international technology oriented agreements to address climate change much discussion has surrounded possible alternatives for international agreements on climate change particularly post 2012 among these alternatives technology oriented agreements toas are perhaps the least well defined we explore what toas may consist of why they might be sensible which toas already exist in international energy and environmental governance and whether they could make a valuable contribution to addressing climate change we find that toas aimed at knowledge sharing and coordination research development or demonstration could increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of international climate cooperation but are likely to have limited environmental effectiveness on their own technology transfer agreements are likely to have similar properties unless the level of resources expended is large in which case they could be environmentally significant technology specific mandates or incentives could be environmentally effective within the applicable sector but are more likely to make a cost effective contribution when viewed as a complement to rather than a substitute for flexible emissions based policies these results indicate that toas could potentially provide a valuable contribution to the global response to climate change the success of specific toas will depend on their design implementation and the role they are expected to play relative to other components of the policy portfolio

support systems for the diffusion of renewable energy technologies an investor perspective concern over climate change impacts and the projected depletion of fossil fuels has urged more governments to adopt policies that stimulate the diffusion of renewable energy technologies ret with an increasingly diverse suite of support instruments the question emerges as to which instruments or combinations are able to achieve faster more substantial diffusion results although various support instruments were extensively addressed in policy studies there is still no consensus this is partly because many policy studies take a policy maker approach in comparing support instruments leaving relationships between policy design and policy results as a black box this paper proposes an investor oriented perspective to analyze the diffusion potential of support systems for ret the main argument is that it is not the type of support instrument but rather its risk profitability characteristics that influence investor behavior and the rate of diffusion the two instruments most frequently discussed and compared are the feed in tariff and the quota model the analysis in this paper concludes that policy design is crucial while often feed in tariffs are applauded and quota system feared feed in tariffs may also bring about disappointing diffusion results when poorly designed while quota systems may be also conceived as attractive instruments for independent power producers

optimal monopolist pricing under demand uncertainty in dynamic markets we examine pricing policy for a monopolist facing uncertain demand in a market characterized by dynamics on the demand side such as diffusion or saturation effects and or on the cost side experience curve effects our model explicitly incorporates the impact of demand uncertainty and thus allows us to analyze the implications of uncertainty on the optimal price path by contrasting the stochastic policy with the corresponding deterministic policy we begin with an analysis of the general model and then focus on several special cases based on well known demand specifications to gain more specific insights and to suggest directional guidelines for dynamic pricing decisions in an uncertain environment in general the interaction among uncertainty demand and or cost dynamics and firm s discount rate thus farsighted firms operating under dynamic market conditions with high demand uncertainty such as high tech companies with innovative products for consumer or industrial markets should attach partic

how do different designs of energy labels influence purchases of household appliances a field study in switzerland abstract energy labels are a key element of energy efficiency policies they provide information on appliances energy consumption and aim at increasing consumers attention to this characteristic a well known example is the eu energy label which is required by law to be displayed on most energy using durables in the eu as well as in switzerland in cooperation with a large online retailer in switzerland we assess the impact of the eu energy label and of a newly designed monetary lifetime oriented energy label in the field we analyze private purchases of household appliances especially freezers vacuum cleaners and tumble dryers we find that the display of any of the two energy labels increases the sales proportion of energy efficient appliances compared to the absence of any energy label at the same time we observe a volume effect for freezers the average size of purchased freezers is larger when any of the two energy labels is displayed compared to the absence of any energy label the influence of the two different energy labels is similar except for vacuum cleaners for which monetary information might have an adverse effect

barriers to consumer choice of energy efficient products a number of barriers deter consumers from making energy conserving choices when buying major durables in a field experiment refrigerator energy labels and sales staff emphasis were manipulated in an attempt to help put these barriers into perspective energy information was most effective in the low price market segment when consumers were choosing between manual and frost free refrigerators

fostering change to sustainable consumption and production an evidence based view this note from the field is an edited version of a policy brief summarizing the key findings from the first half of the sustainable consumption research exchange network score for the policy programs in the field of sustainable consumption and production scp we recommend a framework for action to change to scp that mentions the key domains to include food mobility and energy use housing the last two clearly related to urban development it should use a systemic perspective on the scp challenge and differentiate between developed fast developing and base of the pyramid economies score focuses mainly on developed economies and here we propose to differentiate between 1 measures that fit with mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could make operational agreements on implementation of instruments like green public procurement stimulating ecodesign etc 2 problems where a rough agreement on goals exists but where change is radical or means are uncertain and hence planning difficult here governments could foster visioning experimentation and support e g international collaboration in leapfrogging programs 3 problems that outright clash with the mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could foster informed deliberation on the more fundamental issues related to markets governance and growth 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

