trading in exhaustible resources in the presence of conversion costs a general equilibrium approach we survey the literature on the general equilibrium approach to trade in exhaustible resources and present a model in which conversion costs are incorporated and in which the usual balance of payments condition is relaxed it is found that in many cases the problem of dynamic inconsistency will arise

photovoltaic electricity production in brazil a stochastic economic viability analysis for small systems in the face of net metering and tax incentives abstract currently in addition to the search for sustainable development there is increased pressure for a change in consumption and production of energy patterns in brazil in this scenario net metering is an important mechanism fostering dissemination of small photovoltaic pv solar systems as complementary support to net metering a tax exemption is currently being offered in some brazilian states thus the objective of the present study is to analyze the impact of tax exemption on the circulation of goods and services and the returns and risks of the pv microgeneration project in four cities located in different regions of brazil belem petrolina uberaba and uruguaiana the analysis is performed using the monte carlo simulation mcs wherein uncertainties related to the financial and environmental variables are considered the results of the stochastic economic viability analysis allowed us to conclude that the exemption of tax on circulation of goods and services icms is fundamental to make pv microgeneration viable in brazil in the cities analyzed pv microgeneration presented economic unfeasibility to the investor when the icms is charged when considering the icms exemption policy the cities of petrolina and belem obtained high probabilities of viability in relation to the risk analysis pv microgeneration obtained the best results in petrolina both in terms of the condition of collection and exemption of icms there is high potential for harness solar throughout the brazilian territory however due to the current evolution stage and the productive chain of the brazilian pv industry high costs limit the expansion of this clean energy generation technology the findings of this study could assist policymakers in evaluating this incentive program highlighting that this tax exemption directly meets one of the objectives for which the icms was created which is to encourage the development of productive sectors such as pv industry

can decentralized planning really achieve first best in the presence of environmental spillovers abstract it is generally accepted that decentralized policy choice in the presence of interjurisdictional spillovers is inefficient strikingly ogawa and wildasin 2009 find that in a model with heterogenous jurisdictions interjurisdictional capital flows and interjurisdictional environmental damage spillovers decentralized planning outcomes are equivalent to that under a centralized planner we first show the critical importance of two key assumptions no retirement of capital fixed environmental damages per unit of capital in obtaining this result second we consider a more general model allowing for capital retirement and abatement activities and show that the outcome of a decentralized market generally differs from the solution of a centralized planner s social welfare maximizing problem

love and spaghetti the opportunity cost of virtue author s bergstrom ted abstract this paper was written in the form of two puzzles one puzzle concerns romeo and juliet who love spaghetti and each other they wear flimsy clothing and have abdominal hedonimeters the other puzzle asks who benefits from tax deductions to the rich for charitable deductions

monopolistic recycling of oil revenue and intertemporal bias in oil depletion and trade this paper investigates oil depletion and trade when monopolistic oil producers also exercise monopoly power in the capital market a two period model views collusively organized oil producers with an initial trade surplus and a subsequent deficit when monopoly power in the capital market is applied to the disadvantage of borrowers less oil is initially made available to oil importers than if the interest rate had been competitively determined this depletion bias however is reversed if because of incentives for capital accumulation it is to the advantage of the oil producers to subsidize lending to the oil importers in either case the bias in oil depletion due to monopolistic recycling of oil revenue is greater the more vulnerable are oil importer s incomes to a curtailment of oil supplies 25 references

design of an economically efficient feed in tariff structure for renewable energy development abstract evidence suggests albeit tentatively that feed in tariffs fits are more effective than alternative support schemes in promoting renewable energy technologies rets fits provide long term financial stability for investors in rets which at the prevailing market price of electricity are not currently cost efficient enough to compete with traditional fossil fuel technologies on the other hand if not properly designed fits can be economically inefficient as is widely regarded to have been the case under the public utility regulatory policies act of 1978 purpa under purpa too high a guaranteed price led to the creation of so called purpa machines poorly performing generating units that could survive financially only because of heavy subsidies that came at the expense of retail customers similarly because of their adverse impacts on retail electricity rates german fits have been subject to increasing political pressure from utilities and customers in this paper we propose an innovative two part fit consisting of both a capacity payment and a market based energy payment which can be used to meet the renewables policy goals of regulators our two part tariff design draws on the strengths of traditional fits relies on market mechanisms is easy to implement and avoids the problems caused by distorting wholesale energy markets through above market energy payments the approach is modeled on forward capacity market designs that have been recently implemented by several regional transmission organizations in the usa to address needs for new generating capacity to ensure system reliability

economic guideline about financial utilization of flat plate solar collectors fpscs for the consumer segment in the city of eskisehir abstract solar energy systems yield energy savings relative to conventional systems by considering the ecological balance although it still has barriers the most commonly used system of this type is fpsc in turkey which produces hot water by absorbing solar energy through fpscs this study is a kind of guidance about utilization of fpscs in eskisehir that concentrates on a consumer segment the aim of the study is displaying the necessity of transition to renewable energy systems in the local free markets where the place of domestic resources the data is supplied from an original hand collected survey and turkish governmental institutions such as the central bank of the republic of turkey cbrt and the turkish statistical institute turkstat that is used for a possible scenario to show how these systems can become an extensive investment and financed in the city the most significant finding is purchasing a fpsc device which is a rational and profitable investment decision for households in the economic conditions of eskisehir this type of energy system has certain costs including installation credit and annual maintenance costs however after they have been set up fpsc systems yield many ecological advantages that more than offset the associated costs such as fuel savings over the long term and exemptions from tax payments that apply to other types of fuels these advantages benefit both the environment on a global scale and the region in which the system is constructed therefore the global and local economy can improve its structure by utilizing fpscs

eu and russian discourse on energy relations the paper explores the dominant interpretations of the eu russian energy relations by identifying three dominant concepts around which these interpretations revolve 1 integration 2 liberalization and 3 diversification building on a detailed discourse analysis of 97 textual units produced by eu leaders and institutions and 104 documents and speeches by russian policy makers the paper argues that these three discourses differ widely in their assessment of the two partners mutual ties both in terms of the relationship s symmetry and the perceived benefits for each partner the paper comes up with two basic arguments first in spite of the shared usage of the three basic notions by both sides the interpretations of each of the discourses are widely different in the eu and in russia which causes continuous frictions and misunderstandings second and surprisingly the discourse of integration is dominant both in the eu and russia which shows that the claims about the alleged securitization of eu russian energy relations are clearly exaggerated

adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector an empirical analysis based on energy survey data this paper empirically explores factors driving the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures in the tertiary sector which mainly consists of public and private services trade commerce and some small industries the measures considered include switching off installations or lighting managing energy use and routinely considering energy efficiency for new purchases our statistical analysis employs single and multivariate probit models relying on more than 1500 observations from a recent representative survey of the tertiary sector in germany the findings suggest that the landlord tenant dilemma holds for the adoption of all low cost energy efficiency measures considered they further imply that financial incentives such as higher energy prices accelerate the diffusion of low cost energy measures our findings also provide some evidence that knowledge transfer from the mother company to a subsidiary enhances the diffusion of low cost energy efficiency measures likewise public sector organizations are more likely to adopt energy management by and large though sectoral heterogeneity appears to have little impact on the adoption of low cost energy efficiency measures

the prime criteria for private sector participation in renewable energy investment in the middle east case study iran abstract to have sustainable electricity generation from renewable energy resources economically competitive more privatization is needed in this sector true understanding based on transparent information is one of the salient necessities for the private sector to invest in the energy business in this article the researchers are to recognize the targeted factors considered by the private sector in order to improve their participation in the electricity generation markets from renewable sources in the middle east the results illustrate that the most important factors are governmental policies consumption markets and engineering efficiency these recognized factors then are classified from different aspects such as techno engineering business and relevant policies and the environment

