geothermal wood biomass and three types of biogas the analysis uses a renewable energy focused input output model that the authors developed to analyse life cycle environmental and socio economic impacts of renewable power generation technologies and policies the analysis reveals that there are distinctive differences among the nine technologies impacts on employment the total employment creation potential over the life cycle is estimated to be in the range of 1 04 5 04 person years per gwh furthermore the nine technologies have unique features regarding how many and what kinds of jobs are created across the whole life cycle the introduction of these technologies into an economy directly and indirectly induces jobs in different industrial sectors reflecting their technological characteristics on the other hand the nine different technologies have a common employment effect in that they create relatively high employment opportunities in the service sectors such as wholesale trade non life insurance and judicial financial and accounting services the present study reveals quantitative employment characteristics of the different types of renewable power generation technology to provide valuable information for renewable energy policy making

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

analysing future trends of renewable electricity in the eu in a low carbon context the aim of this paper is to analyse the situation and trends of electricity from renewable energy sources res e in the eu up to 2030 taking into account several drivers and barriers and different maturity levels for the renewable energy technologies the methodology is based on the results of simulation models providing insights on future outlooks complemented with an analysis of regulations and other drivers and barriers regarding the most mature renewable electricity technologies the main drivers will be public policies carbon prices and support schemes and the expected up ward trend in fossil fuel prices and the main barriers are related to grid access administrative procedures and the exhaustion of places with the best wind resource for those already commercial but expensive technologies the main driver is support schemes but not carbon prices allowing the exploitation of the large potential for investment cost reductions barriers are mostly related to their high investment costs finally for those technologies which are emerging and immature further technical improvements as a result of r d efforts will be needed and they cannot be expected to significantly penetrate the european electricity market until 2030

investigating the sustainability of renewable energy an empirical analysis of european union countries using a hybrid of projection pursuit fuzzy clustering model and accelerated genetic algorithm based on real coding abstract renewable energy sustainability plays a significant role in ensuring energy security improving environment and promoting sustainable development of economic and social this paper focuses on assessing and analyzing the sustainability and influencing factors of 27 eu countries renewable energy by dpsir four dimensional indicators system four sustainability dimensions of energy economy society and environment are considered and integrated to deal with the randomness and fuzziness of multi dimensional metadata and to conduct assessment without standard we develop a nonlinear multi factor assessment model projection pursuit fuzzy clustering model with accelerated genetic algorithm based on real coding the results show that the co2 emissions energy productivity non renewable energy emission intensity energy dependence electricity price and policy support are closer related to the renewable energy sustainability the strongest sustainability countries are denmark and sweden from the overall analysis time series analysis shows that general sustainable level is a wave of growth the geographical analysis shows that the countries with better sustainable development are mainly located in the central region showing a belt distribution from north to south the sustainability decreases from the middle to the sides

the challenges of determining the employment effects of renewable energy abstract the benefits of promoting renewable energy are regularly claimed to be energy security climate change mitigation and job creation while the first two benefits are generally accepted the impact of renewable energy on employment is still disputed this paper presents a discussion of the various factors that influence the analysis of renewable energy and its impact on employment the advantages and disadvantages of input output methods and analysis methods are discussed as well as the issues surrounding the measurement of job creation a critical evaluation of the literature reveals factors that should be considered when completing a study about renewable energy and employment labour intensity of renewables cost increases and availability of investments counting job losses job quality and skills model assumptions and sources of information analytical studies using extensive surveys were found to be more appropriate for regional studies while input output methods were better suited to national and international studies

deliverable robust ramping products in real time markets the increasing penetration of variable energy resources has led to more uncertainties in power systems flexible ramping products frp have been adopted by several electricity markets to manage the uncertainties we reveal that neglected line congestion for frp may not only cause infeasibility but also result in a failure of cost recovery to address the deliverability issues on frp this paper proposes a new concept deliverable robust ramping products drrp in real time markets the drrp includes generation ramping reserve and generation capacity reserve the drrp is deliverable and immunized against any predefined uncertainty it also fully addresses the bid cost recovery issue caused by the line congestion in existing frps the prices of drrp are derived within the affine adjustable robust optimization aaro framework these prices can be used to identify valuable reserves among available reserves and quantify the values of flexible resources that provide reserves this paper also proposes a general approach to obtaining the time decoupled prices for drrp and generation which can be used for the market settlement of the first interval only in real time markets simulations on a 3 bus system and the ieee 118 bus system are performed to illustrate the concept of drrp and the advantages of drrp compared to existing frp