enterprise level amount of energy saved targets in china weaknesses and a way forward abstract recognizing the industrial sector s high energy use and vast potential for energy saving many national governments have established voluntary or negotiated agreements that set quantitative energy saving targets for individual industrial enterprises the most commonly used energy saving targets worldwide are volume and energy intensity targets since 2006 the chinese government has set mandatory enterprise level energy saving targets in terms of the amount of energy saved this represents a unique category that differs from both volume and energy intensity targets based on first hand data collected at ten case enterprises this paper represents one of the first attempts to verify the reliability of the amount of energy saved data reported by the chinese government and to rigorously and systematically investigate the inherent weaknesses of the amount of energy saved targets through a comparison with the mainstream categories of energy saving targets the ten case enterprises reported four different types of amount of energy saved while all of the case enterprises claimed full achievement of their amount of energy saved targets four enterprises exaggerated their performance by violating the national standard for calculating the amount of energy saved of enterprises the paper thus hypothesizes that the national top 1000 enterprise program s alleged achievement of performance 65 higher relative to its amount of energy saved target is likely an overestimation although amount of energy saved targets constitute an innovative energy saving indicator they do not represent a step forward from conventional volume and intensity targets because of the following four weaknesses 1 amount of energy saved targets provide limited potential for comparison given the different types of amount of energy saved and the different calculation methods 2 they generate uncertain environmental outcomes as it is possible to meet a portion of an amount of energy saved target through production volume expansion 3 they are difficult to enforce due to the complexity of data verification on the part of local government agencies and 4 they are poorly correlated with the national target for reducing energy intensity amount of energy saved targets should therefore be replaced with double control targets that impose both volume and intensity targets on industrial enterprises

the misleading effect of energy efficiency information on perceived energy friendliness of electric goods the european union energy label informs consumers at the point of sale about the energy efficiency and electricity consumption of various electric goods the label should enable consumers to purchase energy friendly products i e products with low energy consumption thereby making a significant contribution to the reduction of overall energy consumption this paper offers a systematic analysis of consumers interpretation of the energy label the results of a set of experimental studies revealed that consumers tend to base their estimates of a product s energy consumption mainly on the energy efficiency class e g a communicated on the energy label and largely ignore information about annual electricity consumption e g 120 kwh year thereby consumers potentially overestimate the energy friendliness of a product assigned a high energy efficiency rating this also holds true when consumers directly compare two products in terms of energy friendliness thus participants chose a higher consuming product because it had a high energy efficiency rating high energy efficiency ratings e g a can distort consumers perceptions of product categories that consume excessively e g freezers participants were seduced into thinking that a high energy efficiency rating e g a means the energy consumption of energy hogs is no longer problematic this paper provides evidence that the energy label could have a contrary effect than the one intended due to people s susceptibility to an energy efficiency fallacy this misinterpretation of the energy label could further explain why overall energy demand is increasing despite enhanced energy efficiency finally implications for policy makers and further research for enhancement of the energy label are discussed

carbon tariffs and cooperative outcomes abstract in the absence of an international environmental agreement iea on climate change a country may be reluctant to unilaterally implement environmental actions as this may lead to the relocation of firms to other lax on pollution countries to avoid this problem while still taking care of the environment a country may impose a carbon tariff that adjusts for the differences between its own carbon tax and the other country s tax we consider two countries with a representative firm in each one and characterize and contrast the equilibrium strategies and outcomes in three scenarios in the first benchmark scenario in a first stage the regulators in the two countries determine the carbon taxes noncooperatively and in a second stage the firms compete a la cournot in the second scenario the regulators cooperate in determining the carbon taxes while the firms still play a noncooperative cournot game in the third scenario we add another player e g the world trade organization which announced a border tax in a prior stage the game is then played as in the first scenario our two major results are i a border tax adjustment bta mimics quite well the cooperative solution in setting the carbon taxes as in scenario two this means that a bta may be a way around the lack of enthusiasm for an iea ii all of our simulations show that a partial correction of the difference in taxes is sufficient to maximize total welfare in short the conclusion is that a bta may be used as a credible threat to achieve an outcome that is very close to the cooperative outcome

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

predicting consumer demand responses to carbon labels abstract providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions this paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label our model uses consumers value of their individual carbon footprint with own and cross price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non food composite and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes our simulation results have several findings including 1 carbon labels can reduce emissions but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint 2 carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter and 3 carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied

the role of policy instruments in the innovation and diffusion of environmentally friendlier technologies popular claims versus case study experiences abstract moving towards sustainability will require that new environmentally friendlier technologies are developed and widely adopted policy instruments that promote eco efficiency are therefore necessary some claims frequently made in the literature on the relationship between policy instruments and technological development are examined the claims concern regulations environmental taxation and funding of research and development the claims are explored on the basis of empirical evidence from two sectors the pulp and paper industry and the marine engine industry little support was found for some of the claims in some cases even contradictory findings and for some claims the findings differed between the sectors and even within a sector depending on the issue

cognitive reflection and the valuation of energy efficiency abstract based on a stated choice experiment among about 3 600 german households heads on the purchase of electricity using durables this paper explores how cognitive reflection influences consumers valuation of energy efficiency and investigates the interaction with consumers response to the eu energy label our results indicate that consumers with low cognitive reflection value energy efficiency less furthermore we demonstrate that consumers with a low level of cognitive reflection primarily choose appliances based on grade like energy efficiency classes rather than detailed information on annual energy use