jealousy and equilibrium overconsumption the idea that the happiness of an individual depends upon the consumption of others is widely viewed as an important feature of our shared social existence recent research in finance has used this idea through consumption externalities to explore asset pricing anomalies consumption externalities potentially break the link between pareto optimality and competitive equilibria and open the door for beneficial government intervention e g lars ljungqvist and harald uhlig 2000 in this paper we delineate two effects that a consumption externality may have an increase in aggregate consumption may a raise the marginal utility of individual consumption relative to leisure and or b lower an individual s utility level we refer to a as keeping up with the joneses henceforth kuj following jordi gali 1994 and we refer to b as jealousy jealousy is a distinct concept from kuj under kuj an individual derives greater utility from additional own consumption relative to leisure when others consume more at the same time higher per capita consumption holding fixed individual consumption can trigger either jealousy so that individual utility falls or admiration so that individual utility rises in section i of this paper we show that jealousy implies that the laissez faire equilibrium consumption level is greater than the optimal level whether preferences exhibit kuj is not necessary for this main result intuitively in the presence of jealousy consumption is similar to pollution overpollution exists because individuals do not take into account the cost of polluting on others not because an increase in economywide pollution makes the return to individual polluting higher similarly overconsumption exists because individuals do not take into account the negative effect of own consumption on jealous others things go in the opposite direction when individuals are admiring in section ii we consider a functional form that encompasses several existing models we show that jealousy determines the optimal tax to correct overconsumption and that kuj is mainly important for asset pricing

modelling farmer uptake of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract the uk biomass strategy suggests that to reach the technical potential of perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus by 2020 requires 350 000 hectares of land this represents a more than 20 fold increase on the current 15 546 hectares previous research has identified several barriers to adoption including concerns over security of income from contracts in addition farmers perceive returns from these crops to be lower than for conventional crops this paper uses a farm level linear programming model to investigate theoretical uptake of energy crops at different gross margins under the assumption of a profit maximising decision maker and in the absence of known barriers to adoption the findings suggest that while src willow at current prices remains less competitive returns to miscanthus should have encouraged adoption on a wider scale than at present this highlights the importance of the barriers to adoption recently announced contracts for miscanthus appear to offer a significant premium to farmers in order to encourage them to grow the crops this raises the question of whether a more cost effective approach would be for government to provide guarantees addressing farmers concerns including security of income from the contracts such an approach should encourage adoption at lower gross margins

carbon leakage the green paradox and perfect future markets policies of lowering carbon demand may aggravate instead of alleviate climate change green paradox in a two period three country general equilibrium model with finite endowment of fossil fuel one country enforces an emissions cap in the first or second periods when that cap is tightened the extent of carbon leakage depends on the interaction of various parameters and elasticities conditions for the green paradox are specified all determinants of carbon leakage resulting from tightening the first period cap work in the opposite direction when the second period cap is tightened tightening the second period cap does not necessarily lead to the green paradox

characterizations of consequentialism and nonconsequentialism abstract by allowing for the possibility that individuals recognize the intrinsic value of choice along with the instrumental value thereof we suppose that individuals express extended preference orderings of the following type choosing an alternative x from an opportunity set a is better than choosing an alternative y from an opportunity set b within this framework we identify a consequentialist and a nonconsequentialist who show contrasting attiduces toward alternatives vis a vis opportunities this paper characterizes these attitudes in terms of some axioms whereas the companion paper explores the implication of these concepts in the context of social choice theory a la arrow journal of economic literature classification numbers d00 d60 d63 d71

oil prices welfare and the trade balance the paper examines welfare effects and the trade balance response to changes in the world oil prices and interest rates for a small oil importing economy the trade balance is mainly seen as the difference between saving and investment and these are derived from intertemporal optimization it is shown that the welfare effects consist of static terms of trade effects intertemporal terms of trade effects and employment effects the trade balance deteriorates for temporary oil price increases whereas its response is ambiguous for permanent oil price increases for a fall in the world interest rate the trade balance deteriorates if the economy is a net borrower

economic evaluation of short rotation coppice systems for energy from biomass a review abstract since economic profitability is the most important factor for the adoption of short rotation coppice src for energy from biomass our objective was to analyze and summarize published knowledge about the economic evaluation of src of 37 studies 43 reported economic viability of src in comparison to a reference system whereas 19 stated economic disadvantages of src and 38 reported mixed results depending on the underlying assumptions we found a wide variety of underlying assumptions underlying costs process chains and methods used to evaluate src systems of the 37 studies 8 used static approaches of capital budgeting 84 used dynamic approaches and 8 applied approaches in which uncertainties were taken into account due to the long term nature of investment in src and therewith the uncertain development of sensitive assumptions approaches which consider uncertainties were best suited for economic evaluation the profitability of src was found to be most sensitive to the price for biomass and biomass yield but site specific biomass data was lacking despite the wide variation within each cost unit costs for land rent harvesting chipping and establishment consistently made up the largest proportion of overall costs and should therefore be chosen carefully we close with suggestions for improving the economic evaluation of src and enhancing traceability and comparability of calculations

energy policy and cooperation in southeast asia the history challenges and implications of the trans asean gas pipeline tagp network this article explores the proposed multibillion dollar trans asean gas pipeline tagp network in southeast asia focusing on the interests that have promoted the tagp and why based on extensive field research textual analysis of government reports and more than 100 research interviews at government institutions multilateral development banks universities consulting firms energy companies and nongovernmental organizations this article assesses the challenges facing the tagp in terms of promotion implementation and operation it explores the genesis of the tagp project and the drivers pushing southeast asian investment in natural gas with a special emphasis on the development needs of the region it also investigates the numerous technical economic legal political social and environmental impediments to the tagp project the article concludes that the rhetoric of regional energy cooperation touted by the association of southeast asian nations asean does not match its actual practice and that in many cases discussions of regionalism and energy security are intended to obscure opportunistic thinking within individual countries

international capital markets oil producers and the green paradox a rapidly rising carbon tax leads to faster extraction of fossil fuels and accelerates global warming we analyze how general equilibrium effects operating through the international capital market affect this green paradox in a two region two period world with identical homothetic preferences and without investment the global interest rate falls and the green paradox weakens with investment or a relatively more impatient oil importing region the green paradox may be strengthened because the future oil demand function shifts downward or because the interest rate rises if the oil importing region is very much more patient than the oil exporting region the green paradox may be reversed but in our calibrated model the effects are tiny with exploration and endogenous initial oil reserves a future carbon tax lowers cumulative oil extraction in partial equilibrium if the boost to current oil extraction is weakened strengthened or reversed in general equilibrium so is the fall in cumulative extraction a partial and general equilibrium welfare analysis of a future carbon tax both for full and partial exhaustion is given the effects of stock dependent extraction costs are separately discussed in an appendix

reform despite politics the political economy of power sector reform in fiji 1996 2013 abstract attempts to reform the electricity sector in developing countries have achieved mixed results despite the implementation of similar reforms in many developed countries and concerted effort by donors to transfer reform models in many cases political obstacles have prevented full and effective implementation of donor promoted reforms this paper examines the political economy of power sector reform in fiji from 1996 to 2013 reform has been pursued with political motives in a context of clientelism policy inconsistency and reversal is explained by the political instability of ethnic based politics in fiji modest success has been achieved in recent years despite these challenges with fiji now considered a model of power sector reform for other small islands developing states sids in the pacific the experience demonstrates that reform is possible within difficult political environments but it is challenging takes time and is not guaranteed the way in which political motives have driven and shaped reform efforts also highlights the need for studies of power sector reform to direct greater attention toward political drivers behind reform