nonconventional renewable energy governance in brazil lessons to learn from the german experience abstract this paper presents a comparative analysis of energy governance regarding nonconventional renewable energy sources ncres in brazil and germany brazil is a world leader in the use of conventional renewable energy sources such as hydro power while germany has been achieving outstanding results in fostering ncres the focus is on two critical issues the legal and regulatory framework and the institutions created to support the ncres market development the comparison shows that despite the very different energy situations and policy drivers valuables lessons can be extracted from the german experience the main lesson for brazil is to think ncres as a strategic opportunity to rely less on fossil fuel and large hydroelectric power plants to decentralize the electric power sector to use the huge solar biomass and wind power potential available in the country and to create a environment friendly ncres industry to this end three critical points were identified 1 the legal and regulatory framework should be improved 2 long term energy planning taking into account social economic and climate issues and 3 the current institutions supporting ncres in brazil should be upgraded and or new ones such as more specific energy agencies should be created

the impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage the case of biogas in lombardy abstract the growing demand of maize silage for biogas production in northern italy has triggered an intense debate concerning land rents maize prices and their possible negative consequences on important agri food chains the aim of this work is to quantify the extent to which the rapid spread of biogas raised the maize price at regional level increasing the demand of land for energy crops for this purpose we applied a partial equilibrium framework simulating the agricultural sector and the biogas industry in lombardy under two alternative schemes of subsidization policy results show that policy measures implemented in 2013 reducing the average subsidy per kwh may contribute to enforce the complementarity of the sector with agri food chains decreasing the competition between energy and non energy uses compared to the old scheme maize demand for biogas would decrease lessening the market clearing price as well as feed opportunity cost for livestock sector and reducing land demand for energy purposes

robust security constrained unit commitment and dispatch with recourse cost requirement with increasing renewable energy resources price sensitive loads and electric vehicle charging stations in the power grid uncertainties on both power generation and consumption sides become critical factors in the security constrained unit commitment scuc problem recently worst scenario based robust optimization approaches are employed to consider uncertainties this paper proposes a non conservative robust scuc model and an effective solution approach the contributions of this paper are three fold first the commitment and dispatch solution obtained in this paper can be directly used in day ahead market as it overcomes two issues conservativeness and absence of robust dispatch which are the two largest obstacles to applying robust scuc in real markets secondly a new concept recourse cost requirement similar to reserve requirement is proposed to define the upper bound of re dispatch cost when uncertainties are revealed thirdly a novel decomposition approach is proposed to effectively address the well known computational challenge in robust approaches simulation results on the ieee 118 bus system validate the effectiveness of the proposed novel model and solution approach

uncertainty marginal price transmission reserve and day ahead market clearing with robust unit commitment the increasing penetration of renewable energy in recent years has led to more uncertainties in power systems these uncertainties have to be accommodated by flexible resources i e upward and downward generation reserves in this paper a novel concept uncertainty marginal price ump is proposed to price both the uncertainty and generation reserve at the same time the energy is priced at locational marginal price lmp a novel market clearing mechanism is proposed to credit the generation and reserve and to charge the load and uncertainty within the robust unit commitment in the day ahead market we derive the umps and lmps in the robust optimization framework ump helps allocate the cost of generation reserves to uncertainty sources we prove that the proposed market clearing mechanism leads to partial market equilibrium we find that transmission reserves must be kept explicitly in addition to generation reserves for uncertainty accommodation we prove that transmission reserves for ramping delivery may lead to financial transmission right ftr underfunding in existing markets the ftr underfunding can be covered by congestion fund collected from uncertainty payment in the proposed market clearing mechanism simulations on a six bus system and the ieee 118 bus system are performed to illustrate the new concepts and the market clearing mechanism

public policies to support the development of renewable energy in romania a review abstract the aim of this study is to review the public policies used to support the development of renewable energy in romania over the past ten years romania assumed a target of 24 share of renewable energy in consumption in 2020 higher than the average target of the european union and this target has already been reached in the beginning of 2014 as a result of the public policies implemented therefore this study examines firstly the support schemes for the development of renewable energy in the european union underlining the arguments to support the renewable energy as well as the main barriers for its development secondly this study analyses the renewable energy sector in romania in terms of theoretical and economic potential production and consumption of renewable energy and legislation related to the renewable energy thirdly this study discloses the main issues of the public renewable energy policy in romania starting with an overview of the tradable green certificates system and revealing the changes of the romanian support scheme and the possible effects of the policy changes the results of the present study may be useful for further research regarding public policies for the development of renewable energy projects