calculating short run marginal costs of active and reactive power production proper pricing of active and reactive power is an important issue for economic and secure operations of power systems in an open transmission access ota environment this paper presents a flexible formulation for this purpose the proposed formulation identifies an important price component for reactive power which is fundamentally different from those existing in the literature this makes the pricing of reactive power more understandable the proposed approach is efficient for real time application and allows for carrying out active and reactive power pricing simultaneously or independently through the use of the decoupled optimal power flow formulation price signals derived from this approach are quite meaningful from an engineering point of view in addition the proposed approach can be easily extended to evaluate nugs and wheeling transactions the paper includes test results on the 30 and 118 bus ieee standard systems

public procurement and innovation resurrecting the demand side abstract demand is a major potential source of innovation yet the critical role of demand as a key driver of innovation has still to be recognised in government policy this article discusses public procurement as one of the key elements of a demand oriented innovation policy the paper starts by signaling the new significance of public procurement for innovation policy strategies at the eu level and in a range of european countries it then defines the concept of public procurement and embeds this concept within a taxonomy of innovation policies the rationales and justifications of public procurement policies to spur innovation are discussed followed by a consideration of the challenges and potential pitfalls as well as appropriate institutional arrangements and strategies including some recent empirical examples of good practice it concludes by confronting the public procurement approach with two of the most common objections to it and by considering future prospects

optimal production for manufacturers considering consumer environmental awareness and green subsidies abstract manufacturers provide products that have distinct green levels i e higher degree of environmental friendliness to satisfy consumer demands with different green preferences a product with a higher green level generate fewer emissions but have higher costs to encourage those manufacturers to produce environmentally friendly products a government can implement subsidy policies this paper focuses on the decision making problem faced by manufacturers to determine which levels of green products to produce and production quantities at each green level we develop an optimization model under oligopolistic competition considering green preferences and subsidies with the objective of profit maximization for the manufacturers we prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium and propose a converged algorithm with theory of finite dimensional variational inequality numerical results show that an increase of consumer environmental awareness will incentivize manufacturers to produce more green products with higher green levels but this does not necessarily lead to higher profits for the manufacturers moreover a well designed subsidy policy can not only generate more profits for manufacturers but also save subsidy investment for the government in addition with the changes of consumer environmental awareness or and subsidy policy manufacturers may obtain more profits even if the competition is more fierce

decision making in electrical appliance use in the home this paper presents the results of a survey as well as an argument from the viewpoint of behavioral economics with the aim of clarifying how consumers make decisions about electrical appliance use in the home a survey of consumers showed that most have little awareness of the energy efficiency of appliances the price of the services produced by electrical appliances or electricity rates these findings indicate that price does not function as a signal in electricity consumption through electrical appliance use rather we found that consumer decision making in electricity consumption is dependent on the characteristics of the particular electrical appliances they use additionally we argue that the payment system for home electricity consumption plays an important role in decision making causing biases due to aspects of human psychology discussed here in terms of satisficing and heuristics payment decoupling and budgeting we conclude that decision making about electrical appliance use and electricity consumption in the home is not always rational and is affected both by the particular characteristics of appliances and the payment system for electricity consumption along with human psychology

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

the price of fairness in this paper we study resource allocation problems that involve multiple self interested parties or players and a central decision maker we introduce and study the price of fairness which is the relative system efficiency loss under a fair allocation assuming that a fully efficient allocation is one that maximizes the sum of player utilities we focus on two well accepted axiomatically justified notions of fairness viz proportional fairness and max min fairness for these notions we provide a tight characterization of the price of fairness for a broad family of problems

pricing decisions for substitutable products with green manufacturing in a competitive supply chain abstract in this paper we examine the pricing strategies in a two stage supply chain with two competitive manufacturers and one retailer we address six game models the centralized model model i the ms bertrand model model ii the ms stackelberg model model iii the rs bertrand model model iv the rs stackelberg model model v and the cost sharing contract model model vi to explore the optimal pricing strategies of substitutable products we address the optimal green manufacturing level retail prices wholesale prices and the profits of supply chain members as well as the whole supply chain under different models numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed models first the impact of green investment on the green manufacturing level and supply chain performance is examined then the impact of price elasticity cross price sensitivity and green manufacturing coefficient on the green manufacturing level is analyzed we find that the centralized model is the best and the cost sharing contract model will be better than the four decentralized models when the cost sharing proposition is in a certain interval additionally in decentralized scenarios the stackelberg model has an advantage for manufacturers while the bertrand model is superior for the retailer our results also indicate that green manufacturing will benefit the manufacturer involved in green investment

behavioral economics and energy conservation a systematic review of non price interventions and their causal effects abstract research from economics and psychology suggests that behavioral interventions can be a powerful climate policy instrument this paper provides a systematic review of the existing empirical evidence on non price interventions targeting energy conservation behavior of private households specifically we analyze four nudge like interventions referred to as social comparison commitment devices goal setting and labeling in 44 international studies comprising 105 treatments this paper differs from previous systematic reviews by solely focusing on studies that permit the identification of causal effects we find that all four interventions have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption of private households yet effect sizes vary immensely we conclude by emphasizing the importance of impact evaluations before rolling out behavioral policy interventions at scale