economic analysis of pv systems on buildings in sicilian farms abstract the photovoltaic sector in italy in recent years has experienced a rapid growth also in the primary sector thanks to substantial incentives guaranteed by energy policies simultaneous reduction of investment costs and tax benefits in order to better understand the growth of the pv industry in italian primary sector the aim of this paper has been to evaluate the economic convenience of four pv systems on farm buildings located in four different farms of the north western coast of sicily and realized during the second and fourth italian feed in schemes for each feed in scheme it has been considered a pv plant that sells the electricity to the grid and another in which the energy generated is consumed entirely by the farm the results show a clear convenience to the realization of investments both with the current market conditions and at the variation of the feed in tariff or the investment costs

the diagnosis of an electricity crisis and alternative energy development in pakistan abstract the electricity sector in pakistan is currently facing the formidable challenges of an insufficient installed capacity a suboptimal infrastructure circular debt and revenue shortage all of these problems hamper socioeconomic activities this paper diagnoses the overall condition of the electricity sector as well as the potential and recent progress in the implementation of alternative energy projects in the context of the targets set in the national energy security plan nesp the assessment reveals the unsatisfactory overall progress of the implementation of the nesp in general and alternative energy in particular we assess that if the short term measures contained in the nesp have been adequately executed were enough to bridge the existing electricity supply demand gap and the country might not be facing an ongoing electricity crisis further we investigated the specific alternative energy policy issues that hinder this sector s development in pakistan we conclude that fuel diversification by means of the maximum utilisation of alternative energy resources would help in solving the crisis and would also furnish the long term energy needs of the country finally we recommend a comprehensive strategy for revamping the electricity sector and developing the alternative energy resources needed to tackle the ongoing electricity crisis in pakistan

economic and socio economic assessment methods for ocean renewable energy public and private perspectives this paper provides a comprehensive review of the current state of the art of the economics and socio economics of ocean renewable energy ore the many ways in which the viability and impacts of an ore project are assessed and an analysis of the current weaknesses issues or inappropriateness of the metrics and methodologies used in their definition and presentation the outcomes of this paper are anticipated to benefit the ore and wider renewable sector as a whole the review revealed that for the most part the current study of economics and socio economics of ore remain separate and discrete areas of research the economic methods utilised appear to be comprehensive but are limited to project or private investor level the methods identified for socioeconomic assessment fall between traditional and now routine environmental assessment approaches and more novel holistic approaches such as ecosystem services and life cycle assessment the novel section of the paper explored the connectivity between the economics and socio economics of ore in relation to project developments and policy planning a visualisation method was created of concentric rings intersected by related axis of economic socio economic and environment and enabled the examination of the benefits arising from the connectivity between the two spheres the concept of sustainable development process and the integration of environmental assessment for ore was also explored and how it responds to differing stakeholder aspirations and interpretations the analysis revealed that there was a divergence between public and private economic and socioeconomic assessments for ore environmental assessment is primarily a public responsibility but with significant inputs from the private developer involved while economic assessments are conducted primarily by the developer and or investor at their own behest however the two spheres of economic and socio economic for ore are highly connected and synergistic and must be examined in a holistic manner

the framing of unconventional natural gas resources in the foreign energy policy discourse of the russian federation the advent of unconventional resources of natural gas has altered the order on global as well as continental gas markets with rising liquidity the position of established dominant suppliers is eroding we focus on the initial response of russia the leading supplier of natural gas to europe to the new situation building the research on unit level constructivism and discourse analysis we use frame analysis to reveal what image of unconventional resources was constructed in russian foreign energy policy discourse fepd in the period between 2009 and 2011 when the unconventional revolution did not yet have any sharp contours we conclude that in russian fepd the unconventionals are considered as a distinctive and inferior source of energy compared to conventional natural gas emphasis is put on their economic irrationality and environmental hazards the bottom line of the discourse is the idea that there is a choice between conventional and unconventional sources with this choice being framed as one between good and bad or right and wrong

optimal saving policy for exhaustible resource economies abstract the paper examines the optimal saving policy for a small exhaustible resource exporting economy ere that has an exhaustible asset and a reproducible capital stock it shows that both in magnitude and time profile the optimal saving policy for an ere sharply differs from a that of a nonextractive economy and b that derived from the conventional models of growth with exhaustible resources these differences arise from the specific economic features that distinguish the small resource exporting developing economies both from other developing economies and from mature industrial ones for a wide range of plausible parameter values comparisons of computed optimal saving paths with actual savings rates of selected eres suggest substantial deficiencies in their savings rates

reserve reporting in the united states coal industry united states energy policymaking can be better supported with accurate and consistent data on coal reserves both in the public and private sectors in particular reserve data for coal and other energy resources should be directly comparable so that decision makers can easily understand the relationship among available resources long term policy and investment choices regarding energy security the environment and resource allocation depend on accurate information but existing and easily available data on the magnitude of geologically environmentally economically socially and legally accessible coal reserves are of insufficient quality to guide such decisions even still these data are often presented for use in policy and energy analysis currently coal reserves are overstated relative to competitor energy resource reserves in part because coal reporting standards have historically been more liberal and vague than standards for resources like natural gas overstating the marketable coal resource could lead to inefficient allocation of limited capital investment that can be difficult to reverse us government bodies like the energy information administration united states geological survey securities and exchange commission and bureau of land management can help correct deficiencies by clarifying standards and collecting data that are relevant for decision makers such as energy based reserve information

liquid biofuels in china current status government policies and future opportunities and challenges abstract china like many other countries is promoting the development of liquid biofuel including bioethanol and biodiesel the chinese government has set biofuel development targets for the coming decade and sanctioned a series of supportive policies this paper provides a comprehensive overview of current liquid biofuel development in china related government policies and the potential opportunities and challenges for its future expansion our assessment is based on two rounds of in depth fieldwork and a thorough literature review the assessment shows that the prevailing concern on food security has pushed china to move from cereal based to non cereal based biofuel production emphasis has also been put on utilizing new marginal land for feedstock production our assessment indicates that the targets of china s biofuel development are cautious and feasible but on the other hand there are still severe challenges for the sustainability of such development a better understanding of china s experience in striking a balance between energy security food security and environmental protection would inform the debates across country boundaries and contribute to the efforts for global sustainability

interjurisdictional spillovers decentralized policymaking and the elasticity of capital supply a key question in the fiscal federalism literature is whether decentralized policymaking in an economy with spillovers among jurisdictions leads to an efficient outcome see e g oates 1972 a striking example where this question is of particular importance is the current debate on global warming the failure of the copenhagen summit in late 2009 has shown impressively that centralized solutions to the climate change problem are hard to realize one might thus want to know whether a decentralized policy approach where each country chooses its own climate policy without coordinating it with the climate policy of other countries gives hope for an efficient policy outcome further important examples of decentralized decision making in the presence of interjurisdictional spillover effects can be found in the decentralized provision of education and infrastructure at first glance it is hardly imaginable that decentralized policymaking can ever be optimal it is not only the very existence of spillovers that causes doubt the policy instruments themselves also create policy externalities despite this presumption against the efficiency of decentralized policymaking the previous literature provides several studies in which decentralization leads to an undistorted policy choice an important example is the paper of oates and schwab 1988 who argue that the choice of capital taxes in an economy with identical jurisdictions mobile capital and local pollution may indeed be efficient in a remarkable recent paper ogawa and wildasin 2009 extend the analysis to account for transboundary pollution spillovers and asymmetric countries and still get the efficiency result in their model emissions and thus the extent of spillovers generated by a jurisdiction is proportional to capital employed in this jurisdiction the choice of capital taxes is then distorted by the jurisdictions incentives for tax competition and by the jurisdictions disregard of spillover effects but the key argument is that both distortions just neutralize each other and thereby lead to efficient capital tax rates our paper contributes to this literature and points to the important role that the elasticity of aggregate capital supply with respect to the net rate of return to capital plays for the efficiency of decentralized policymaking in accordance with the previous literature we show that under a fixed capital supply zero capital supply elasticity the decentralized policy choice is indeed optimal if the capital supply elasticity is strictly positive however capital tax rates are inefficiently low in the decentralized