economic effects of renewable energy expansion a model based analysis for germany abstract the increasing utilization of renewable energy sources res is a major energy policy strategy in many countries worldwide germany is a forerunner in the deployment of res and has ambitious goals for the future the support and use of renewables affects the economy it creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable energy facilities but comes with costs related to supporting its deployment this paper analyses and quantifies the net balance of economic effects associated with renewable energy deployment in germany until 2030 to this end we use a novel model the sectoral energy economic econometric model this is an econometric multi country model which for germany contains a detailed representation of industries including 14 renewable energy technology sectors our results show that renewable energy expansion can be achieved without compromising growth or employment the analysis reveals a positive net effect on economic growth in germany net employment effects are small but also positive their size depends strongly on labour market conditions and policies results at the industry level indicate the size and direction of the need for restructuring across the sectors of the germany economy

investments and cleaner energy production a portfolio analysis in the italian electricity market abstract the recent climate change global warming environmental disasters and the economic crisis are only the first signs of the failure of an economic system that for too long shows an uncontrolled utilization of the planet wealth the italian electricity market which is strongly dependent on hydrocarbons only in recent years has seen a first attempt to change towards renewable resources for electricity production aimed at self consumption and for feeding into the grid this paper presents an economic analysis whose purpose is to evaluate the profitability of investments in renewable technologies for the production of electricity each renewable source has its own profitability dependent on a number of factors and subject to market fluctuations cost and frequent changes in the incentive policies applying portfolio theory is possible to select the right mix of renewable energy sources and simulate its evolution moreover the presented analysis can be useful for energy planners to select future green scenarios finalized to the reduction of emissions and energy imports through the increasing use of renewable energy

ex post analysis of economic impacts from wind power development in u s counties wind power development has surged in recent years in the united states policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project level case studies or modeled input output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power often focusing on potential local state wide or national employment or earnings impacts building on this literature we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large wind rich region in the country taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location we find an aggregate increase in county level personal income and employment of approximately 11 000 and 0 5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008 these estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input output results and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0 2 and 0 4 for counties with installed wind power over the same period

policy based reserves for power systems this paper introduces the concept of affine reserve policies for accommodating large fluctuating renewable in feeds in power systems the approach uses robust optimization with recourse to determine operating rules for power system entities such as generators and storage units these rules or policies establish several hours in advance how these entities are to respond to errors in the prediction of loads and renewable infeeds once their values are discovered affine policies consist of a nominal power schedule plus a series of planned linear modifications that depend on the prediction errors that will become known at future times we describe how to choose optimal affine policies that respect the power network constraints namely matching supply and demand respecting transmission line ratings and the local operating limits of power system entities for all realizations of the prediction errors crucially these policies are time coupled exploiting the spatial and temporal correlation of these prediction errors affine policies are compared with existing reserve operation under standard modeling assumptions and operating cost reductions are reported for a multi day benchmark study featuring a poorly predicted wind infeed efficient prices for such policy based reserves are derived and we propose new reserve products that could be traded on electricity markets

the hidden costs of renewables promotion the case of crop based biogas abstract this paper finds that specific characteristics of bioenergy investments namely long times to build relatively high variable costs and the managerial ability of corrective actions during the project help bioenergy producers to respond to market uncertainties this effect is shown to compromise the economic effectiveness of bioenergy policies the paper compares the effectiveness of financial and regulatory incentive programs aiming to stimulate production of crop based biogas a stylized stochastic real options based investment model is developed to analyze the investment behavior of biogas producers under alternative policies the model is solved by a numerical approach combining stochastic simulations and the genetic algorithm technique unless bioenergy schemes account for structural characteristics of the bioenergy industry they will tend to encourage investments in unused production capacities this would cause additional welfare costs and benefit mainly crop producers

energy and reserve pricing in security and network constrained electricity markets this paper analyzes some unresolved pricing issues in security constrained electricity markets subject to transmission flow limits although the notion of separate reserve types as proposed by ferc can be precisely and unambiguously defined when transmission constraints are active the very existence of separate reserve prices and markets is open to question when the prices are based on marginal costs instead we submit here that the only products whose marginal costs can be separately and uniquely defined and calculated are those of energy and security at each node thus under marginal pricing at any given network bus all scheduled reserve types should be priced not at separate rates but at a common rate equal to the marginal cost of security at that bus furthermore we argue that nodal or area reserves cannot be prespecified but must be obtained as by products of the market clearing process simulations back up these conclusions

the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and energy efficiency practices adoption abstract the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and the adoption of energy efficiency practices recommended by the us department of energy doe through the industrial assessment center iac using non parametric techniques such as data envelopment analysis dea and parametric techniques like stochastic frontier analysis sfa and corrected ordinary least square cols to measure the efficiency the regression quantile rq is carried out to test the hypothesis that the most efficient companies have adopted a higher level of practice the main conclusion is that when the enterprise operates at increasing returns to scale rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases positively inversely when the enterprise operates at decreasing rts the impact of efficiency on adoption increases negatively