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

what s driving energy efficient appliance label awareness and purchase propensity the eu appliance energy consumption labeling scheme is a key component of efforts to increase the diffusion of energy efficient household appliances in this paper the determinants of consumer knowledge of the energy label for household appliances and the choice of class a energy efficient appliances are jointly estimated using data from a large survey of more than 20 000 german households the results for five major appliances suggest that lack of knowledge of the energy label can generate considerable bias in both estimates of rates of uptake of class a appliances and in estimates of the underlying determinants of choice of class a appliance simulations of the choice to purchase a class a appliance given knowledge of the labeling framework reveal that residence characteristics and in several cases regional electricity prices strongly increase the propensity to purchase a class a appliance but socio economic characteristics have surprisingly little impact on appliance energy class choice

developing food labelling strategies multi level labelling abstract labelling is an important cue for consumers as it helps to quickly communicate information about a product or production process however the majority of labels on the market are binary such as labels that indicate whether a product was produced using animal welfare friendly standards or not or whether it was produced organically or not yet there are many intermediate qualities that binary labels do not display in turn this could lead to a market failure a multi level label can show different process standards of products explicitly nonetheless before launching a multi level labelling system it should be tested if a multi level labelling system can shift market shares in favour of the labelled products using a consumer study with 1538 german consumers and the example of animal welfare the shares of product choices are calculated two comparisons of the shares of product choices will be made one between no label and a binary label and the other between no label and a multi level label the results suggest that a multi level labelling system achieves higher market shares therefore boosts sustainability attributes and can result in higher revenues or sales the results deliver important information for policymakers and industry

price coordination in distribution channels a dynamic perspective abstract in this study we investigate two important questions related to dynamic pricing in distribution channels i are coordinated pricing decisions efficient in a context where prices have carry over effects on demand ii should firms practice a skimming or a penetration strategy if they choose to coordinate or to decentralize their activities to answer these questions we consider a differential game that takes place in a bilateral monopoly where the past retail prices paid by consumers contribute to the building of a reference price the latter is used by consumers as a benchmark to evaluate the value of the product and by firms to decide whether to adopt a skimming or a penetration strategy we then compute and compare strategies total channel profits and individual profits under vertical integration and decentralization at steady state and along the optimal time paths one of our main findings states that for some values of the initial reference price there is a time interval where channel decentralization performs better than coordination during this transition period at least one of the channel members could be tempted to end his cooperation especially if he is not farsighted and if there are no binding agreements with the other channel partners

model of efficient and sustainable improvements in a lean production system through processes of environmental innovation abstract globalization has changed the world as well as how a customer judges the value of a product which has created a new business focus different approaches have been oriented on this direction such as the lean manufacturing system and the concept of sustainability however these two notions are not easy to implement simultaneously besides several authors have declared doubts with respect to reaching this target difficulty persists in identifying the tools required and quantifying the improvements achieved this research develops a general approach based on environmental innovation to help firms harmonize efficiency and sustainability the goal is to add extra value to the product which provides the potential to enhance competitiveness in the 21st century globalized market a case study demonstrates that the costs the incomes the social responsibility and the sustainability can be improved when environmental innovation is applied transforming the traditional production system into a lean system

overcoming barriers to innovation and diffusion of cleaner technologies some features of a sustainable innovation policy regime despite a deepening understanding of systems and processes by which the innovation and diffusion of cleaner technologies occurs relatively little attention has been given to the development of policy processes that reflect this deeper understanding a set of guiding principles for improving sustainable innovation policy processes has been formulated and disseminated by the authors and colleagues in research drawing on theoretical and empirical analysis including a case study of low carbon energy innovation in the uk and interactions with policy makers and other stakeholders through a series of workshops this paper elaborates on two of the guiding principles 1 stimulating the development of a sustainable innovation policy regime bringing together innovation and environmental policy regimes 2 applying systems thinking engaging with the complexity and systemic interactions of innovation systems and policy making processes to promote a transition to sustainability

diffusion as time dependent result of technological evolution competition and policies the case of cleaner iron and steel technologies abstract the typical focus of diffusion analysis on one new technology and patterns of its evolution in time tends to neglect important features of technological evolution such as the dynamics of technological competition and the importance of the institutional framework this is particularly so for cleaner technologies which have to compete with well established technologies and of which diffusion dynamics are related to environmental policy too in this paper a new conceptual approach to innovation diffusion building on insights of evolutionary economic theory is proposed and applied to a case study on the diffusion of a cleaner ironmaking technology