changing energy intensity of economies in the world and its decomposition abstract this paper decomposes energy intensity change across countries into five components attributable to technological catch up technological progress and changes in capital energy ratio labor energy ratio and output structure it is found that 1 technological progress capital accumulation and output structure change contributed to the decline of energy intensity from 1980 to 2010 2 changes in labor energy ratio drove up energy intensity and 3 spatial and temporal heterogeneity existed regarding relative importance of the five components

second best carbon taxation in the global economy the green paradox and carbon leakage revisited acceleration of global warming resulting from a future carbon tax is large if the price elasticities of oil demand are large and that of oil supply is small the fall in the world interest rate weakens this weak green paradox effect especially if intertemporal substitution is weak still social damages from greenhouse gases drop if the fall in oil supply and cumulative emissions is strong enough if the current carbon tax is set too low the second best future carbon tax is set below the first best too to mitigate adverse green paradox effects unilateral second best optimal carbon taxes exceed the first best taxes due to an import tariff component the intertemporal terms of trade effects of the future carbon tax increase current and future tariffs and those of the current tax lower the current tariff finally carbon leakage and globally altruistic and unilateral second best optimal carbon taxes if non kyoto oil importers price carbon too low are analysed in a three country model of the global economy

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

think locally act locally spillovers spillbacks and efficient decentralized policymaking we analyze models with interjurisdictional spillovers among heterogeneous jurisdictions such as co 2 emissions that affect the global environment each jurisdiction s emissions depend upon the local stock of capital which is interjurisdictionally mobile and subject to local taxation in important cases decentralized policymaking leads to efficient resource allocation even in the complete absence of corrective interventions by higher level governments or coordination of policy through coasian bargaining in particular even when the preferences and production technologies differ among the agents the decentralized system can result in globally efficient allocation

grid parity and self consumption with photovoltaic systems under the present regulatory framework in spain the case of the university of jaen campus abstract the cut off of any subsidy or feed in tariff that incentives the installation of new renewable energy systems which are close to the grid parity is a reality in most of the european countries but in the recent years the grid parity has worsened because of the global economic crisis in the case of spain in addition to the economic problems the photovoltaic sector has been dramatically damaged through a changeable regulatory framework an excessive bureaucracy and the inclusion of additional fees or possible back up tolls that are very prejudicial for the deployment of this sector nowadays the current spanish legislation mentions the possibility of self consumption totally or partially of the electricity generated by pv or any renewable energy systems but up to the date of this work the law that regulates the administrative technical and economic conditions for the net metering of the electrical energy produced within the consumer s network is still under a draft stage in this paper it is analyzed the case of the university of jaen where it has been identified and simulated several pv systems on the roofs and parking lots of the university campus and considering the current electrical tariffs hourly defined for the case of high power and high voltage consumers it has been done a cost and economic analysis as a result it has been obtained an average levelised cost of energy around 0 125 kwh 1 a discount payback time of 17 5 years or less a positive net present value and a nominal internal rate of return of 8 48 in the worst case beyond that it has been carried out a sensitivity analysis of the factors that have more influence in the profitability of these systems like the initial investment cost the pv electricity yield additional taxes and the variations in the electricity price market

the impact of technological change on climate protection and welfare insights from the model mind abstract avoiding dangerous climate change is likely to require policies to mitigate co2 emissions that are substantially more ambitious than those currently being considered for such policies the issue of endogenous technological change becomes important both to estimate the overall costs and to identify the intertemporally cost effective combination of mitigation options in this paper we first discuss the recent literature that evaluates the potential for endogenous technological change to reduce mitigation costs and the efforts to incorporate endogenous technological change into pre existing integrated assessment models then we formulate our own integrated assessment model the model of investment and technological development mind which allows analysis of the relationship between specific mitigation options and the costs of ambitious climate protection objectives our model reveals two important results first the incorporation of technological change in a portfolio of mitigation options can reduce the costs of climate policies substantially achieving the ambitious policy goals necessary to avoid dangerous climate change becomes feasible without significant welfare losses second the different mitigation options are of different importance in achieving climate protection goals improving energy efficiency becomes too costly as a major mitigation option in the long run in the long run fossil fuels have to be substituted by renewable energy sources because a backstop technology with the potential of learning by doing has the strongest impact on reducing the welfare losses due to climate protection furthermore carbon capturing and sequestration can allow for further reduction in the costs of climate protection and can postpone the need to transform the energy system from a fossil fuel based one to a renewables one

the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea choosing pigs prostitutes and poker chips over panels this study explores the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea the authors collected primary data through semi structured research interviews conducted over the course of february 2010 april 2010 respondents included government officials financiers planners commercial distributors and companies teachers and rural villagers in addition to members of civil society academics consultants and trainers these interviews were supplemented with site visits to port moresby goroka and madang and field research in the villages of akameku asaroka lufa kundiawa okifa simbu and talidig the study draws from these interviews and visits to discuss four types of barriers technical barriers relate to substandard equipment and logistical problems economic barriers include high rates of poverty misconceptions about the role of currency and lack of financing political barriers include poor institutional capacity and a government commitment to fossil fueled grid electrification social barriers encompass unrealistic expectations about what shs can provide along with jealousy theft vandalism and unfamiliarity with solar technology

climate policy under factor mobility a differentiated case for capital taxation abstract in a general equilibrium model with two periods and a finite fossil resource i analyze the non cooperative climate policies of symmetric countries that are in competition for mobile factors of production capital and fossil energy the paper shows that countries that want to slow down climate change but are also concerned about tax revenues from mobile tax bases have a rationale to supplement environmental taxes on fossil fuels with source based capital taxes or subsidies more specifically countries find it beneficial to subsidize capital in period one and tax it in period two the first period subsidy on capital facilitates a higher environmental tax by counteracting its adverse effects and increases national and global welfare in equilibrium by contrast the capital tax in period two induces inter and intratemporal distortions that lead to lower welfare the rate of resource extraction is inefficiently high in equilibrium no matter which tax portfolio is at the governments disposal furthermore unintended green paradox effects of demand side policies are shown to arise even in general equilibrium with factor mobility finally factor mobility does not necessarily lead to a higher rate of extraction and lower welfare compared to autarky

why finance ministers favor carbon taxes even if they do not take climate change into account fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition we develop a multi region model of tax competition and resource extraction to assess the fiscal incentive of imposing a tax on carbon rather than on capital we explicitly model international capital and resource markets as well as intertemporal capital accumulation and resource extraction while fossil resources give rise to scarcity rents capital does not with carbon taxes the rents can be captured and invested in infrastructure which leads to higher welfare than under capital taxation this result holds even without modeling environmental damages it is robust under a variation of the behavioral assumptions of resource importers to coordinate their actions and a resource exporter s ability to counteract carbon policies further no green paradox occurs instead the carbon tax constitutes a viable green policy since it postpones extraction and reduces cumulative emissions

subglobal climate change actions and carbon leakage the implication of international capital flows abstract the climate change agreement negotiated in kyoto obliges the oecd countries to initiate the international effort of abating the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in the event that such an initiative is taken the associated competitive pressures may induce significant offsetting increases in non oecd emissions a process generally known as leakage the current models used to study these competitive effects have adopted an empirically inconsistent view of the world that international capital markets are perfectly integrated to the extent that restrictions on the international mobility of capital affect regional investment decisions it might be expected that the competitive impacts drawn from these models could significantly be altered this paper addresses this issue the paper suggests that these competitive effects are not really contingent on capital flows with a regionally disaggregated dynamic model of the world economy we show a quite robust result that carbon leakage is virtually unaffected by the presence of restrictions on the mobility of international capital

review of taiwan s climate policy after copenhagen abstract the copenhagen accord in 2009 initiated new opportunities for international cooperation in reducing greenhouse gas ghg emissions the purpose of this study was to review taiwan s current climate policy and in response to the copenhagen accord to deliberate this policy in the light of new strategic thinking the study proposes a two stage approach with a dividing line in 2020 in the first stage from now until 2020 strategy should be based on cost constraints with a suggested reduction cost below 60 t co 2 and implementation of domestic ghg emissions trading scheme and reduction strategies in the second stage from 2020 and beyond action by taiwan should accord with international cooperative actions to link its domestic emissions trading scheme with the international carbon market