distributional employment impacts of renewable and new energy a case study of china abstract the main goal of this paper is to argue for the necessity and significance of studying the distributional employment impacts of renewable and new energy development rne based on the comprehensive review of the methodology and conclusions of existing literatures this paper builds up an extended input output model to study rne s distributional employment impacts on gender and personnel structure the case study of china s power sector in this paper affirmed earlier doubts that rne development will indeed aggravate the gender inequality problem and add to the level of mismatch between the structure of labor demand and supply causing structural unemployment problems the quantitative analysis in this paper outlined here implies that from 2011 to 2020 the development of rne will bring about 7 million employment gains but only 81 8 of which can be realized due to the mismatch problem the study of china may alert other countries to be less optimistic about rne s employment impacts and reaffirm the need to carry out the distributional employment impacts analysis this paper concludes with policy suggestions such as providing suitable training and equal promotion opportunities for women offering courses and vocational trainings to rne related majors in order to reduce the structural unemployment problem and further speed up the development of rne

regional net impacts and social distribution effects of promoting renewable energies in germany this paper concerns the net effects of promoting renewable energies on value added and disposable income in germany as well as their distribution among regions and income brackets since its entry into force the german renewable energy sources act eeg has stimulated tremendous investments in renewable energy capacities by guaranteeing investors a fixed price per kwh as well as a preferred feed into the grid over electricity from conventional sources the policy measures are financed by a surcharge on electricity prices in recent years a controversy has arisen about potentially negative regional and social distribution effects in this paper multiregional price and quantity input output models with endogenous heterogeneous households are used to trace the indirect impacts of the eeg on value added and disposable income through the complex network of regional value chains our findings suggest that the generation of electricity from renewable sources itself leads to small positive impacts on industries but leads to a significant drain on household income and has regressive distributive effects however investment in new capacities may possibly transform these negative impacts into a positive direction for the majority of households

economic and co2 mitigation impacts of promoting biomass heating systems an input output study for vorarlberg austria this paper reports on an empirical investigation about the economic and co2 mitigation impacts of bioenergy promotion in the austrian federal province of vorarlberg we study domestic value added employment and fiscal effects by means of a static input output analysis the bioenergy systems analysed comprise biomass district heating pellet heating and automated wood chip heating systems as well as logwood stoves and boilers ceramic stoves and buffer storage systems the results indicate that gross economic effects are significant regarding both investment and operation of the systems and that the negative economic effects caused by the displacement of conventional decentralised heating systems might be in the order of 20 40 finally co2 mitigation effects are substantial contributing already in 2004 around 35 of the 2010 co2 mitigation target of the land vorarlberg for all renewable energy sources

sustainable development case study in the implementation of renewable energy in brazil abstract in response to demands by new clean renewable energy sources emerged in brazil in the last 10 years many investors interested in implementing wind farms thus arises the question of how the surrounding communities may be affected positively and or negatively by installing wind farms projects and other energy renewable sources the aim of this study is to propose a set of guidelines and best practices for public managers public authorities and owners of wind farms and other energy renewable sources about the perspective of the sustainable development of the surrounding communities the research was conducted in three phases literature review on sustainable development case study in major community a and minor communities b c and d where were implemented wind farms development of the best practice and guidelines through the brainstorming focus group current reality tree and creating shared value the results show the political dimension of sustainability as a root cause of underdevelopment of communities were proposed a set of 22 guidelines and best practices that contribute to the sustainable development of communities

how does germany s green energy policy affect electricity market volatility an application of conditional autoregressive range models abstract based on a dynamic model for the high low range of electricity prices this article analyses the effects of germany s green energy policy on the volatility of the electricity market using european energy exchange data from 2000 to 2015 we find rather high volatility in the years 2000 2009 but also that the weekly price range has significantly declined in the period following the year 2009 this period is characterised by active regulation under the energy industry law enwg the eu emissions trading directive etd and the renewable energy law eeg in contrast to the preceding period price jumps are smaller and less frequent especially for day time hours implying that current policy measures are effective in promoting renewable energies while simultaneously upholding electricity market stability this is because the regulations strive towards a more and more flexible and market oriented structure which allows better integration of renewable energies and supports an efficient alignment of renewable electricity supply with demand

energy poverty an overview abstract in the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change security of supply and energy poverty the first two have been extensively analysed but less attention has been paid to the third even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people this paper presents an overview on energy poverty different ways of measuring it and its implications according to the who indoor pollution causes an estimated 1 3 million deaths per annum in low income countries associated with the use of biomass in inadequate cookstoves although energy poverty cannot be delinked from the broader more complex problem of poverty in general access to energy infrastructures would avoid its most serious consequences and would help to encourage autonomous development according to the iea the cost of providing universal access to energy by 2030 would require annual investment of 35 billion i e much less than the amount provided annually in subsidies to fossil fuels finally the paper argues that energy and energy poverty need to be incorporated into the design of development strategies