economic and welfare influences of an energy excise tax in jiangsu province of china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract in recent years although china s energy intensity has gradually decreased the total consumption of energy commodities has increased sharply levying an excise tax on energy commodities is one of the keys to control energy consumption this paper constructed a computable general equilibrium model to simulate levying an energy excise tax in jiangsu province which is one of china s strong economic provinces with lower endowments of energy resources the results show that the energy excise tax is beneficial for energy saving while levying energy will cause economic and welfare declines when at a level tax rate of 5 10 and 15 the loss of gdp will reach 0 27 0 66 and 1 13 respectively and the incomes of inhabitants and enterprises alike will decrease when the energy tax revenue used to compensate for the welfare losses suffered by inhabitants or enterprises there is a double dividend effect energy saving and increasing income moreover the simulation indicated that a 5 improvement of energy efficiency brings about a backfire phenomenon with an increase of 142 in energy consumption however when considering the cost of energy efficiency improvements the rebound effect will be significantly decreased policy suggestions are further recommended to help improve the energy policy in regard to reducing energy consumption

technological learning in energy environment economy modelling a survey abstract this paper aims at providing an overview and a critical analysis of the technological learning concept and its incorporation in energy environment economy models a special emphasis is put on surveying and discussing through the so called learning curve both studies estimating learning rates in the energy field and studies incorporating endogenous technological learning in bottom up and top down models the survey of learning rate estimations gives special attention to interpreting and explaining the sources of variability of estimated rates which is shown to be mainly inherent in r d expenditures the problem of omitted variable bias the endogeneity relationship and the role of spillovers large scale models survey show that despite some methodological and computational complexity related to the non linearity and the non convexity associated with the learning curve incorporation results of the numerous modelling experiments give several new insights with regard to the analysis of the prospects of specific technological options and their cost decrease potential bottom up models and with regard to the analysis of strategic considerations especially inherent in the innovation and energy diffusion process in particular the energy sector s endogenous responses to environment policy instruments top down models

a global and local endogenous experience curve model for projecting future uptake and cost of electricity generation technologies abstract a global and local learning model gallm has been developed to project the cost and global uptake of different electricity generation technologies to the year 2050 this model features three regions endogenous technological learning within and across those regions various government policies to facilitate technological learning and a penalty constraint which is used to mimic the effect market forces play on the capital cost of electricity generation technologies this constraint has been added as market forces have been a strong factor in technology pricing in recent years global regional and component experience curves have been developed for some technologies the model with the inclusion of these features projects a diverse range of technologies contributing to global electricity generation under a carbon price scenario the penalty constraint leads to gradual and continual installations of technologies and because the constraint provides a disincentive to install too much of a technology it reduces the impact of uncertainty in the learning rate alternative forms of the penalty constraint were tested for their suitability it was found that with a zero and lower cost version of the constraint photovoltaics are installed in a boom and bust cycle which is not supported by past experience when the constraint is set at a high level there are fewer installations

equity measurement in facility location analysis a review and framework abstract in selecting sites for facilities especially in the public sector the issue of equity is becoming increasingly important beginning with the work of mumphreys et al 1971 mcallister 1976 and savas 1978 a substantial literature has developed that incorporates equity in facility siting decision models despite this level of interest however there has been little agreement in these models as to how equity should be measured further except for some recent works there has generally been little comparison of alternative measures or assesment of their relative value let alone any consensus on the best measure s to use perhaps even more surprising is the great number and variety of measures employed the motivation for this paper is to address these problems and provide for researchers a base from which issues of equity can be included in facility siting models more specifically we seek to review the equity literature as it pertains to facility location assemble the set of measures that have been developed and introduce a framework and common notation for organizing them we also will discuss approaches that can be used to select an appropriate measure of equity

subsidies in carbon finance for promoting renewable energy development abstract faced with decreasing exhaustible nonrenewable resources and climate change resulting from the use of fossil energy it is urgent to accelerate the development of renewable energy but the development of renewable energy requires abundant financial support both from banks and governments this article considers bank loans to develop renewable energy and highlights the effects of government subsidies by using a microeconomic model and taking all stakeholders including the government banks and shareholders of the firm into consideration this study finds that government subsidies raise outputs and debt levels of renewable energy firms and improve shareholder value as well more importantly financial debts stimulate firms outputs but decrease the net profit per unit of debt due to the limited liability effects finally subsidy policy plays a critical role in renewable energy development because environmental efficiencies of subsidies decrease with the subsidy degree other valuable conclusions would be achieved if principal agent problem and other corporate governance factors are employed

the effect of local and global learning on the cost of renewable energy in developing countries high upfront costs are a critical barrier for investments in clean infrastructure technologies in developing countries this paper uses a case study of thailand s electricity sector to create realistic estimates for the relative contributions of local and global technological learning to reducing these cost in the future and discusses implications of such learnings for international climate policy for six renewable electricity technologies we derive estimates for the share of locally and globally sourced goods and services and analyze the effects of local and global learning during the implementation of thailand s renewable energy targets for 2021 our results suggest that in aggregate the largest potential for cost reduction lies in local learning this finding lends quantitative support to the argument that the conditions enabling local learning such as a skilled workforce a stable regulatory framework and the establishment of sustainable business models have a more significant impact on cost of renewable energy in developing countries than global technology learning curves the recent shift of international support under the united nations framework convention on climate change towards country specific technology support is therefore promising however our results also show that the relative importance of local and global learning differs significantly between technologies and is determined by technology and country characteristics this suggests that international support need to consider both the global perspective and local context and framework conditions in order to reap the full benefits of technological learning across the wide range of clean technologies