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

on the contribution of external cost calculations to energy system governance the case of a potential large scale nuclear accident abstract the contribution of nuclear power to a sustainable energy future is a contested issue this paper presents a critical review of an attempt to objectify this debate through the calculation of the external costs of a potential large scale nuclear accident in the externe project a careful dissection of the externe approach resulted in a list of 30 calculation steps and assumptions from which the 6 most contentious ones were selected through a stakeholder internet survey the policy robustness and relevance of these key assumptions were then assessed in a workshop using the concept of a pedigree of knowledge overall the workshop outcomes revealed the stakeholder and expert panel s scepticism about the assumptions made generally these were considered not very plausible subjected to disagreement and to a large extent inspired by contextual factors such criticism indicates a limited validity and useability of the calculated nuclear accident externality as a trustworthy sustainability indicator furthermore it is our contention that the externe project could benefit greatly in terms of gaining public trust from employing highly visible procedures of extended peer review such as the pedigree assessment applied to our specific case of the external costs of a potential large scale nuclear accident

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

the possibility of social choice the subject of social choice includes within its capacious frame various problems with the common feature of relating social judgments and group decisions to the views and interests of the individuals who make up the society or the group some challenges and foundational problems faced by social choice theory as a discipline are discussed social choice theory is a subject in which formal and mathematical techniques have been very extensively used voting based procedures are entirely natural for some kinds of social choice problems such as elections referendums or committee decisions they are however altogether unsuitable for many other problems of social choice impossibility results in social choice theory led by the pioneering work of arrow 1951 have often been interpreted as being thoroughly destructive of the possibility of reasoned and democratic social choice including welfare economics that view is argued against

are fluctuations in energy consumption per capita transitory evidence from a panel of pacific island countries this study applies the panel stationarity test developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 breaking the panels an application to gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 to examine the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for a panel of 13 pacific island countries over the period 1980 2005 this test has the advantage that it allows for multiple structural breaks at unknown dates that can differ across countries and can account for all forms of cross sectional correlation between countries the conclusion from the study is that energy consumption per capita in approximately 60 of countries is stationary and that energy consumption per capita for the panel as a whole is stationary the study offers several suggestions for modelling energy consumption and policy making in the pacific islands

a qualitative factor analysis of renewable energy and sustainable energy for all se4all in the asia pacific this study assesses the factors responsible for the success and failure of renewable energy access programs in bangladesh china laos mongolia nepal sri lanka india indonesia malaysia and papua new guinea based on 441 research interviews over the course of four years site visits to 90 renewable energy facilities and focus groups with almost 800 community members in 10 countries this study develops a series of overarching qualitative factors that correlate with programs that met their targets sometimes ahead of schedule and produced measurable benefits exceeding costs the inverse of these factors is associated with programs that did not meet their targets were behind schedule and or produced measurable costs exceeding benefits it concludes by offering 10 lessons for energy analysts and development practitioners concerning appropriate technology income generation financing political leadership capacity building programmatic flexibility marketing and awareness stakeholder engagement community ownership and technical standardization

the politico economics of electricity planning in developing countries a case study of ghana abstract off grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries however many un electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off grid technologies electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off grid technologies using a case study of un electrified communities in ghana we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to 1 cost efficiency and 2 political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations and therefore votes are given priority in terms of grid electrification the results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade offs shift from considering the grid versus off grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access

independent regulatory agencies and rules harmonization for the electricity sector and renewables in the mediterranean region the paper analyses the existing regulatory framework for the electricity and renewables sectors and the role of regulatory agencies in northern africa and middle east countries under the promotion by the european union using data collected through an original survey directed at regulators ministry departments and energy companies of the southern mediterranean the study is aimed at assessing the extent of agencies independence looking at three main dimensions of independence regulatory instruments available to regulators and decision making autonomy regulators organizational autonomy and regulators accountability results show that those countries having established an independent regulator have a more credible regulatory framework than those countries in which such a body does not exist in particular the analysis shows that turkey croatia and jordan have defined a regulatory framework that limits administrative expropriation and consequently creates an environment more suitable for attracting investments in the electricity and renewables sector on the institutional ground this is probably related with the harmonization of regulatory standards promoted by the european union through the neighboring policy for the jordan case and the membership perspective in the turkish and croatian cases

is public capital provision efficient abstract we examine whether public investment undertaken in australia over the last three decades satisfies conditions for intertemporal efficiency we find that the conditions are satisfied over the sample period but only after allowance for changes in the relative price of public and private capital in contrast to previous research we do not find any evidence of excessive returns to public investment rather the average real investment return for both private and public capital is estimated at about 9 per annum

economic assessment of eucalyptus spp for biomass production as alternative crop in southern italy the increase in energy prices and the stagnation of sales prices of the main agricultural commodities required a rethinking of farm production strategies since during the last years thanks to a series of policies aimed at promoting renewable sources it has been a rapid diffusion of lignocellulosic biomass species this paper aimed at evaluating the economic feasibility of the introduction of eucalyptus eucalyptus spp as energy crop for farmers of southern italy by comparing it with traditional crop rotations in particular economic analysis has been carried out in a representative case study located in the sicilian hilly hinterland where in 2013 it has been built a biomass plant for energy production however results showed that introduction of eucalyptus for biomass production is less profitable for farmers than traditional crops considering the incompressibility of production costs and the actual market price of woodchips

agro energy districts contributing to environmental and social sustainability in rural areas evaluation of a local public private partnership scheme in greece abstract the current economic downturn has put public budgets under pressure reducing investments and revenues for local stakeholders to cope among other things with contemporary demands of environmental protection local based partnerships may provide an efficient tool by adopting integrating and implementing actions based on awareness and participation of a set of different players this need is even more evident in rural areas in which a proposed decentralized bio energy production model established in agro energy districtscan provide incentive and create a comfortable ground for the development of an energy production plant based on a mixed public private partnership drawing on the implementation of a european co funded research project the paper presents the efforts being made to build a partnership at a local level in order to cover the lack of an institutional plan and public investment for handling biomass production our aim is not primarily to present the best technical solution to bio energy production but rather to illustrate the networking between different players the public consultation and the agreements being made under the form of public private partnerships as well as the levels of commitment and the risks taken the gist of this study is that despite the civic engagements the inconsistent administrative environment the dominance of the public sector and the state intervention through legislation and different political decisions makes it still difficult for local partnerships to exercise their power and turn from government to governance in order to cope with the environmental challenges and tackle inequalities faced in rural areas