the hidden winners of renewable energy promotion insights into sector specific wage differentials abstract in light of germany s energy system transformation this paper examines differences in employment structures and wage differentials between renewable energy establishments and their sector peers to do so we have developed a novel data set by linking company level information from the german renewable energy federation with administrative establishment level data from the institute for employment research descriptive evidence shows significant differences in wages and several other characteristics between renewable energy establishments and their sector peers our estimates give evidence that human capital and other establishment level characteristics mostly explain the wage differential among manufacturers and energy providers however we find a persistent renewable energy wage premium of more than ten percent in construction installation activities and architectural engineering services we interpret this premium as a positive indirect effect of the promotion of renewable energies for the benefit of employees in renewable energy establishments within these two sectors

the expansion of renewable energies and employment effects in germany the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy is a high priority of the european union as well of its member states the german government wants to increase the share of renewable energies from about 5 to 12 by 2010 to attain this goal the german government has introduced compulsory compensation schemes for electricity produced from renewable energy fed into the public grid this paper examines the economic impact of this policy employing an econometric model particular emphasis was given to employment effects in general we distinguish two effects 1 an expansive effect resulting from additional investments and 2 a contractive effect resulting from an increase in the production cost of power the first effect will dominate during the first years and lead to an increase in employment of approximately 33 000 new jobs however the contractive effect will offset these gains and lead to a slightly negative employment balance by 2010

an option valuation analysis of investment choices by a regulated firm this paper analyzes a utility power plant construction project using an option pricing model of the value of the capital investment it includes descriptive factors frequently ignored in the valuation of capital investments by regulated firms including lead time lumpy and sequential cost outlays irreversibility of expenditures and uncertainty about regulatory outcomes for completed projects the analysis shows the value of shorter lead time technologies the value of flexibility to delay or abandon construction the incentive to delay construction under uncertain regulation and how cost recovery policies such as possible disallowance of allow for funds used during construction afudc create incentives to invest less but to complete construction quickly the analysis may also apply in unregulated contexts where the value of a completed project is affected by taxation the possibility of nationalization or possible competitors actions that create uncertain restrictions on potential profits

employment trends in the u s electricity sector 2008 2012 abstract between 2008 2012 electricity generated gwh from coal the longtime dominant fuel for electric power in the us declined 24 while electricity generated from natural gas wind and solar grew by 39 154 and 400 respectively these shifts had major effects on domestic employment in those sectors of the coal natural gas wind and solar industries involved in operations and maintenance o m activities for electricity generation using an economic input output model we estimate that the coal industry lost more than 49 000 jobs 12 nationally over the five year period while in the natural gas solar and wind industries employment increased by nearly 175 000 jobs 21 we also combine published ratios for jobs per unit of fuel production and per megawatt of power plant capacity with site specific data on fuel production and power plant retirements additions and capacity changes to estimate and map direct job changes at the county level the maps show that job increases in the natural gas solar and wind industries generally did not occur where there were significant job losses in the coal industry particularly in west virginia and kentucky

modelling strategy and net employment effects of renewable energy and energy efficiency a meta regression by conducting a meta analysis of the empirical literature on the net employment effects of renewable energy we explore the extent to which the reported net employment effects are driven by the applied methodology we find that the reported conclusions on net employment effects are to a large extent driven by the methodology that is applied where computable general equilibrium cge and i o methods that include induced effects and studies that consider only the near future in their study period up to 2020 are generally less optimistic about net employment creation in the wake of the energy transition in addition we found that policy reports have a greater tendency to report a positive net employment effect than academic studies

a meta analysis of general and partial equilibrium simulations of trade liberalisation under the doha development agenda model based simulation of welfare effects is commonly used to make a case for trade liberalisation and to inform participants a nd stakeholders in trade negotiations however the simulated welfare effects of trade liberalisation vary greatly even across studies that model similar liberalisation scenarios this

can the clean development mechanism cdm deliver abstract the paper investigates whether the clean development mechanism cdm under the kyoto protocol has played a significant role in the development of rural communities specifically investigating uptake of small scale renewable energy projects the investigation involved an assessment of 500 registered small scale cdm projects under the kyoto protocol in terms of their potential impact on the envisaged sustainable development goals for rural communities five case studies from the indian subcontinent were also examined the paper concludes that the cdm in its current state and design has typically failed to deliver the promised benefits with regard to development objectives in rural areas successful projects were found to have had good community involvement and such projects were typically managed by cooperative ventures rather than money making corporations the paper puts forward a new framework for the assessment of such benefits in the hope that future projects can be better assessed in this regard the key problem however remains on how to deal with the inherent contradiction between development and sustainability