regulation and competition issues in thai electricity sector abstract this paper explores the issues related to regulatory reform and liberalisation leading toward competition in the thai electricity sector which is still under the monopoly control of state owned enterprises soes following an overview of the current market structure of the thai electricity sector the process of liberalisation and deregulation that contributes to the uncompetitive market structure under soes control is examined the author asserts that there are problems within the energy commission and the energy industry act be 2550 2007 that contribute to the continuance of an uncompetitive electricity supply possible reforms to the thai electricity regulation are proposed with the aim of creating market competition and efficiency in the thai electricity sector

green supply chain performance with cost learning and operational inefficiency effects environmental issues are receiving significant attention from the public accelerating the development of green supply chain in operations management this study focuses on the green supply chain performance in a single manufacturer retailer setup in which the manufacturer determines energy efficiency level and wholesale price while the retailer decides on sales price the unit production cost is jointly affected by cost learning and operational inefficiency effects open loop feedback and myopic equilibria are subsequently derived and the corresponding supply chain performance and profit distribution are analyzed the main results show that forward looking behavior is preferred to myopic one for channel members feedback equilibrium is beneficial to the manufacturer but is harmful to the retailer the supply chain efficiencies in forward looking and myopic situations are lower than the static supply chain efficiency which results from cost learning and operational inefficiency effects as well as non price variable the manufacturer and the retailer extract more profits under certain conditions i e high cost learning effect large energy efficiency effectiveness low operational inefficiency effect or discount rate however the corresponding supply chain efficiencies decrease and the manufacturer s profit proportions are less than 2 3 investigation of supply chain performance with competition from multiple retailers implies that the effects of system parameters on supply chain performance keep the same directions of single manufacturer retailer setup while competition improves supply chain efficiency and manufacturer s profit proportion this work contributes in involving cost learning and operational inefficiency effects simultaneously in a dynamic environment to explore supply chain performance

a reactive power capacity market using annual auctions this paper presents a new approach to design reactive power capacity markets under this approach annual auctions to procure reactive power capacity are conducted by the system operator two products are defined reactive power generation and absorption capacity which can be supplied by different independent var sources such as generators svcs capacitor banks and shunt reactors reactive power capacity is allocated using an optimization algorithm that matches capacity bids and system reactive power needs for peak and low demand hours the reactive power requirements are calculated taking into account system contingencies and the dynamic performance of the var sources under these situations another key proposal of the paper is the distribution of costs of the reactive power capacity market to the agents responsible for contingencies according to the use of the service by each market participant this remuneration approach provides fair and efficient economic signals to all market participants the applicability of the approach is illustrated with two case studies

environmental criteria in the public purchases above the eu threshold values by three nordic countries 2003 and 2005 abstract green public procurement gpp has been considered as an important policy instrument in the context of sustainable consumption and production the state and progress of gpp has earlier been measured by questionnaires and interviews both methods being based on the assessment by the purchaser and questionnaires having low response rates recently a new method was developed analyzing the existence of environmental criteria in the calls for tenders however the studies have dealt neither with the progress in gpp nor the statistical evidence of differences between countries our aim was to analyze more thoroughly whether the differences in the proportions of green calls for tenders between the three nordic countries denmark finland and sweden in 2003 and 2005 were real and whether there had occurred any progress between the years concerned the paper also presents the gpp record method which enables more valid measurement of the environmental soundness of public purchasing the statistical analyses were done using logit models with country year and product group as the explanatory factors it proved to be relevant to take into account the variation that occurred from the random existence of product groups in the samples of calls for tender there were less environmental criteria in the calls for tenders in finland than in denmark and sweden in 2003 but in 2005 no significant difference between finland and denmark was observed both finland and sweden saw progress in this area between 2003 and 2005

contributing to differentiated technology policy making on the promotion of energy efficiency technologies in heavy industrial sector a case study of china abstract promoting energy efficiency technologies eets in heavy industrial sector is a crucial approach for energy conservation worldwide due to the existence of various barriers the diffusion of eets is often slow and is largely influenced by policy incentives insufficient consideration of the heterogeneity of eets makes the one size fits all policy design scheme ineffective and inefficient in practice therefore this paper analyzes the design of differentiated technology policies to accelerate the promotion of eets the analysis is based on technology classification results from a bottom up technology evaluation system technical attributes were qualitatively analyzed and the 130 total technologies were divided into three segments 76 main production process technologies pp 39 process integrated resource and energy recycling technologies rer and 15 pollution control technologies pc then the 115 pp and rer technologies were quantitatively analyzed by calculating benefit cost ratio investment payback time and technical penetration the evaluation results proved that eets had marked differences in economic efficiency and technical maturity with dynamic investment payback time ranging from 0 3 to 11 years and penetrations ranging from 1 to 80 graphing investment payback time on a vertical axis and technical penetration on a horizontal axis the 115 technologies were classified into four quadrants features and policy support demands of those three types of technologies in the four quadrants were discussed and corresponding technology policies were proposed the thorough technical investigations in this study also provided a complete technological database for policy making which was freely offered on the website of china s ministry of industry and information technology