a design of experiments response surface methodology approach to study the economic sustainability of a 1 mwe photovoltaic plant abstract to obtain a rigorous investment analysis for photovoltaic power generation plants a dynamic business plan has been studied it allows us to determine in real time the investment parameters net present value internal rate of return return on investment etc starting from the technical economical financial and positional data the business plan provides as output the exact values of the parameters dependent variables or objective functions basing on the exact values of the input variables independent variables by suitably varying the independent variables it is possible to obtain a sensitivity analysis on the dependent variables due to which different evaluations about the investment in multiple pre set scenarios can be obtained on the other hand by using the business plan as data creator and then applying the response surface methodology techniques it has been possible to obtain mathematical functions regression meta models which are able to explain the link among dependent and independent variables in the definition range this approach allows to generate a sort of k dimensional state equation of order n for the different investigated economic parameters these equations provide in the chosen dimensional space two or three dimensional a view of the dependent variable behaviour e g net present value internal rate of return while changing one or two independent variables e g government incentives discount rate the descriptive ability of this approach has a higher level in terms of quality and reliability than a traditional sensitivity analysis in this paper a case study about a 1 mwe photovoltaic plant located in liguria north italy and a comparison with a similar plant located in sicily south italy are also presented

profitability of wind energy investments in china using a monte carlo approach for the treatment of uncertainties abstract china is the global leader in terms of installed wind capacity further wind energy development is expected for the next years and decades to meet the continuously increasing electricity demand and the need of using clean domestic energy since 2009 china is divided into four geographical regions each assigned with a different benchmark on grid tariff moreover the existing infrastructures are not equally developed throughout the country making investment decisions more complicated and risky the scope of this paper is to apply an innovative methodology and evaluate the attractiveness of each region for wind energy development by taking into consideration all relevant investment risks such as wind potential wind curtailment access to the grid and macroeconomic parameters to this purpose a monte carlo simulation approach integrated into a typical financial model is implemented in each of the four regions performing many hundreds of iterations each characterized by a randomly selected set of the examined uncertain parameters this approach intends to provide information to private investors doing a first exploratory research in the huge country s area in order to decide whether and where to invest as well as to policy makers to help them assess critical policy parameters and investigate different scenarios of wind energy development the evaluation of the current framework for wind energy development in china verifies that the existing system of feed in tariffs in china is very effective for the balanced deployment of wind energy in the whole country however it is shown that the risk of curtailment and grid accessibility may significantly reduce the potential profitability of wind energy investments in all four regions priority for development of infrastructures should be given in isolated northern windy areas with high accumulation of wind farms

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

altruism jealousy and the theory of optimal non linear taxation abstract this paper studies optimal non linear taxes in a world in which there is altruism and jealousy a formula for optimal marginal tax rates is derived which turns out to be a simple and intuitively appealing extension of a result due to mirrlees the paper shows that in this sort of economy all of optimal tax theory s general results either no longer hold or need not hold and it sets out appropriate modifications to standard tax rules

can carbon tax eat opec s rents abstract we consider the optimal emission tax for a stock pollutant when the pollutant flow is also regulated by a resource exporting cartel we consolidate clarify and generalize a set of previous results to obtain clear isolation of the pigouvian and trade policy components of the tax because of the trade policy component the tax can shift more rents from the cartel than the pollution causes damage related costs this leads to the possibility that the pollution problem accompanied by the coordination of taxation can bring about net benefits at the expense of the cartel

optimal saving interest rates and endogenous growth the main point of this paper is that the apparent failure of economists thus far to establish a positive empirical link between interest rates and saving does not by itself discredit the hypothesis of a direct structural relationship between the two ceteris paribus because this structural relationship may be shifting about in response to changes in exogenous variables such as tastes and technology in a way that is consistent with any type of reduced form correlation between interest rates and saving in the data this point is demonstrated within a simple model of optimal saving interest rates and economic growth the different implications of endogenous versus exogenous growth are explored in this context

revisiting the techno economic analysis process for building mounted grid connected solar photovoltaic systems part two application part one in this two part paper identified monte carlo analysis as an improved approach over traditional deterministic techno economic methods for solar pv prosumers in deregulated markets in this

access to electricity in small island developing states of the pacific issues and challenges abstract energy poverty is widespread in small island developing states sids of the pacific it is estimated that 70 percent of pacific islander households do not have access to electricity which is equivalent to access rates in sub saharan africa and slightly below the average for low income countries pacific sids face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity given that their populations are spread across tens of thousands of islands governments and development partners in pacific sids continue to prioritise development of electricity grids as is evident in ongoing subsidisation of grid based power consumption and the establishment of ambitious grid based renewable energy targets this paper argues that traditional approaches to rural electrification which prioritise grid extension are not suited to the pacific islands region increased funding should be directed by both governments and development partners towards rural electrification especially in off grid areas where isolated systems are more appropriate institutional reform is also important regulatory reform is needed for power utilities to extend electricity grids into rural areas institutional arrangements that facilitate the sustainable operation and maintenance of off grid systems also need to be established past donor and government funded off grid rural electrification projects have rarely been sustainable alternative approaches involving payment of output based subsidies to energy service companies are worth exploring although will only succeed where sound regulatory arrangements are in place

asset life and pricing the use of electricity transmission infrastructure in chile abstract beyond the different approaches to set regulated prices for the use of infrastructure a key parameter to determine regulated tariffs is the concept of asset life and how it changes with changes in the economic and regulatory context which determines the optimal infrastructure investment and replacement policies in this paper we look at the effects that changes in demand the presence of substitutes and complements the regulatory framework both a pro or an anticompetitive framework scale economies and the investment planning horizon have on the economic service life of an asset and the tariffs for its use we find that as the electric industry becomes more competitive a negative effect on the economic service life of electric electricity transmission should be expected also numerical experiments illustrate an inverse relation between scale economies on investment and the esl of electricity transmission infrastructure further we look at the biases on optimal investment that happen when optimal plans do not observe the life cycle of the investments and the esl of the equipment as well as the inconsistency and biases on optimal investment and replacement policies that might result when the social planner optimal investment plan lacks of a long term commitment

the analysis on photovoltaic electricity generation status potential and policies of the leading countries in solar energy abstract energy which is the main agenda of our world is crucially important for the people many countries frequently held meetings and discussions with energy agenda these countries are working to balance the energy demand and supply for finding the solution are researched researches should be attempted to present a more efficient way to use energy as well as renewable energy resources effectively photovoltaic energy power systems take place as the most dominant source among renewable energy technologies the most important reason is that it is unlimited and clean energy of the solar power systems many studies show that photovoltaic power systems will have an important share in the electricity of the future in this study to generate electricity from solar energy using photovoltaic systems have a leading position in some european countries united states of america china and japan s current status and future policies will be analyzed in various comments were made

energy and economic analysis for large scale integration of small photovoltaic systems in buildings the case of a public location in southern spain abstract the integration of grid connected pv systems into buildings or public areas is one of the most usual applications of the photovoltaic solar energy in developed countries and it is being highly promoted by several european governments in this paper it has been evaluated the photovoltaic potential of the campus of the university of jaen and it has been defined possible areas where the pv systems could be installed according to power requirements space possibilities the electrical configuration of the campus and some social integration requirements too the definition of the pv potential together with a technical analysis for the calculation of the energy generated is the previous step for carrying out an economic and cost analysis in order to certify the profitability of these systems in general particularizing the study for the case of this university located in southern spain the pv electricity cost generated has been calculated through the concept levelised cost of electricity lcoe where in our case is estimated to be around 0 13 0 14 kwh 1 the results obtained in this economic analysis recommend the implementation of pv grid connected systems pvgcs as the internal rate of return reaches a maximum value of 6 21 the net present value is positive and the discounted payback time is around 16 years an additional sensitive analysis shows the influence that some parameters have on the lcoe specially the initial investment the energy yield and the nominal discount rate

