the role of air and water residuals for steam electric power generation the decade of the sixties saw increasing concern over the progressive deterioration in environmental quality and in the early seventies major federal legislation established air and water pollution control strategies at the time these laws were enacted information on the costs and benefits of pollution control programs was limited today nearly two decades after the first expressions of concern there remain few neoclassical models of productions that explicitly incorporate residuals as by products of production activities most of the available information on the costs of pollution control policies is based on engineering cost analyses of model plants as a rule these studies estimate costs by considering the increments to production costs associated with adding specific types of capital equipment to reduce emissions to specified levels they often do not consider the full menu of responses possible in meeting a given emission standard equally important they are relevant only for the model plant which formed the basis for the cost calculations the purpose of this paper is to present the results of a neoclassical analysis of the role of a variety of residuals that generally comprise the major air and water emissions of steam generating electric plants our analysis distinguishes plants by vintage of equipment and treats generating capital as a quasi fixed factor thus the results provide a description of the features of the ex post production technology it should of course be acknowledged that a neoclassical production model is an approximate summary of the engineering features of the underlying technology the value of the approach to describing production activities ultimately depends on its ability to authentically describe the features of that technology recent experimental evidence by kopp and smith 25 suggests that neoclassical cost models which ignore constraints on industrial effluents may provide seriously misleading descriptions of the features of the underlying production processes steam electric generating

competition and coalition formation of renewable power producers we investigate group formations and strategic behaviors of renewable power producers in electricity markets these producers currently bid into the day ahead market in a conservative fashion because of the real time risk associated with not meeting their bid amount it has been suggested in the literature that producers would bid less conservatively if they can form large groups to take advantages of spatial diversity to reduce the uncertainty in their aggregate output we show that large groups of renewable producers would act strategically to lower the aggregate output because of market power to maximize renewable power production we characterize the trade off between market power and generation uncertainty as a function of the size of the groups we show there is a sweet spot in the sense that there exists groups that are large enough to achieve the uncertainty reduction of the grand coalition but are small enough such that they have no significant market power we consider both independent and correlated forecast errors under a fixed real time penalty we also consider a real time market where both selling and buying of energy are allowed we validate our claims using pjm and nrel data

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

country specific oil supply shocks and the global economy a counterfactual analysis abstract this paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of country specific oil supply shocks our contribution is both theoretical and empirical on the theoretical side we develop a model for the global oil market and integrate this within a compact quarterly model of the global economy to illustrate how our multi country approach to modeling oil markets can be used to identify country specific oil supply shocks on the empirical side estimating the gvar oil model for 27 countries regions over the period 1979q2 to 2013q1 we show that the global economic implications of oil supply shocks due to for instance sanctions wars or natural disasters vary considerably depending on which country is subject to the shock in particular we find that adverse shocks to iranian oil output are neutralized in terms of their effects on the global economy real outputs and financial markets mainly due to an increase in saudi arabian oil production in contrast a negative shock to oil supply in saudi arabia leads to an immediate and permanent increase in oil prices given that the loss in saudi arabian production is not compensated for by the other oil producers as a result a saudi arabian oil supply shock has significant adverse effects for the global economy with real gdp falling in both advanced and emerging economies and large losses in real equity prices worldwide

market price behavior of wholesale electricity products texas abstract applying a regression based approach to a newly developed sample of over 60 000 hourly observations for 01 01 2011 12 30 2017 we answer the question what moves the day ahead market dam prices for energy and ancillary services as and the real time market rtm price for energy in the electric reliability council of texas ercot our answer comprises the following findings that capture the interdependence of ercot s energy and as products 1 the dam energy price increases with the day ahead forecasts of natural gas price system load and as requirements but declines with nuclear and wind generation s forecasts 2 the as prices increase with the dam energy price and the as procurement forecasts but decline with the as offer forecasts and 3 the rtm energy price increases with the dam energy price but diverges from the dam energy price due to forecasting errors related to the dam energy price s fundamental drivers these findings imply that texas can reduce the prices for day ahead energy day ahead as and real time energy via wind generation development and demand side management further texas can improve its electricity trading efficiency by improving ercot s forecast accuracy to narrow the rtm energy price s divergence from the dam energy price

market clearing with stochastic security part i formulation the first of this two paper series formulates a stochastic security constrained multi period electricity market clearing problem with unit commitment the stochastic security criterion accounts for a pre selected set of random generator and line outages with known historical failure rates and involuntary load shedding as optimization variables unlike the classical deterministic reserve constrained unit commitment here the reserve services are determined by economically penalizing the operation of the market by the expected load not served the proposed formulation is a stochastic programming problem that optimizes concurrently with the pre contingency social welfare the expected operating costs associated with the deployment of the reserves following the contingencies this stochastic programming formulation is solved in the second companion paper using mixed integer linear programming methods two cases are presented a small transmission constrained three bus network scheduled over a horizon of four hours and the ieee reliability test system scheduled over 24 h the impact on the resulting generation and reserve schedules of transmission constraints and generation ramp limits of demand side reserve of the value of load not served and of the constitution of the pre selected set of contingencies are assessed

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

aid policy and growth in post conflict societies countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice this paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post conflict growth process it is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil wars and covers 27 countries that were in their first decade of post conflict economic recovery during the 1990s the authors first investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is systematically different in post conflict countries they find that during the first three post conflict years absorptive capacity is no greater than normal but that in the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its normal level so ideally aid should phase in during the decade historically aid has not on average been higher in post conflict societies and it has tended to taper out over the course of the decade the authors then investigate whether the contribution of policy to growth is systematically different in post conflict countries and in particular whether particular components of policy are differentially important for this they use the world bank policy rating database the authors find that growth is more sensitive to policy in post conflict societies comparing the efficacy of different policies they find that social policies are differentially important relative to macroeconomic policies however historically this does not appear to have been how policy reform has been prioritized in post conflict societies

cost functions and nonlinear prices estimating a technology with quality differentiated inputs the paper is concerned with developing a production theory for the case when some inputs have nonlinear prices because the price depends on endogenous quality this involves extending the notion of a cost function to the case where nonlinear prices are parameters of costs after developing the appropriate theory we apply our results to the case of coal fired electric power generation where fuel quality depends on sulfur and ash impurities environmental regulations induce a negative value on sulfur whereas ash impurities degrade performance and thus reduce production possibilities a number of empirical results emerge including significant rates of technological change that are sulfur and ash saving though capital using this change may explain in part the recent drop in the price of sulfur allowances in the united states