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

achieving global environmental benefits through local development of clean energy the case of small hilly hydel in india abstract energy and development are closely intertwined yet increasing fossil fuel based energy consumption contributes significantly to environmental problems both locally and globally this article explores the interlinkages between local livelihood and environmental benefits from the provision of energy to remote rural households through small hydropower development the analysis is based on research carried out around a large development project designed to assist the government of india in the optimum utilization of small hydropower resources in the himalayan and sub himalayan regions there are about 100 000 villages in india that are not connected to electricity supply many of them in the hilly regions with ample hydropower potential the project aimed to demonstrate the utility of and options for providing electricity to such villages through clean mini hydro the article addresses the nature of the impacts of the demonstration small hydel schemes on the local communities to what extent they translate into environmental benefits both locally and globally and the perceptions and participation of the local communities in these small hydro schemes the study explores the impacts of the schemes on financial capital natural capital social capital physical capital human capital and gender equity in the local communities it further provides a discussion on the links between local and global environmental benefits overall it is found that the schemes impacts both on the local communities and the environment are mostly marginally positive or neutral although achieving clearly demonstrable benefits would require major upscaling of the effort involving broader changes than possible under this project furthermore it is argued that some of the assumptions behind the project design were faulty involvement of the local communities and direct livelihood benefits to them are essential for the long term sustainability of the small hydro schemes the discussion and conclusions are intended to provide guidance to programmes and projects that aim to promote environmentally sound energy in the rural areas of developing countries

contingency constrained reserve requirements in joint energy and ancillary services auction this paper presents a security constrained unit commitment model for energy and ancillary services auction which can be used by an iso to optimize reserve requirements in electricity markets the proposed day ahead algorithm determines reserve requirements by simulating contingencies rather than specifying the requirements as fixed system constraints to address the computational complexity the original auction problem is decomposed into a master problem for solving unit commitment and subproblems for considering network security constraints numerical examples show that the proposed joint auction model can clear energy and ancillary services bids simultaneously while minimizing the total operating cost and satisfying transmission security constraints

do national level policies to promote low carbon technology deployment pay off for the investor countries abstract national level policies to promote deployment of low carbon technologies have been suggested and used as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the context of international climate change mitigation the long term benefits of such policies in the context of international climate change mitigation depend on their effects on near term emissions abatement and resultant long term technological change that will reduce abatement costs of achieving global mitigation goals there is also an argument that these policies might foster early mover advantages in international low carbon technology markets we first review the factors that could influence such benefits and use a global integrated assessment model to present an illustrative example to understand the potential magnitude of these benefits we find that reductions in long term abatement costs might not provide sufficient incentives to justify policies to promote the deployment of low carbon technologies in particular the emerging higher risk and currently expensive alternatives we also find that early mover advantages can potentially provide substantial benefits but only if these advantages are both strong and persistent our results suggest a role for international cooperation in low carbon technology deployment to address the existence of free riding opportunities in the context of global climate change mitigation

the welfare economics of a biofuel tax credit and the interaction effects with price contingent farm subsidies a framework is developed to analyze the effects of a biofuel consumer tax exemption and the interaction effects with a price contingent farm subsidy ethanol prices rise above the gasoline price by the amount of the tax credit corn farmers gain directly while gasoline consumers only gain from any reduction in world oil prices due to the extra ethanol production domestic oil producers lose historically the intercept of the ethanol supply curve is above the gasoline price hence part of the tax credit is redundant and represents rectangular deadweight costs that dwarf triangular deadweight cost measures of traditional farm subsidies copyright 2007 oxford university press

project management under risk using the real options approach to evaluate flexibility in r d managerial flexibility has value in the context of uncertain r d projects as management can repeatedly gather information about uncertain project and market characteristics and based on this information change its course of action this value is now well accepted and referred to as real option value we introduce in addition to the familiar real option of abandonment the option of corrective action that management can take during the project the intuition from options pricing theory is that higher uncertainty in project payoffs increases the real option value of managerial decision flexibility however r d managers face uncertainty not only in payoffs but also from many other sources we identify five example types of r d uncertainty in market payoffs project budgets product performance market requirements and project schedules how do they influence the value from managerial flexibility we find that if uncertainty is resolved or costs revenues occurafter all decisions have been made more variability may smear out contingencies and thus reduce the value of flexibility in addition variability may reduce the probability of flexibility ever being exercised which also reduces its value this result runs counter to established option pricing theory intuition and contributes to a better risk management in r d projects our model builds intuition for r d managers as to when it is and when it is not worthwhile to delay commitments for example by postponing a design freeze thus maintaining flexibility in r d projects