the impact of climate change on the balanced growth equivalent an application of fund the stern review added balanced growth equivalents bge to the economic climate change research agenda we first propose rigorous definitions of the bge for multiple regions and under uncertainty we show that the change in the bge is independent of the assumed scenario of per capita income for comparable welfare economic assumptions as the stern review we calculate lower changes in bge between a business as usual scenario and one without climate impacts with the model fund than the stern review found with the model page we find that mitigation policies give even lower changes in bge and argue that those policy choices should be the focus of the research effort rather than total damage estimates according to our results the current carbon tax should be below 55 tc sensitivity analyses show that the stern review chose parameters that imply high impact estimates however for regionally disaggregated welfare functions we find changes in bge that are significantly higher than the results from the stern review both for total damage as for policy analysis with regional disaggregation and high risk aversion we observe fat tails and with that very high welfare losses

economics and climate change integrated assessment in a multi region world this paper develops a model that integrates the climate and the global economy an integrated assessment model with which different policy scenarios can be analyzed and compared the model is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium setup with a continuum of regions thus it is a full stochastic general equilibrium version of rice nordhaus s pioneering multi region integrated assessment model like rice our model features traded fossil fuel but otherwise has no markets across regions there is no insurance nor any intertemporal trade across them the extreme form of market incompleteness is not fully realistic but arguably not a bad approximation of reality its major advantage is that along with a set of reasonable assumptions on preferences technology and nature it allows a closed form model solution we use the model to assess the welfare consequences of carbon taxes that differ across as well as within oil consuming and producing regions we show that surprisingly only taxes on oil producers can improve the climate taxes on oil consumers have no effect at all the calibrated model suggests large differences in views on climate policy across regions

an analysis of feed in tariff remuneration models implications for renewable energy investment recent experience from around the world suggests that feed in tariffs fits are the most effective policy to encourage the rapid and sustained deployment of renewable energy there are several different ways to structure a fit policy each with its own strengths and weaknesses this paper presents an overview of seven different ways to structure the remuneration of a fit policy divided into two broad categories those in which remuneration is dependent on the electricity price and those that remain independent from it this paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of these different fit models and concludes with an analysis of these design options with a focus on their implications both for investors and for society

germany s solar cell promotion dark clouds on the horizon abstract this article demonstrates that the large feed in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in germany constitute a subsidization regime that threatens to reach a level comparable to that of german hard coal production a notoriously outstanding example of misguided political intervention yet as a consequence of the coexistence of the german renewable energy sources act eeg and the eu emissions trading scheme ets the increased use of renewable energy technologies does not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ets alone similarly disappointing is the net employment balance which is likely to be negative if one takes into account the opportunity cost of this form of solar photovoltaic pv support along the lines of the international energy agency iea 2007 energy policies of iea countries germany 2007 review international energy agency oecd paris p 77 we recommend the immediate and drastic reduction of the magnitude of the feed in tariffs granted for solar based electricity ultimately producing electricity on this basis is among the most expensive greenhouse gas abatement options

raising children to work hard altruism work norms and social insurance children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market moreover parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non credible to promote work

how substitutable is natural capital one of the recurring themes in the sustainability literature has been the extent to which a loss of natural capital can be made up for in welfare terms by an increase in other forms of capital this issue was raised early on in the debate on sustainability by pearce and has never really been resolved this paper is an empirical attempt to measure the degree of substitutability between different forms of capital a nested ces production function is used to allow flexibility in the estimated elasticities of substitution also within this specification natural resources and other inputs are combined in different levels of the function thus allowing for different levels of substitutability institutional and economic indicators are also incorporated in the production function estimated results show that the elasticities derived from functions involving land resources were generally around one or greater implying a fairly high degree of substitutability furthermore changes in trade openness and private sector investment have a statistically significant and direct relationship on the efficiency of production and hence on income generation no statistically significant relationship between income and any of the institutional indicators was found

the efficient side of progressive income taxation abstract this paper examines allocative properties of progressive income taxation when individuals care about their relative income it shows that introducing a progressive income tax can yield a pareto improvement if pre tax income is evenly distributed implementing undistorted choices of working hours requires a progressive tax schedule and the optimal degree of progressivity decreases with pre tax income inequality

the effect of electricity consumption from renewable sources on countries economic growth levels evidence from advanced emerging and developing economies abstract this paper uses a sample of 36 countries for the time period 1990 2011 in order to examine the relationship between countries electricity consumption from renewable sources and gross domestic product gdp levels several nonparametric techniques are applied to investigate the effect of electricity consumption from several renewable sources including wind geothermal solar biomass and waste on countries gdp levels when investigating the whole sample ignoring countries economic development status the results reveal an increasing relationship up to a certain gdp level which after that point the effect of electricity consumption on gdp stabilises however when analyzing separately the emerging markets and developing economies and the advanced developed economies the results change significantly for the case of emerging market and developing economies the relationship appears to be highly nonlinear an m shape form indicating that on those countries the levels of electricity consumption from renewable sources will not result on higher gdp levels in contrast for the case of the advanced economies the results reveal an increasing nonlinear relationship indicating that higher electricity consumption levels from renewable sources results to higher gdp levels this finding is mainly attributed to the fact that in the advanced developed economies more terawatts from renewable sources are generated and consumed compared to the emerging market and developing economies which traditionally their economies rely on non renewable sources for power generation and consumption

nosy preferences benevolence and efficiency author affiliation chetan dave cdave nyu edustefan dodds sdodds uwinnipeg ca acknowledgment we would like to thank ingela alger sheryl ball nathan berg tarek coury rachel croson frances woolley participants at the 2008 canadian economics association meetings seminar participants at queen s university and two anonymous referees for valuable comments all errors are those of the authors 1 introductionthe pareto principle declares that if everyone in a society prefers some social state of the world x to another state y then the aggregated social ranking should reflect this as well minimal liberalism requires that no individual s preference relation between social states say z and w be violated in the social choice provided that the position of other individuals is unaffected across states z and w both of these principles can be appealing to economists as they evaluate the normative features of various policies however the liberal paradox of sen 1970 demonstrates that the pareto principle and minimal liberalism are potentially at odds with one another the paradox shows that if individuals possess nosy preferences that is they hold opinions about what others should do even though their own material well being is unaffected by others actions then it is in general impossible to arrive at a unique social choice that jointly satisfies these two axioms 1 as an elegant proof by contradiction the paradox adds to the list of social choice impossibilities 2sen s paradox highlights the tension between freedom of choice and efficiency with nosiness as the key ingredient in this article we re examine this tension by using recent insights from behavioral economics the idea that individuals may have concern for others namely altruism is well established in the behavioral economics literature becker 1974 however the concept of nosy preferences and what they imply for collective choice environments has not been extensively studied from a behavioral perspective here we provide such a study to do so we recast nosiness as a new form of social preference in a strategic setting this insight stems from the analysis of segal and sobel 2007 who consider a model where players in a game possess preferences over both outcomes and strategies employed by all players we embed our version of nosiness into a more general model of social preferences individuals in the model derive utility from three sources intrinsic payoffs from the outcomes of strategic choice nosy payoffs based on specific actions taken by other individuals to generate such outcomes and unconditionally altruistic or benevolent payoffs positively related to the extended utilities of other individuals this framework allows us to analyze strategic environments in which there exist interdependent preferences over utilities and actions or just one of these features we apply this particular model of preferences to two environments the first was suggested by aldrich 1977 who sought to provide a game theoretic interpretation of sen s paradox for this environment we are interested in the efficiency of equilibria and to what extent inefficiency depends on particular forms of social preferences we thus offer a new behavioral interpretation of sen s paradox following the behavioral theme we show that when individuals exhibit loss aversion over their own actions the paradox may be robust to schemes that attempt to generate efficiency by restricting action sets ex ante the second environment we consider is that of relative consumption concerns we show that applying our particular model of interdependent preferences to this environment allows us to find cases where individuals will voluntarily restrict consumption to mitigate the negative externality arising from nosy concerns about what others consume