economics of pooling small local electricity prosumers lcoe self consumption abstract the arrival of small scale decentralized energy installations coincides with the emergence of so called prosumers entities households that are producer and consumer of energy in one this research focuses on an electricity prosumer model in the context of the uk market levelized cost of electricity lcoe for photovoltaic pv and wind energy will be modeled for six uk sites additionally self consumption levels for two different load profiles and technologies will be estimated per site the simulations are modeled with homer software and multiple inputs will be varied including natural resource equipment cost maintenance cost equipment life expectancy cost of capital project life and load profiles the modeled self consumption levels show significant differences and varied between 31 and 72 depending on load profile itself and re technologies mixes modeled the pooling of prosumers implied by lower load profile volatility proved to be beneficial to self consumption levels in the modeled scenarios up to 17 6 lcoe showed significant ranges depending on the input parameters and their combination 10 55 p kw h for pv and 2 19 p kw h for wind the combination of these factors is decisive for the final lcoe and the negative effects of less benign factors can be compensated by other parameters when compared to current electricity retail prices of around 15 p kw h around 97 of wind sites and around 4 of pv scenarios implied lcoe reached grid parity the self consumption levels and lcoe analysis indicate the viability of electricity prosumer models

effect of wind generation on ercot nodal prices abstract in this paper we utilize nodal price data at each thermal generation facility within the ercot footprint between 2014 and 2016 to revisit an empirical question of great interest to various parties how does wind integration affect the wholesale energy price we find that for every additional 1000 mw of wind generation in a real time 15 minute settlement interval nodal prices at non wind resources would be suppressed by 1 45 mwh to 4 45 mwh with considerable heterogeneity across time and space

welfare measurement for environmental improvements using the hedonic model the case of nonparametric marginal prices abstract research in environmental and natural resource economics frequently requires the use of hedonic models because of the differentiated products involved this is true for studies of the relationship between environmental quality and property values or wages or between the characteristics of a recreation site and the demand for its services an obvious use of such studies is in estimating willingness to pay for improvements with differentiated products there are usually nonlinear hedonic price schedules and thus nonlinear budget constraints this makes welfare analysis difficult because standard duality results no longer hold this paper develops a technique for estimating a psuedo demand system that can be used to derive exact measures of consumer welfare change similar techniques are developed for producers with a psuedo profit function that can be converted to an exact measure of the change in quasi rents or rents the paper also shows that the distance function can be used to develop an ex ante measure of welfare change

intraday trading of wind energy in this paper we tackle the problem of a wind power producer participating in a short term electricity market that allows for the continuous but potentially illiquid intraday trading of energy considering the realistic case of a wind farm operating in the western danish price area of nord pool we build a simple but effective algorithm for the wind power producer to fully benefit from the elbas intraday market we then investigate the sensitivity of the obtained benefits to the maximum volume of energy the wind power producer is willing to trade in the intraday market the ultimate aim of the trade either to decrease energy imbalances or to increase profits and to the installed capacity of the wind farm our numerical results reveal that the wind power producer can substantially increase his revenues by partaking in the intraday market but with diminishing returns to scale a result that we attribute to the low liquidity of elbas

stochastic security for operations planning with significant wind power generation in their attempt to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation several countries are committed to install wind power generation up to and beyond the 10 20 penetration mark however the large scale integration of wind power represents a challenge for power system operations planning because wind power 1 cannot be dispatched in the classical sense and 2 its output varies as weather conditions change this warrants the investigation of alternative short term power system operations planning methods capable of better coping with the nature of wind generation while maintaining or even improving the current reliability and economic performance of power systems to this end this paper formulates a short term forward electricity market clearing problem with stochastic security capable of accounting for nondispatchable and variable wind power generation sources the principal benefit of this stochastic operation planning approach is that when compared to a deterministic worst case scenario planning philosophy it allows greater wind power penetration without sacrificing security

uncertainty management in the unit commitment problem uncertainty in power systems operations has been traditionally managed by multistage decision making and operating reserve requirements a familiar example of multistage decisions is day ahead unit commitment and real time economic dispatch an alternate approach for managing uncertainty is a stochastic formulation which allows the explicit modeling of the sources of uncertainty this paper compares stochastic and reserve methods and evaluates the benefits of a combined approach for the efficient management of uncertainty in the unit commitment problem numerical studies show that unit commitment solutions obtained for the combined approach are robust and superior with respect to the traditional approach in terms of both economics and reliability metrics

winds of change how high wind penetrations will affect investment incentives in the gb electricity sector abstract wind power is widely expected to expand rapidly in britain over the next decade large amounts of variable wind power on the system will increase market risks with prices more volatile and load factors for conventional thermal plant lower and more uncertain this extra market risk may discourage investment in generation capacity financial viability for thermal plant will be increasingly dependent on price spikes during periods of low wind increased price risk will also make investment in other forms of low carbon generation e g nuclear power more challenging a number of policies can reduce the extent to which generators are exposed to market risks and encourage investment however market risks play a fundamental role in shaping efficient investment and dispatch patterns in a liberalised market therefore measures to improve price signals and market functioning such as a stronger carbon price and developing more responsive demand are desirable however the scale of the investment challenge and increased risk mean targeted measures to reduce although not eliminate risk exposure such as capacity mechanisms and fixed price schemes may have increasing merit the challenge for policy is to strike the right balance between market and planned approaches

multilateral productivity comparisons with undesirable outputs in a recent paper in this journal caves christensen and diewert i982 hereafter ccd derive what they term multilateral superlative indexes for use in the comparison of output input and productivity across economic entities the indexes derived are distinguished both by transitivity and by a high degree of characteristicity a term introduced by dreschler i 973 to refer to the degree to which the weights used in a comparison are specific to the observations being compared though the indexes are presented with the application to multicountry comparisons of output input and productivity foremost in mind the authors note that they may be useful in a number of other contexts as well i e firms and industries time series and pooled time series and cross section all of the applications mentioned or implied however have this in common they involve the comparison of productive entities all of whose outputs are sold for positive prices this is not surprising of course since most products with which economists are concerned possess this characteristic however it does render incomplete or potentially misleading the comparison of productive entities which produce significant amounts of undesirable outputs such as water and air pollution since the list of such entities is rather long and includes industries critical to many national and regional economies e g chemicals paper petroleum refining copper and steel the omission of this factor from consideration may be a matter of some importance 2 consider for example a comparison of the productivity of the steel industries