investment decisions in hog finishing an application of the real options approach in this paper option pricing theory is applied to an investment problem in hog production a stochastic simulation model capable of pricing american type options is developed this is achieved by recursive calculation of the exercise frontier the model is used to determine the investment trigger and the disinvestment trigger for a pig fattening barn under german market conditions it turns out that the investment trigger taking into account the value of waiting in an uncertain environment can be considerably higher compared to classical investment criteria such as the net present value this offers an explanation as to why farmers are indeed reluctant to invest in hog production another finding is the sensitivity of the option prices with respect to the stochastic process that is assumed for revenues and variable costs of the production activity

security constrained unit commitment for simultaneous clearing of energy and ancillary services markets this paper introduces a security constrained unit commitment scuc model with emphases on the simultaneous optimization of energy and ancillary services markets benders decomposition is used to decouple the scuc into a unit commitment uc master problem and hourly network security checking subproblems lagrangian relaxation is used to decouple the uc problem into individual single unit commitment problems dynamic programming is used to find the optimal commitment decision a simultaneous marginal curve algorithm is proposed to find the optimal values of energy and ancillary services a six bus system with three units and the ieee 118 bus system with 54 units are analyzed to illustrate the proposed model

spot pricing of capacities for generation and transmission of reserve in an extended poolco model the poolco model is emerging as one of the most acceptable options for organizing the spot market of electricity although the model represents a reasonable and safe transition from present industry practices to what is required in a competitive electricity market many important issues remain to be resolved in particular issues regarding reliability related services are of a special concern to the industry this paper is devoted to the issue of reserve service delivery and pricing the poolco model is extended in this paper to include spot pricing of reserve generation and transmission capacities as well as demand side bidding in the authors extended model suppliers submit bids for power as well as for reserve capacities a new formulation of the extended security constrained economic dispatch which allocates both power and reserve generation resources is presented in this paper the dispatch of the resources is constrained by limitations of system transmission capacities the proposed formulation is considered to be relevant not only in the poolco but in a more general setup an illustrative example is used to introduce concepts and present results finally some general issues regarding formats of proposals balance of payments and uniqueness of the prices that apply equally to both the original and extended poolco models are discussed

cost effective policy instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution through bioenergy production in austria abstract climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of austrian energy policy bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets to increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply supporting policy instruments are necessary the cost effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy targets depends on the availability of bioenergy technologies advanced technologies such as second generation biofuels biomass gasification for power production and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage beccs will likely change the performance of policy instruments this article assesses the cost effectiveness of energy policy instruments considering new bioenergy technologies for the year 2030 with respect to greenhouse gas emission ghg reduction and fossil fuel substitution instruments that directly subsidize bioenergy are compared with instruments that aim at reducing ghg emissions a spatially explicit modeling approach is used to account for biomass supply and energy distribution costs in austria results indicate that a carbon tax performs cost effectively with respect to both policy targets if beccs is not available however the availability of beccs creates a trade off between ghg emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution biofuel blending obligations are costly in terms of attaining the policy targets

the impact of wind power on the brazilian labor market abstract wind power is an important source of renewable energy beyond the environmental dimension the wind energy may contribute to the local development due to its weather conditions brazil emerges as one of the leading countries in the generation of wind power this study estimates the impact of wind farms on the brazilian labor market through the exploration of the staggered nature of the sequential process of wind farm implantation between 2004 and 2016 we estimate the treatment effect parameters using a difference in differences did approach with i multiple time periods ii variation in treatment timing and iii dynamic treatment effects through an event study design we aggregate information from several data sources into a panel and we analyze the impact on employment and wages by considering economic sectors educational levels firm sizes and types of jobs direct or indirect jobs our findings suggest that wind farms increase employment in the industry agriculture and construction and increase the wages in all economic sectors and we find evidence that this effect occurs on indirect jobs additionally we find positive effects on the employment and wages of less educated workers and of small and medium sized firms the impact of this intervention can last for up to two years after the implementation of wind farms in the municipalities our results suggest that wind power may generate significant social impacts through the labor market by contributing to local development and increasing social welfare in developing economies

solar energy strategies in the u s utility market abstract given the exponential cost decline trend of solar energy generation technologies and the targeted tax incentives and loan guarantees for renewable energy in the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 and other policy measures solar energy generation has been enjoying rapid growth in the united states this paper examines the incorporation of solar renewable energy into generation portfolios and the effects of natural capital specifically the geospatially calculated potential solar energy generation as measured by potential average annual kilowatt hours per square meter per day and respective state mandated renewable portfolio standard targets on utility scale solar energy generation findings suggest that a state s natural solar energy potential is a predictor of solar energy generation development and further this relationship is significantly moderated by state specific renewable energy portfolio standard targets