inversion of real time spot prices in the direction of real power flow in a transmission line an increasing number of electricity markets employing some form of spot pricing however limited experience of the behavior of spot prices exists this paper introduces and investigates one particular aspect of pricing behavior observed in the new zealand spot market known as price inversion spot prices are generally calculated using some form of opf or power flow software the phenomena of price inversion is investigated using the dc power flow implemented in the new zealand spot market and using a full ac power flow price inversion is shown to be dependent on the physical characteristics of the power system the economic implications of price inversion are also discussed

on the measurement of inequality under uncertainty abstract to take into account both ex ante and ex post inequality considerations one has to deal with inequality and uncertainty simultaneously under certainty much of the literature has focused on comonotonically linear indices functionals that are linear on cones of income profiles that agree on the social ranking of the individuals this family generalizes both the gini index and the egalitarian index minimal income however it does not include functionals such as the average of expected gini and gini of expectation in contrast the family of min of means functionals is rich enough for this purpose journal of economic literature classification numbers d31 d63 d81

the characteristics of energy efficiency measures a neglected dimension abstract the diffusion of cost effective energy efficiency measures eems in firms is often surprisingly slow this phenomenon is usually attributed to a variety of barriers which have been the focus of numerous studies over the last two decades however many studies treat eems homogenously and assume they have few inherent differences apart from their profitability we argue that complementing such analyses by considering the characteristics of eems in a structured manner can enhance the understanding of eem adoption for this purpose we suggest a classification scheme for eems in industry which aims to provide a better understanding of their adoption by industrial firms and to assist in selecting and designing energy efficiency policies the suggested classification scheme is derived from the literature on the adoption of eems and the related fields including the diffusion of innovations eco innovations and advanced manufacturing technology our proposed scheme includes 12 characteristics based on the relative advantage the technical and the information context of the eem applying this classification scheme to six example eems demonstrates that it can help to systematically explain why certain eems diffuse faster than others furthermore it provides a basis for identifying policies able to increase the rate of adoption

assessing emissions mitigation energy policy under integrated supply and demand analysis the colombian case the effects of greenhouse gases on climate variation set policy challenges for the energy industry the largest greenhouse gas contributor globally in this context the energy industry is being subjected to reforms focussing on the environment internalisation of emission costs and the promotion of cleaner technologies to overcome the challenges posed by the emission of greenhouse gases governments have implemented mitigation policies in the power supply industries most policy instruments include either financial incentives or goals and standards and these generate impacts on electricity prices and consumer behaviour this paper models policies effects on prices and demand through an integrated demand and supply analysis for the colombian case while simulation of carbon taxes shows important reductions of fossil fuelled power capacity a feed in tariff policy promotes clean technologies though not significantly reducing use of fossil technologies when applied simultaneously policy has a greater impact on both emission reductions and the diffusion of clean technologies while only increasing electricity prices slightly even when price elasticity of demand is low such policies may have a significant effect on the penetration of renewables and emissions furthermore this structured modelling of policy helps explain how the ultimate intended goal sustainable emissions reduction might be achieved

dual role of price and myopia in a marketing channel abstract in this paper we study a dynamic two player channel where the manufacturer controls the wholesale price and the investment in quality and the retailer chooses the retail price we consider that the retail price affects both the demand and the perceived quality of the brand and that its variations contribute to the building of an internal reference price one of the model s distinctive features is that it accounts for the two meanings of price i e its classical objective measure of the cost of acquiring a particular quantity of the product and its subjective roles as an assessment of the quality of the product and an evaluation of gains or losses deal vs sacrifice resulting from buying a cheap or an expensive product this dual computation is done with respect to the internal reference price our objective is to investigate the impact of retailer s myopia on the pricing strategies and payoffs of channel members in this context a myopic retailer is an agent that disregards the effects of its pricing strategy on the evolution of the perceived brand quality and the reference price

decomposition model and interior point methods for optimal spot pricing of electricity in deregulation environments in this paper an integrated optimal spot pricing model is presented first the proposed model includes the detailed derivation of optimal nodal specific real time prices for active and reactive powers and the method to decompose them into different components corresponding to generation loss and many selected ancillary services such as spinning reserve voltage control and security control the features of the proposed model are discussed in relationship to existing pricing models and classical economic dispatch the model is then implemented by modifying existing newton opf methods through interior point algorithms which can effectively avoid go no go gauge i e highly volatile in the calculation of spot prices case studies on 5 bus and ieee 30 bus systems are reported to illustrate the proposed method