techno economic evaluation of small hydro power plants in greece a complete sensitivity analysis abstract hydropower has by far been the most mature renewable energy resource used for electricity generation in our planet recently the investors interest was whipped up by the mass development of small hydropower shp stations as they are the most prosperous for additional hydropower penetration in developed electricity markets in greece the increasing interest for building shp stations got off the ground since 1994 ever since an enormous number of requests keep piling up in the greek regulatory authority of energy and the ministry of development with the object of creating new shp stations of total capacity over 600 mw the present work is concentrated on the systematic investigation of the techno economic viability of shp stations the study is concluded by a sensitivity analysis properly adapted for the local market financial situation in order to enlighten the decision makers on the expected profitability of the capital to be invested according to the results obtained the predicted internal rate of return irr values are greater than 18 for most shp cases analysed finally as per the sensitivity analysis carried out the installation capacity factor the local market electricity price annual escalation rate and the reduced first installation cost are found to be the parameters that mostly affect the viability of similar ventures

enabling private sector investment in microgrid based rural electrification in developing countries a review access to electricity is widely recognized as an important factor for economic and social development low rates of access particularly in remote rural areas in regions such as sub saharan africa south asia and southeast asia have led developing nations and international organizations to set ambitious goals to expand the reach of electricity decentralized solutions such as microgrids have been proposed as cost effective solutions to reaching communities located far from central grid infrastructure lack of capital from public and donor sources has severely impeded achieving access goals leading to calls for greater private sector participation in electrification activities however due to the high level of risk associated with decentralized electrification projects in low income areas marginal expected returns on investment and a lack of clear and effective public policy the private sector has not shown significant interest in participating in such projects the purpose of this paper is to review barriers to private sector participation in decentralized electrification projects and to identify solutions that have been implemented and proposed to overcome these barriers the barriers discussed include unsecure revenue streams inability to finance projects and long term project risks such as grid encroachment the range of interventions and business models reviewed include methods to secure reliable demand subsidy models risk guarantees and different revenue models this paper does not include an analysis of the effectiveness of the different interventions described future research should evaluate the relative costs and benefits of these interventions in order to provide robust policy guidance to decision makers in developing countries

optimal taxes on fossil fuel in general equilibrium we analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with an externality through climate change from using fossil energy our central result is a simple formula for the marginal externality damage of emissions or equivalently for the optimal carbon tax this formula which holds under quite plausible assumptions reveals that the damage is proportional to current gdp with the proportion depending only on three factors i discounting ii the expected damage elasticity how many percent of the output flow is lost from an extra unit of carbon in the atmosphere and iii the structure of carbon depreciation in the atmosphere thus the stochastic values of future output consumption and the atmospheric co2 concentration as well as the paths of technology whether endogenous or exogenous and population and so on all disappear from the formula we find that the optimal tax should be a bit higher than the median or most well known estimates in the literature we also formulate a parsimonious yet comprehensive and easily solved model allowing us to compute the optimal and market paths for the use of different sources of energy and the corresponding climate change we find coal rather than oil to be the main threat to economic welfare largely due to its abundance we also find that the costs of inaction are particularly sensitive to the assumptions regarding the substitutability of different energy sources and technological progress

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

a critical review of china s rapidly developing renewable energy and energy efficiency policies renewable energy and energy efficiency reee policies have far reaching implications for energy security climate change economic competitiveness pollution and human livelihood for these reasons reee has become a national priority for the chinese government particularly since 2005 this paper aims to critically review china s reee policies in six sectors electricity industry transportation buildings and local government in addition to examining the progress china has made in the development and implementation of reee policies this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement finally five policy recommendations are presented

when do increasing carbon taxes accelerate global warming a note on the green paradox abstract the green paradox by hans werner sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near term extraction in fear of higher future taxation in this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners we calculate a critical initial value for the carbon tax that leads to a decreased cumulative consumption over the entire infinite time horizon applying our formal findings to carbon taxes for several mitigation targets we conclude that there is a low risk of a green paradox in case the regulator implements and commits to a permanently mal adjusted tax this remaining risk can be avoided by emissions trading scheme as suggested by sinn as long as the emission caps are set appropriately and the intertemporal permit market works correctly

flattening the carbon extraction path in unilateral cost effective action internalizing the global negative externality of carbon emissions requires the flattening of the extraction path of world fossil energy resources world carbon emissions we consider governments with sign unconstrained emission taxes at their disposal and seeking to prevent world emissions from exceeding some binding aggregate emission ceiling in the medium term such a ceiling policy can be carried out either in full cooperation or by a sub global climate coalition unilateral action has to cope with carbon leakage and high costs which makes a strong case for choosing a policy that implements the ceiling in a cost effective way in a two country two period general equilibrium model with a non renewable fossil energy resource we characterize the unilateral cost effective ceiling policy and compare it with its fully cooperative counterpart we show that with full cooperation there exists a cost effective ceiling policy in which only first period emissions are taxed at a rate that is uniform across countries in contrast the cost effective ceiling policy of a sub global climate coalition is characterized by emission regulation in both periods the share of the total stock of energy resources owned by the sub global climate coalition turns out to be a decisive determinant of the sign and magnitude of unilateral cost effective taxes

risk adjusted financial costs of photovoltaics recent research shows significant differences in the levelised photovoltaics pv electricity cost calculations the present paper points out that no unique or absolute cost figure can be justified the correct solution is to use a range of cost figures that is determined in a dynamic power portfolio interaction within the financial scheme support mechanism and industry cost reduction the paper draws attention to the increasing role of financial investors in the pv segment of the renewable energy market and the importance they attribute to the risks of all options in the power generation portfolio based on these trends a former version of a financing model is adapted to project the energy mix changes in the eu electricity market due to investors behaviour with different risk tolerance aversion the dynamic process of translating these risks into the return expectation in the financial appraisal and investment decision making is also introduced by doing so the paper sets up a potential electricity market trend with the associated risk perception and classification the necessary risk mitigation tasks for all stakeholders in the pv market are summarised which aims to avoid the burden of excessive risk premiums in this market segment

economic evaluation of miscanthus production a review this paper reviews the peer reviewed literature dealing with the economics of miscanthus cultivation to identify factors influencing the adoption of miscanthus and to reveal shortcomings in research in total 51 studies have been identified for this review the majority of these publications are recent i e the majority is published after 2009 and concern case studies in europe particularly the uk and ireland and north america this review reveals that the economic viability of miscanthus depends on largely uncertain assumptions especially concerning yields 10 48 t dry matter per ha and prices 48 134 t dry matter but also concerning the lifespan 10 20 years and different cost items a lack of established markets high establishment costs and uncertainties arising to a large extent from the long term commitment are identified as major barriers to miscanthus adoption in addition the level of support for miscanthus production e g via subsidies is identified as crucial for miscanthus profitability but is found to be highly heterogeneous across countries next to diversity in agronomic and economic assumptions also the assessment criteria and research techniques used to investigate the profitability of miscanthus differ widely while the net present value criterion was most frequently used we identify a lack of approaches that account for risks and uncertainties which seem to potentially play a critical role in the uptake of miscanthus by farmers

optimality and consistency in a differential game with non renewable resources abstract imperfect competition amongst buyers for a non renewable resource is modeled as a stackelberg differential game the buyers may act as a cartel or behave non cooperatively in setting tariffs which the sellers take as given the buyer s optimal policy is not consistent when extraction costs depend on the stock level both optimal and consistent unit and ad valorem tariff s are analyzed when a buyers cartel uses a consistent tariff the sellers may prefer to behave as perfect competitors or a monopolist depending on the functional form of demand and cost non cooperative buyers who are constrained to act consistently are unable to extract any rent from competitive sellers