renewable energy deployment in europe up to 2030 and the aim of a triple dividend abstract renewable energy sources res play a key role in the european commission s 2030 climate and energy framework which aims for a low carbon economy that increases the security of the eu s energy supplies and creates new opportunities for growth and jobs among other benefits we assess whether renewable energy deployment in europe can provide this triple dividend at which ambition levels of 2030 res targets and what the role of the support policy scheme for electricity is we apply two types of models a detailed techno economic sector model of the deployment of res and two macroeconomic models our findings suggest that up to 2030 our triple dividend hypothesis holds even under a declining role of europe as technology provider for the rest of the world additional emission reductions of up to 1040 mt co 2 as compared to a baseline scenario in 2030 are possible demand for fossil fuels can likewise be reduced due to the deployment of renewable energy sources by up to 150 mtoe more ambiguous is the order of magnitude of the effects on gdp and employment which differs noticeably depending on the economic theory applied in the different models nevertheless both models predict slightly higher gdp and employment in 2030 when implementing ambitious res targets

on ex post pricing in the real time electricity market this paper proposes a new framework in calculating the ex post prices for the spot electricity market the proposed method finds a set of prices that are as consistent as possible with the actual outputs of resources correctly following their dispatch instructions two alternative consistency metrics are proposed in the paper one measures the difference between the actual performance of an individual resource and its bid based profit maximizing response to the ex post prices in a perfectly competitive market another measures the difference between the ex post price and the price that supports the actual response of an individual resource compared to the existing approaches adopted in the real time electricity markets in the u s the proposed method solves the ex post energy and ancillary service prices directly and simultaneously it does not require heuristics that are hard to justify and has a much clear definition for the pricing problem than the existing approaches do moreover the proposed approach is flexible in the price control required by the market operators numerical examples are presented to further demonstrate the validity of this approach

the long term effect of renewable electricity on employment in the united kingdom abstract assessment of the employment impact of renewable electricity technologies is generally implemented through either complex and data intensive methods such as computable general equilibrium models or simplistic approaches normally focused on specific energy generation technologies such as employment factors in contrast this article proposes a transparent and easily reproducible econometric methodology based on the vector error correction model that uses aggregated and widely available data the model is applied to the power generation sector in the united kingdom using annual data from 1990 onwards and provides evidence that the long term employment impact of renewable technologies is much higher than the impact arising from deploying nuclear or natural gas technologies the impulse response function analysis indicates that a permanent 1 gigawatt hours increase in annual electricity supply generated by renewable technologies creates 3 5 jobs in the long term period finally this study derives the implications of the findings in the context of decarbonisation scenarios for the power sector in the united kingdom and assesses the extent to which decarbonisation pathways based on renewable electricity contribute to stimulating employment in the generation sector

socioeconomic impact of wind energy on peripheral regions abstract the socioeconomic benefits from the development of wind power could go beyond environmental issues or the diversification of the energy mix there is an increasing interest in quantifying the impact on regional economies of such deployment especially in those peripheral regions with low growth rates and traditional declined sectors however many studies in this field are meta analyses or they do not take into account the different dynamics between temporal and permanent activities in the sector as well as the regional singularities the main aim of this paper is to analyse the economic impact of wind energy in terms of contribution to the gdp and job creation applying as a case study the spanish peripheral region of galicia this quantification is addressed from a regional and sectoral perspective the methodology is based on the analysis of the value chains regarding the design of the investment breakdown between temporal and permanent activities and the input output approach in order to assess the economic impact in addition the regional symmetric matrices are updated by means of a variation of the ras technique which avoids the fixed technical coefficients related to the traditional input output models empirical evidences underline the remarkable economic impact on the regional gdp and to a lesser extent on the employment although wind sector is capital intensive employment increases in large amounts in industrial subsectors and knowledge intensive activities such as r d hence it might be an industrial alternative in peripheral regions if legislative instability is removed and promotion polices foster the regional value chain

business structure in renewable energy industry key areas abstract diffusion of renewable energy utilization is difficult because of its entrepreneurial nature and related technological investment political and market uncertainties therefore evaluation of business structure based on traditional business models is difficult in this industry although many countries have actively developed renewable energy technologies by both governments and private sector business professionals are not still assured about participation and investment understanding the areas of business structure that lead to successful commercialization of renewable technologies has suitable research scope in this industry the objective of this article is to identify key areas of business structure to allow newcomers to enter successfully in the renewable energy industry from engineering policy and business aspects the innovative analysis leads to identification of seven sides of renewable energy business