the estimation of demand parameters in hedonic price models this paper shows that the econometric problem of estimating hedonic demand parameters is not a standard identification problem caused by demand supply interaction as has been often assumed estimation procedures based on this assumption lead to biased results the hedonic estimation problem is instead caused by the endogeneity of both prices and quantities when households face a nonlinear budget constraint an instrumental variables solution to this problem is suggested using instruments that exogenously shift the budget constraint

large scale utilization of wind power in china obstacles of conflict between market and planning the traditional strict planning system that regulates china s power market dominates power industry operations however a series of market oriented reforms since 1997 call for more decentralized decision making by individual market participants moreover with the rapid growth of wind power in china the strict planning system has become one of the significant factors that has curtailed the generation of wind power which contradicts with the original purpose of using the government s strong control abilities to promote wind power development in this paper we first present the reasons why market mechanisms are important for large scale utilization of wind power by using a case analysis of the northeast grid and then we illustrate the impact of conflicts between strict planning and market mechanisms on large scale wind power utilization last we explore how to promote coordination between markets and planning to realize large scale wind power utilization in china we argue that important measures include implementing flexible power pricing mechanisms instead of the current fixed pricing approach formulating a more reasonable mechanism for distributing benefits and costs and designing an appropriate market structure for large scale wind power utilization to promote market liquidity and to send clear market equilibrium signals

optimal offering and operating strategies for wind storage systems with linear decision rules the participation of wind farm energy storage systems wf ess in electricity markets calls for an integrated view of day ahead offering strategies and real time operation policies such an integrated strategy is proposed here by co optimizing offering at the day ahead stage and operation policy to be used at the balancing stage linear decision rules are seen as a natural approach to model and optimize the real time operation policy these allow enhancing profits from balancing markets based on updated information on prices and wind power generation our integrated strategies for wf ess in electricity markets are optimized under uncertainty in both wind power and price predictions the resulting stochastic optimization problem readily yields optimal offers and linear decision rules by adding a risk aversion term in form of conditional value at risk into the objective function the optimization model additionally provides flexibility in finding a trade off between profit maximization and risk management uncertainty in wind power generation as well as day ahead and balancing prices takes the form of scenario sets permitting to reformulate the optimization problem as a linear program case studies validate the effectiveness of the strategy proposed by highlighting and quantifying benefits w r t other existing strategies

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

a large amount of idle capacity under rapid expansion policy analysis on the dilemma of wind power utilization in china abstract wind power installation in china has increased rapidly since 2004 however wind power usage remains relatively low resulting in a lot of idle capacity beginning in 2007 in this paper we determine the main framework of china s current wind power policies and illustrate how these policies led to the rapid installation expansion accompanied by large idle capacity building on this we explore how to alleviate the high installation low wind power usage conflict in china we establish optimal models to i analyze wind power and power grid company behavior ii demonstrate the impact of china s current policies on power and grid companies and iii clarify the causes and mechanisms resulting in high growth and low wind power capacity usage our analysis shows that the incentive incompatibility of current policies which enticed power companies to pursue installation expansion regardless of quality while inhibiting grid companies from improving connectivity transmission and scheduling technology is the primary cause for such large scale idle capacity the results of our study suggest that the fundamental way to scale up wind power utilization is to enhance policy incentive compatibility which mainly includes i distributing revenues and diversifying risk fairly between power and grid companies and ii motivating power companies to address demand fluctuation actively

bringing wind energy to market wind energy is a rapidly growing source of renewable energy generation however the current extra market approach to its assimilation into the electric grid will not scale at deep penetration levels in this paper we investigate how an independent wind power producer might optimally offer its variable power into a competitive electricity market for energy starting with a stochastic model for wind power production and a model for a perfectly competitive two settlement market we derive explicit formulae for optimal contract offerings and the corresponding optimal expected profit as wind is an inherently variable source of energy we explore the sensitivity of optimal expected profit to uncertainty in the underlying wind process we also examine the role of forecast information and recourse markets in this setting we quantify the role of reserves in increasing reliability of offered contracts and obtain analytical expressions for marginal profits resulting from investments in improved forecasting and local auxiliary generation the formulae make explicit the relationship between price signals and the value of such firming strategies

fixed feed in tariff versus premium a review of the current spanish system a b s t r a c t since 1998 the spanish government established a feed in system where res e generators could choose between two alternatives fixed feed in tariff and premium nowadays all res e 1 can be sold in the electricity market getting an additional premium except for solar photovoltaic one important novelty established in 2007 is a cap and floor system for facilities under the premium option the aim of this paper is to analyze and compare these two alternative options fixed fit and premiums which coexist at the same time in spain describe the evolution of both systems and evaluate its performance the introduction of this support system in spain led to very good results in terms of res e deployment the main advantage of the premium option is that it is a scheme integrated in the electricity market one disadvantage is that it can occasionally lead to overcompensation one way to try to avoid it is to set a cap value in order to evaluate the performance of this dual support system not only res e deployment has been assessed but also the policy stability the adequacy of res e production to the electricity demand pattern and the changes in the investors behaviour

does technological innovation really reduce marginal abatement costs some theory algebraic evidence and policy implications the existing literature models innovation in pollution control as a reduction in marginal abatement costs we show that this assumption is inappropriate for production process innovations such as fuel switching algebraically we examine the effects of different innovation types on marginal abatement cost curves showing that some desirable innovations increase marginal abatement costs empirically we estimate marginal abatement costs for sulfur dioxide by measuring the output distance function for electric power in korea regression results confirm that production process innovations did raise marginal abatement costs in this case one policy implication economic instruments do not always provide stronger innovation incentives than command and control policies

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

a game theoretic analysis of wind generation variability on electricity markets wind generation variability in an energy only market such australian national electricity market nem can create significant revenue uncertainties for incumbent generators and substantially increase price risks faced by retailers this paper presents a cournot game model to formally analyze how high volatility of wind generation in a concentrated energy only market can raise the peak shoulder period of typically low wind generation prices to offset the foregone revenue during off peak periods of high wind generation a monte carlo simulation around a cournot game is formulated as an inter temporal nonlinear optimization problem to assess these issues the model is implemented for the south australian zone of the australian nem that has experienced high growth in wind generation in recent years the model results support some of the observed spot pricing behavior in the region in recent years these findings have significant ramifications for the efficacy of the energy only market in scenarios with high penetration of intermittent generation

impacts of variable renewable energy on wholesale markets and generating assets in the united states a review of expectations and evidence abstract we synthesize available literature data and analysis on the degree to which growth in variable renewable energy vre has impacted or might in the future impact bulk power system assets pricing and costs in the united states most studies of future scenarios indicate that vre reduces wholesale energy prices and capacity factors of thermal generators traditional baseload generators are more exposed to these changing market conditions than low capital cost and more flexible intermediate and peak load generators from analysis of historical data we find that vre is already influencing the bulk power market through changes in temporal and geographic patterns areas with higher levels of vre the most significant observed impacts have concentrated in areas with significant vre and or nuclear generation along with limited transmission with negative pricing also often occurring during periods with lower system wide load so far however vre has had a relatively modest impact on historical average annual wholesale prices across entire market regions at least in comparison to other drivers the reduction of natural gas prices is the primary contributor to the decline in wholesale prices since 2008 similarly vre impacts on thermal plant retirements have been limited and there is little relationship between the location of recent retirements and vre penetration levels although impacts on wholesale prices have been modest so far impacts of vre on the electricity market will be more significant under higher vre penetrations

on the market impact of wind energy forecasts this paper presents an analysis of how day ahead electricity spot prices are affected by day ahead wind power forecasts demonstration of this relationship is given as a test case for the western danish price area of the nord pool s elspot market impact on the average price behaviour is investigated as well as that on the distributional properties of the price by using a non parametric regression model to assess the effects of wind power forecasts on the average behaviour the non linearities and time variations in the relationship are captured well and the effects are shown to be quite substantial furthermore by evaluating the distributional properties of the spot prices under different scenarios the impact of the wind power forecasts on the price distribution is proved to be considerable the conditional price distribution is moreover shown to be non gaussian this implies that forecasting models for electricity spot prices for which parameters are estimated by a least squares techniques will not have gaussian residuals hence the widespread assumption of gaussian residuals from electricity spot price models is shown to be inadequate for these model types the revealed effects are likely to be observable and qualitatively similar in other day ahead electricity markets significantly penetrated by wind power

a stochastic two settlement equilibrium model for electricity markets with wind generation incentives to encourage the uptake of renewable energy generation have fostered wind energy in many power systems these incentives usually take the form of market instruments e g feed in tariff or premium that are not directly amenable to optimization representations of the market in this paper we propose an equilibrium model of the short term market to address the impact of wind operation under different structural assumptions the model is formulated for several price taking risk averse firms in competition it accounts for wind generation uncertainty and embeds a representation of the day ahead and balancing mechanisms the consumer is modeled by a linear inverse demand function we focus on feed in premium as the incentive to wind as this is the instrument most favored today in european discussions the model is formulated as a stochastic equilibrium problem where the karush kuhn tucker kkt conditions from the optimization problem of each firm are simultaneously solved together with market clearing conditions on energy capacity for reserve and energy for reserve the problem for each firm consists of a two stage stochastic optimization problem with a recourse function based on the conditional value at risk cvar as a risk measure due to price taking assumptions the model is a single stage complementarity problem it is implemented and solved using the software gams an example based on a stylized simplification of the spanish power market and motivated by the impact of wind penetration on the revenue of conventional plants is used to illustrate the proposed approach

reforming performance based aid allocation practice performance based aid allocation systems are used by a number of multilateral agencies to allocate aid among developing countries a number of bilateral agencies also allocate aid on the basis of the performance of recipients albeit in a less systematic way than these multilateral agencies this paper points to a number of fundamental problems associated with performance based aid allocation systems including a problematic balancing of need and performance criteria being reductionist with respect to the drivers of effective aid and not being sufficiently nuanced with respect to performance by ignoring a lack of human capital and economic vulnerability in recipient countries together with providing a theoretical framework that articulates these issues this paper introduces and outlines the papers that follow in this special section

the allocation of aid among developing countries a multi donor analysis using a per capita aid index abstract this paper seeks to measure the relative aid giving performance of aid donors in terms of the inter recipient distribution of their aid performance is taken to be the extent to which a donor bases its aid allocation on the relative needs of recipient countries donor performance is measured by an income weighted per capita aid index formulated in this paper this index was calculated using the per capita allocations to a sample of 85 recipient countries in the years 1969 84 the performance of 17 dac members plus that of a number of multilateral agencies and that of the dac and these agencies combined is identified results indicate that the performance of four countries belgium finland denmark and norway was generally superior to that of other donors

empirical analysis of the merit order effect and the missing money problem in power markets with high res shares an on going debate in the energy economics and power market community raises the question if energy only power markets are increasingly failing due to growing feed in shares from subsidized renewable energy sources res the argument being essentially that the merit order effect of res production depresses day ahead spot market prices which in turn creates a situation where power plant owners cannot recover investment costs missing money problem we argue in short that energy only power markets are not failing in principle but are rather facing several market distortions that hinder proper market functioning namely 1 the gap between the electricity volume actually traded at day ahead spot markets versus the overall electricity consumption and 2 the regulatory assumption that variable res generation i e wind and photovoltaic pv truly has zero marginal operation and grid integration costs in this paper we show that both effects over amplify the well known merit order effect of res power feed in and indirectly also the missing money problem beyond a level that is explainable by underlying physical realities we empirically analyze the impacts of wind and pv power feed in on the day ahead market for the epex german austrian market zone a region that is already today experiencing significant feed in tariff fit subsidized res power feed in ca 20 fit share our analysis shows that if necessary regulatory adaptations are taken i e increasing the spot market s share of overall load demand and using the true marginal costs of res units in the merit order energy based power markets remain functional despite high res power feed in

an equal opportunity approach to the allocation of international aid abstract how should international aid be distributed the most common view is according to some utilitarian formula in order to maximize the average growth rate of aid recipients or the growth rate of income of the class of recipient countries recently the the world bank the world bank 1998 assessing aid world bank policy research report has published a study demonstrating the importance of good economic management within a recipient country in transforming aid into economic growth we identify good economic management with effort and ask how should aid be distributed to equalize opportunities among recipient countries for achieving growth according to roemer s theory of equal opportunity roemer j e 1998 equality of opportunity harvard university press cambridge ma

a single settlement energy only electric power market for unpredictable and intermittent participants we discuss a stochastic programming based method for scheduling electric power generation subject to uncertainty such uncertainty may arise from either imperfect forecasting or moment to moment fluctuations and on either the supply or the demand side the method gives a system of locational marginal prices that reflect the uncertainty and these may be used in a market settlement scheme in which payment is for energy only we show that this scheme is revenue adequate in expectation

aid selectivity according to augmented criteria a dominant trend in the literature maintains that donor assistance should be targeted to poor countries with sound institutions and policies in this context donor selectivity refers to what extent aid is allocated according to the principles of this canonical model this paper shows that it is legitimate for donors to simultaneously use other selectivity criteria corresponding either to expected factors of aid effectiveness or to handicaps to development it is notably argued that vulnerability to exogenous shocks and low level of human capital should be considered as selectivity criteria taking these other criteria into account dramatically changes the assessment of donor selectivity

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

can the world cut poverty in half how policy reform and effective aid can meet international development goals abstract poverty in the developing world will decline by about one half by 2015 if the trends of the 1990s persist most of this poverty reduction will occur in asia however while poverty will decline only slightly in africa effective aid could make a contribution to greater poverty reduction in lagging regions even more potent would be significant policy reform in these countries we develop a model of efficient aid in which flows respond to policy improvements that create a better environment for poverty reduction and effective aid we investigate scenarios of policy reform and efficient aid that point the way to how the world can cut poverty in half in every major region

comprehensive value assessment of wind power by layer great emphasis has been placed on rational value assessment of wind power in system in recent times because there are different properties in various output levels of wind power there should also be different values this paper proposes a novel method for value assessment of wind power to get a more comprehensive and accurate evaluation wind power outputs are divided horizontally based on the wind layer model then comprehensive studies of cost and benefit are conducted layer by layer furthermore the detailed characteristics in layers storage benefit and value allocation are analyzed after that the sensitivities about the chosen system parameters region size and demand side participation are discussed at length the effectiveness and rationality of the model are proved by the case study the model assesses the value of wind power more precisely and profoundly which would provide significant guidance in the setting of price policy for wind power and market supervision

the incentive to invest in thermal plants in the presence of wind generation abstract in a deregulated market the decision to add generation rests with private investors this paper evaluates how generator profits are affected by increasing wind generation using hourly historical data for the irish single electricity market we simulate new series of electricity prices representative plant bids and wind generation we calibrate the model based on the negative correlation between electricity prices and wind generation this allows us to determine that increasing wind generation induces lower profits for all baseload plants additionally it decreases profits for baseload natural gas plants more than for less flexible coal fuelled plants which might encourage investment in less flexible plants

aid policies and growth the authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid economic policies and growth of per capita gdp in panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four year periods 1970 93 they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus inflation and trade openness they construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid they have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies they find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies in the presence of poor policies aid has no positive effect on growth this result is robust in a variety of specifications which include or exclude middle income countries include or exclude outliers and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous they examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies either for good or for ill they estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors pursuit of their own strategic interests in a counterfactual they reallocate aid reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries growth rates

a retrospective analysis of benefits and impacts of u s renewable portfolio standards abstract as states consider revising or developing renewable portfolio standards rps they are evaluating policy costs benefits and other impacts we present the first u s national level assessment of state rps program benefits and impacts focusing on new renewable electricity resources used to meet rps compliance obligations in 2013 in our central case scenario reductions in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from displaced fossil fuel generated electricity resulted in 2 2 billion of global benefits health and environmental benefits from reductions in criteria air pollutants sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxides and particulate matter 2 5 were even greater estimated at 5 2 billion in the central case further benefits accrued in the form of reductions in water withdrawals and consumption for power generation finally although best considered resource transfers rather than net societal benefits new renewable electricity generation used for rps compliance in 2013 also supported nearly 200 000 u s based gross jobs and reduced wholesale electricity prices and natural gas prices saving consumers a combined 1 3 4 9 billion in total the estimated benefits and impacts well exceed previous estimates of rps compliance costs

the value of intra day markets in power systems with high wind power penetration in this paper the value of intra day markets in managing wind power uncertainty in competitive electricity markets is analyzed a competitive electricity market model consisting of a day ahead market and a number of intra day markets is considered real time operation adjustment is also taken into account stochastic programming is used to model decision making under wind power uncertainty numerical simulations based on two test systems are presented

on generation integrated energy storage generation integrated energy storage gies systems store energy at some point along the transformation between the primary energy form and electricity instances exist already in natural hydro power biomass generation wave power and concentrated solar power gies systems have been proposed for wind nuclear power and they arise naturally in photocatalysis systems that are in development gies systems can compare very favourably in both performance and total cost against equivalent non integrated systems comprising both generation and storage despite this they have not hitherto been recognised as a discrete class of systems consequently policy decisions affecting development or demonstration projects and policy approaches concerning low carbon generation are not fully informed this paper highlights that policy structures exist militating against the development and introduction of gies systems probably to the detriment of overall system good

electricity market price and nuclear power plant shutdown evidence from california abstract japan s fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by the march 11 2011 earthquake has led to calls for shutting down existing nuclear plants to maintain resource adequacy for a grid s reliable operation one option is to expand conventional generation whose marginal unit is typically fueled by natural gas two timely and relevant questions thus arise for a deregulated wholesale electricity market 1 what is the likely price increase due to a nuclear plant shutdown and 2 what can be done to mitigate the price increase to answer these questions we perform a regression analysis of a large sample of hourly real time electricity market price data from the california independent system operator caiso for the 33 month sample period of april 2010 december 2012 our analysis indicates that the 2013 shutdown of the state s san onofre plant raised the caiso real time hourly market prices by 6 mwh to 9 mwh and that the price increases could have been offset by a combination of demand reduction increasing solar generation and increasing wind generation

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

merit order effects of renewable energy and price divergence in california s day ahead and real time electricity markets abstract we answer two policy questions 1 what are the estimated merit order effects of renewable energy in the california independent system operator s caiso s day ahead market dam and real time market rtm and 2 what causes the hourly dam and rtm prices to systematically diverge the first question is timely and relevant because if the merit order effect estimates are small california s renewable energy development is of limited help in cutting electricity consumers bills but also has a lesser adverse impact on the state s investment incentive for natural gas fired generation the second question is related to the efficient market hypothesis under which the hourly rtm and dam prices tend to converge using a sample of about 21 000 hourly observations of caiso market prices and their fundamental drivers during 12 12 2012 04 30 2015 we document statistically significant estimates p value 0 01 for the dam and rtm merit order effects this finding lends support to california s adopted procurement process to provide sufficient investment incentives for natural gas fired generation we document that the rtm dam price divergence partly depends on the casio s day ahead forecast errors for system loads and renewable energy this finding suggests that improving the performance of the caiso s day ahead forecasts can enhance trading efficiency in california s dam and rtm electricity markets

assessing the economic vulnerability of small island developing states and the least developed countries macro vulnerability of the small island developing states sids as well as of least developed countries ldcs has been an increasing concern for the international community this has led to the design of an economic vulnerability index evi to assess the structural economic vulnerability resulting from natural or external shocks we first explain how vulnerability affects growth development and poverty reduction particularly in small developing countries we then examine how the evi has been designed and how it can be used to compare sids and ldcs we argue that evi is a relevant tool not only for identification of ldcs but also for geographical aid allocation to favour vulnerable countries including ldcs and sids even though not all sids qualify as ldcs

issue in pollution control interplant cost differences and economies of scale debate on interplant pollution control cost differences focuses on the question of whether a system of taxes or transferable discharge permits should require those plants with low treatment costs to control a higher share of effluents another issue under debate is whether those industries with a large minimum size may be effectively barred by pollution control requirements evidence of the inefficiency of present institutional arrangements is shown by studying production function estimations of 30 pulp and paper mills in wisconsin and michigan a more efficient reallocation of pollution control resources could be effected with more market oriented regimes 58 references 6 tables dck

identifying barriers to large scale integration of variable renewable electricity into the electricity market a literature review of market design abstract for reaching the 2 c climate target the robust growth of electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources vre in the power sector is expected to continue accommodation of the power system to the variable uncertain and locational dependent outputs of vre causes integration costs integrating vre into a well functioning electricity market can minimize integration costs and drive investments in vre and complementary flexible resources however the electricity market in the european union eu as currently designed seems incapable to deliver this end this paper aims to provide a comprehensive literature review of barriers to the large scale market integration of vre in the eu electricity market design based on the set up of the eu electricity market a framework was developed to incorporate the most pertinent market integration barriers and resulting market inefficiencies this paper concludes that an overhaul is needed for the current eu electricity market to address all barriers identified firstly a discrete auction intraday market a marginal pricing balancing market a two price imbalance settlement and a nodal pricing locational marginal pricing mechanism seem more promising in limiting integration costs secondly to support business cases of vre and complementary flexible resources in the electricity market a level playing field should be established and the price cap should be lifted up to the value of lost load voll meanwhile to fit vre s market participation a higher time resolution of trading products and later gate closure time in different submarkets would be required lastly feed in support schemes currently widely used for vre investments might be inconsistent with market integration as they increase integration costs and lock vre investments in a subsidy dependent pathway to avoid such lock in further investigation of alternative capacity based support schemes is recommended

the impact of european balancing rules on wind power economics and on short term bidding strategies abstract wind power represents a significant percentage of the european generation mix and this will increase to fulfill the renewable energy targets different balancing rules are applied to wind power among the countries for instance to what extent wind power producers wpps are responsible for the energy imbalances and how those imbalances are penalized this paper discusses those different rules and evaluates their effects on wpp bidding strategies to do so a quantitative analysis is presented for an offshore wind farm considering the differences in the balancing rules and prices of belgium denmark germany and the netherlands the quantitative approach consists of a stochastic optimization model that maximizes the profits of a wpp by trading in different markets day ahead and intraday and computes the final energy delivered the model considers uncertainties of most important parameters such as wind energy forecasts and prices at different time frames the results show that the imbalance pricing design and the allocation of balance responsibility significantly affect wpp revenues additionally wpps deviate differently from the expected energy depending on the balancing rules which can impact the system furthermore these balancing rules should be considered with other market regulations such as the design of support schemes

assessment of the cost associated with wind generation prediction errors in a liberalized electricity market in this paper a probabilistic methodology for estimating the energy costs in the market for wind generators associated with wind prediction errors is proposed generators must buy or sell energy production deviations due to prediction errors when they bid in day ahead or hour ahead energy markets the prediction error is modeled through a probability density function that represents the accuracy of the prediction model production hourly energy deviations and their associated trading costs are then calculated three study cases based on real wind power installations in spain are analyzed the three study cases show that the error prediction costs can reach as much as 10 of the total generator energy incomes

policy instruments fostering wind energy projects a multi perspective evaluation approach abstract during the last decade a large number of policy instruments have been developed and implemented all over europe aiming at supporting renewable energy project development however the success of the different policy approaches varies significantly given the very different mechanisms of the diverse instruments the design or the selection of appropriate instruments may cause methodological difficulties in order to support instrument selection economists have developed several evaluation criteria however this paper states that most of the typically proposed and applied criteria catalogues still neglect the interests and requirements of important stakeholder groups this paper therefore proposes a more integrated evaluation approach taking into account the different interests of all relevant stakeholder groups in the three fields renewable energy business especially wind industry policy making and conventional power business

counterfactual comparisons of investment options for wind power and agricultural production in the united states lessons from northern ohio abstract we analyze potential efficiency gains in wind power projects by comparing counterfactual investment decisions in two different scenarios under a real options framework the first scenario is a standard wind power investment where the investor rents the land from local farms in the second scenario the wind power investor buys the land and commercializes both electricity and crop production thus reducing the revenue risk through the diversification both scenarios have a waiting option with the wholesale prices leading the installation decision we model the electricity price as a mean reverting process with jumps and with different jumping probabilities for the different seasons of the year corn prices follow a mean reverting process the waiting flexibility was modeled as a bundle of european options the results indicate that the waiting option is exercised in 100 of our simulations in both scenarios suggesting the still important role of government policies to stimulate wind power more importantly in more than 90 of the simulations the second scenario brought value to the investment furthermore net present values are more sensitive to reductions in capital costs than electricity prices these results can form the basis for more effective policies for the wind power sector

what drives renewable energy development abstract this viewpoint reviews renewable energy development in 14 markets that differ in market structure restructured vs not restructured use of feed in tariff fit yes vs no transmission planning anticipatory vs reactive and transmission interconnection cost allocated to a renewable generator high vs low we find that market restructuring is not a primary driver of renewable energy development renewable generation has the highest percent of total installed capacity in markets that use a fit employ anticipatory transmission planning and have loads or end users paying for most if not all of the transmission interconnection costs in contrast renewable developers have been less successful in markets that do not use a fit employ reactive transmission planning and have generators paying for most if not all of the transmission interconnection costs while these policies can lead to higher penetration of renewable energy in the short run their high cost to ratepayers can threaten the economic sustainability of renewable energy in the long run

economic valuation of reserves in power systems with high penetration of wind power this paper proposes a methodology to determine the required level of spinning and nonspinning reserves in a power system with a high penetration of wind power the computation of the required reserve levels and their costs is achieved through a stochastic programming market clearing model spanning a daily time horizon this model considers the network constraints and takes into account the cost of both the load shedding and the wind spillage the methodology proposed is illustrated using an example and a realistic case study some conclusions are finally drawn

wind power and electricity prices at the pjm market increased deployment of wind power generation is changing the landscape of power supply around the world when integrated with electricity markets wind power is also widely known to influence the prices cleared at the market this paper examines the effect of wind power generation on the day ahead market prices in the pjm electricity market using robust econometric models and statistical inference results show that the quantified expected benefits to wholesale market participants may be substantial despite the relatively low wind power penetration levels still observed within the pjm jurisdiction relative to other markets the quantified unitary benefits outweigh by a great margin the renewable energy credits given to qualifying wind farms across the market when benefits outweigh the costs incurred to generate them welfare is accrued to this end benefit allocation mechanisms are proposed which may contribute to the continued development of wind power on the roadmap to a cleaner power industry of the future

electricity market design for generator revenue sufficiency with increased variable generation we present a computationally efficient mixed integer program mip that determines optimal generator expansion decisions and hourly unit commitment and dispatch in a power system the impact of increasing wind power capacity on the optimal generation mix and generator profitability is analyzed for a test case that approximates the electricity market in texas ercot we analyze three market policies that may support resource adequacy operating reserve demand curves ordc fixed reserve scarcity prices frsp and fixed capacity payments cp optimal expansion plans are comparable between the ordc and frsp implementations while capacity payments may result in additional new capacity the frsp policy leads to frequent reserves scarcity events and corresponding price spikes while the ordc implementation results in more continuous energy prices average energy prices decrease with increasing wind penetration under all policies as do revenues for baseload and wind generators intermediate and peak load plants benefit from higher reserve prices and are less exposed to reduced energy prices all else equal an ordc approach may be preferred to frsp as it results in similar expansion and revenues with less extreme energy prices a fixed cp leads to additional new flexible ngct units but lower profits for other technologies

analysis of the imbalance price scheme in the spanish electricity market a wind power test case this work investigates the interaction between wind power and electricity markets the paper is focused on balancing markets pricing policies the proposal of a new imbalance price scheme is included and conveniently evaluated this proposed scheme tries to minimise the use of ancillary services to compensate for deviations in searching for a more efficient market design the effectiveness of imbalance prices as market signals is also examined and policy recommendations regarding imbalance services are discussed two test cases are included that analyse the participation of a wind power producer in the spanish electricity market using a stochastic optimisation strategy for this purpose the uncertainty of the variables is considered i e wind power production and prediction intraday and imbalance prices test cases were run with real data for 10 months and realistic results are presented along with a hypothetical test case the regulation of the imbalance prices may not be adequate for the spanish electricity market because an error drop is not sufficiently encouraged therefore we suggest the application of a new imbalance price scheme which includes an additional constraint the conclusions of this paper can be assumed to be general policy recommendations

texas s operating reserve demand curve s generation investment incentive abstract faced with reserve margin projections well below the adopted target of 13 75 of the system peak forecast the public utility commission of texas on 01 17 2019 ordered the state s grid operator the electric reliability council of texas to right shift the operating reserve demand curve ordc to increase generators revenue from energy sales in ercot s real time market rtm using a large sample of 15 min data for the backcast period of 01 01 2015 through 12 31 2018 we calculate the ordc shift s impact on rtm prices and investment incentives for natural gas fired generation ngfg had the ordc shift been in effect in the backcast period the resulting rtm price increases in 2018 could suffice to justify ngfg investment though not in the prior years of 2015 2016 and 2017 while the actual ordc shift occurred on 03 01 2019 had a large impact on rtm prices in the ensuing six month period of march august 2019 texas s planned renewable generation is expected to erode ngfg s operating profit thus diminishing the ordc s investment incentive over time hence texas s energy only market design will likely need further refinements to solve the missing money problem of inadequate ngfg investment incentive

efficient estimation of hedonic inverse input demand systems this article is concerned with efficient estimation of characteristics demand we derive and estimate an inverse input demand system for quality characteristics by using 172 946 observations over 881 trading days in the icelandic fish auctions an improved estimation method based on an expanded random coefficient model is suggested as an alternative to the currently used two stage method of brown and rosen the estimates demonstrate the improved efficiency of the suggested method a number of empirical results emerge including a general increase in the demand for quality the purpose of hedonic price analysis is to determine how the price of a unit of a commodity varies with its characteristics that is to estimate the hedonic price function some recent examples of the estimation of hedonic price functions are nerlove combris lecocq and visser and mcconnell and strand however theory predicts that shifts in supply or demand affect the implicit price relationships between the overall price of the good and its individual characteristics and so we need to estimate the underlying demand and supply functions for the characteristics rosen developed a two stage method for analyzing hedonic markets in the first stage of this method the hedonic price function is estimated and in the second stage a system of demand and supply functions for characteristics is estimated using the shadow prices of the characteristics from the first stage as variables brown and rosen showed that this procedure could yield estimates of demand and supply functions that are mere transformations of the coefficients in the hedonic function they suggested the currently used two stage method using data from multiple markets this method utilizes the within market variation to iden

how to take into account vulnerability in aid allocation criteria and lack of human capital as well improving the performance based allocation summary this paper considers why and how the performance based allocation pba used in multilateral development banks and in particular at ida could be improved by taking the structural handicaps of eligible countries into account the pba relies on a debatable definition of performance it does not meet the equity concern raised by the existence of structural handicaps to growth it neglects the lessons of the aid effectiveness literature finally it suffers from some opacity we show how it is possible to increase the share of specific groups of countries such as sub saharan africa or post conflict states in a transparent manner

how to deal with negative power price spikes flexible voluntary curtailment agreements for large scale integration of wind for the large scale integration of electricity from renewable energy sources res e the german system seems to reach its limits in 2009 the electricity wholesale market experienced serious negative prices at times of high wind and low demand the feed in system in germany consists of a fixed feed in price a take off obligation and a res priority rule and in practice only very restrictive use of res e curtailment exactly the latter is the problem we argue that the overall performance of the system would improve seriously by lifting the restrictions on the use of voluntary curtailment agreements while retaining the priority rule as such since generators of res e can only improve under this system reform investment conditions improve leading to higher installed res e capacity this in turn implies that reduced wind output due to curtailment can actually be offset by higher wind output in all periods in which there is no problem

aid quality and donor rankings this paper offers new measures of aid quality covering 38 bilateral and multilateral donors as well as new insights about the robustness and usefulness of such measures the 2005 paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the follow up 2008 accra agenda for action have focused attention on common donor practices that reduce the development impact of aid using 18 underlying indicators that capture these practices derived from the oecd dac s survey for monitoring the paris declaration the new aiddata database and the dac aid tables the authors construct an overall aid quality index and four coherently defined sub indexes on aid selectivity alignment harmonization and specialization compared with earlier indicators used in donor rankings this indicator set is more comprehensive and representative of the range of donor practices addressed in the paris declaration improving the validity reliability and robustness of rankings one of the innovations is to increase the validity of the aid quality indicators by adjusting for recipient characteristics donor aid volumes and other factors despite these improvements in data and methodology the authors caution against overinterpretation on overall indexes such as these alternative plausible assumptions regarding weights or the inclusion of additional indicators can still produce marked shifts in the ranking of some donors so that small differences in overall rankings are not meaningful moreover because the performance of some donors varies considerably across the four sub indexes these sub indexes may be more useful than the overall index in identifying donors relative strengths and weaknesses

wind aggregation via risky power markets aggregation of diverse wind power sources can effectively reduce their uncertainty and hence the cost of wind energy integration a risky power contract is proposed by which wind power producers wpps can trade uncertain future power for efficient wind aggregation a two settlement market with both the risky power contract and a conventional firm power contract is shown to have a unique competitive equilibrium ce characterized in closed form the marginal contribution and diversity contribution of each wpp to the group of all wpps are fairly reflected in the profit earned by this wpp at the ce moreover the ce achieves the same total profit as achieved by a grand coalition of wpps in a coalitional game setting the profit allocation induced by the ce is always in the core and is achieved via a non cooperative risky power market the benefits of the risky power market are demonstrated using wind generation and locational marginal price data for ten wpps in the pjm interconnection

aid allocation and poverty reduction the authors derive a poverty efficient allocation of aid and compare it with actual aid allocations they build the poverty efficient allocation in two stages first they use new world bank ratings of 20 different aspects of national policy to establish the current relationship between aid policies and growth onto that they add a mapping from growth to poverty reduction which reflects the level and distribution of income they compare the effects of using headcount and poverty gap measures of poverty they find the actual allocation of aid to be radically different from the poverty efficient allocation in the efficient allocation for a given of poverty aid tapers in with policy reform in the actual allocation aid tapers out with reform in the efficient allocation aid is targeted disproportionately to countries with severe poverty and adequate polices the type of country where 74 percent of the world s poor live in the actual allocation such countries receive a much smaller share of aid 56 percent than their share of the world s poor with the present allocation aid is effective in sustainably lifting about 30 million people a year out of absolute poverty with a poverty efficient allocation this would increase to about 80 million people even with political constraints introduced to keep allocations for india and china constant poverty reduction would increase to about 60 million reallocating aid is politically difficult but it may be considerably less difficult than quadrupling aid budgets which is what the authors estimate would be necessary to achieve the same impact on poverty reduction with existing aid allocations

electricity market participation of wind farms the success story of the spanish pragmatism abstract in the last 10 years more than 15 gw of wind power asociacion empresarial eolica spanish wind energy association nota de prensa press release 17 de enero de 2008 http www aeeolica org doc np 080117 espana supera los 15000 mw eolicos pdf have been installed in spain of which more than 3 5 gw in 2007 furthermore plans are to reach 20 gw by 2010 and there are expectations of an installed capacity exceeding 40 gw by 2020 this article will present the innovative solutions for technical and economical integration that allow to reach such high level wind penetration objectives the system peaks at around 44 gw and is almost isolated it will be described how the regulation has evolved from a pure feed in tariff to a market premium option where technical and economic integration has been a priority today approximately 97 of installed wind capacity accesses the spanish wholesale electricity market market integration has been crucial sending the correct signals to participants to look for the optimum technical solutions technical improvements have come from both wind power producers fault ride through capabilities visibility and controllability of wind power power production forecasting reactive power control and the system operator specific control centre dedicated to renewable energy sources res new security analysis tools gaining technical confidence of wind capabilities

hedonic prices and implicit markets estimating demand and supply functions for differentiated products in choosing the level of quality to purchase the buyer of a differentiated product also chooses a point on the marginal price schedule for that product hence in general the demand functions for product characteristics cannot be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares market equilibrium results in a matching of characteristics of demanders and suppliers this matching restricts the use of buyer and seller characteristics as instruments when estimating demand and supply functions for product characteristics the paper develops these issues a stochastic structure for hedonic equilibrium models is then proposed identification results are presented and estimation procedures are outlined

electricity market design for facilitating the integration of wind energy experience and prospects with the australian national electricity market abstract australia has been an early and enthusiastic adopter of both electricity industry restructuring and market based environmental regulation the australian national electricity market nem was established in 1999 and australia also implemented one of the world s first renewable energy target schemes in 2001 with significant recent growth in wind generation australia provides an interesting case for assessing different approaches to facilitating wind integration into the electricity industry wind project developers in australia must assess both potential energy market and tradeable green certificate income streams when making investments wind farm energy income depends on the match of its uncertain time varying output with the regional half hourly market price a price that exhibits daily weekly and seasonal patterns and considerable uncertainty such price signals assist in driving investments that maximize project value to the electricity industry as a whole including integration costs and benefits for other participants recent nem rule changes will formally integrate wind generation in the market s scheduling processes while a centralized wind forecasting system has also been introduced this paper outlines experience to date with wind integration in the nem describes the evolution of market rules in response and assesses their possible implications for facilitating high future wind penetrations

large scale wind power integration and wholesale electricity trading benefits estimation via an ex post approach abstract the integration of large scale wind power has brought about a series of challenges to the power industry but at the same time a number of benefits are being realized among those the ability of wind power to cause a decline in the electricity market prices has been recognized in quantifying this effect some models used in recent years are based on simulations of the market supply side and the price clearing process the accuracy of the estimates depend on the quality of the input data the veracity of the adopted scenarios and the rigorousness of the solution technique in this work a series of econometric techniques based on actual ex post wind power and electricity price data are implemented for the estimation of the impact of region wide wind power integration on the local electricity market clearing prices and the trading savings that stem from this effect the model is applied to the case of spain where the estimated savings are compared against actual credit and bonus expenses to ratepayers the implications and extent of these results for current and future renewable energy policy making are discussed

aid and performance a reassessment two visions of aid effectiveness and allocation are compared the first corresponding to the new aid paradigm argues that aid is only effective if domestic policies are appropriate the second in contrast argues that aid effectiveness depends on the external and climatic environment the worse this environment or the more vulnerable the recipient countries the greater the effectiveness of aid cross sectional econometric tests related to gdp growth on two 12 year pooled periods clearly favour the second view the two views can be reconciled through the principle of performance based aid allocation where performance is defined as outcomes adjusted for the impact of environmental factors performance can then be measured in several manners which are subject to comparison one approach would lead one to allocate more aid the worse the external environment is for a given policy and the better the policy is for a given environment