getting the incentives right energy performance contracts as a tool for property management by local government energy conservation is a challenging and difficult task because disincentives in the building sector inhibit innovation the municipality of rotterdam experimented with an energy performance contract that aimed to avoid disincentives and replace them with a stimulus for innovation this article investigates whether the design requirements for performance management found in the management literature were fulfilled during the development of the contract and its implementation the outcomes of the experiment show substantial energy conservation around 30 percent the existing incentive structure was changed through the use of a performance management contract and perverse effects that are mentioned in the literature were limited the incentives established between the commissioning party and the contractor triggered better performance and innovation although balancing the responsibilities between the principal and the agent was demanding and time consuming energy performance contracts are a useful piece of the sustainability puzzle but tailor made refinements are necessary

explicit solutions of optimization models and differential games with nonsmooth asymmetric reference price effects models in marketing with asymmetric reference effects lead to nonsmooth optimization problems and differential games which cannot be solved using standard methods in this study we introduce a new method for calculating explicitly optimal strategies open loop equilibria and closed loop equilibria of such nonsmooth problems application of this method to the case of asymmetric reference price effects with loss aversive consumers leads to the following conclusions 1 when the planning horizon is infinite after an introductory stage the optimal price stabilizes at a steady state price which is slightly below the optimal price in the absence of reference price effects 2 the optimal strategy is the same as in the symmetric case but with the loss parameter determined by the initial reference price 3 competition does not change the qualitative behavior of the optimal strategy 4 adopting an appropriate constant price strategy results in a minute decline in profits

renewable energy technology diffusion an analysis of photovoltaic system support schemes in medellin colombia abstract colombia s electricity mix is dominated by hydropower which constitutes over 65 percent of the installed capacity the country has important potential for introducing solar photovoltaic sources into its electricity generation mix given its high average annual insolation however there is a lack of incentives and support schemes for alternative renewable energy technologies this paper analyzes the diffusion of a photovoltaic system in colombia with a focus on medellin colombia s second largest city a diffusion model is constructed based on the classic bass diffusion theory where the adoption rate is a function of awareness raising campaigning and social interaction the model incorporates both subsidy and feed in tariff policies policy implementation scenarios and the effects of policy mixes are analyzed results show that a 50 percent subsidy for investment together with a usd 0 30 kwh feed in tariff rate jointly provide the highest marginal increase in diffusion rate however given the cheapness of the country s current hydroelectric resources photovoltaic system diffusion might remain a challenge for both the government and private sectors for the foreseeable future

china s energy consumption change from 1987 to 2007 a multi regional structural decomposition analysis abstract increasing use of energy has helped to stimulate china s economy despite central planning china has great differences in economic development energy endowment and energy consumption across its regions this paper uses the structural decomposition approach to uncover the regional disparities in energy consumption from 1987 to 2007 we also examine six possible key factors for the change in energy consumption by region we find that final demand change outpaced efficiency improvements to drive up energy use in all regions between 1987 and 2007 more surprisingly from 2002 to 2007 it appears that changes in production structure enhanced energy consumption in most regions china produced more energy intensive goods for capital investment and export we contend that improving the energy efficiency of key energy intensive sectors would lead a significant decline in energy intensity energy directly or indirectly is flowing from northwest central and north china to coastal regions regional specific policies should be designed to promote production structure change and curb energy demand

a method for simulation and analysis of reactive power market this paper presents a method for the simulation and analysis of alternative reactive power market arrangements based on combined reactive power capacity and energy payments the value of reactive power support in terms of both capability and utilisation of each particular generator is quantified using a developed security constrained reactive optimal power flow the relative competitiveness of participating generators is also assessed for a spectrum of arrangements between a reactive capacity and a reactive utilisation based market also the conflicting objectives of the system operator as a purchaser of reactive power service and generators as suppliers of the services are analysed

cost effectiveness of renewable electricity policies we analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity a portfolio standard rps raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas fired generation a knee of the cost curve exists between 15 and 20 goals for 2020 in our central case and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables a renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers which limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions and it is less cost effective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard neither policy is as cost effective as a cap and trade policy for achieving carbon emission reductions

a bilevel approach to operational decision making of a distribution company in competitive environments this paper presents a model for operational decision making of a distribution company disco with distributed generation dg and interruptible loads il in a competitive market the disco objective modeled through the upper level problem is to minimize the cost of market purchases and dg unit dispatch while taking into account the responses of the other discos this upper level problem is constrained by a lower level market clearing problem whose objective corresponds to maximization of social welfare such a setting results in a multi disco equilibrium problem formulated as an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints epec by combining the optimality conditions of all upper level problems using a nonlinear approach the epec problem is reformulated as a single nonlinear optimization model which is simultaneously solved for all discos the proposed approach is applied to an ac model of a power system to account for voltage and reactive power constraints of the transmission and distribution networks numerical examples based on two test systems are presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

quality improvement vs advertising support which strategy works better for a manufacturer abstract we consider a marketing channel with a single manufacturer and a single retailer where both advertising and quality improvement contribute to the build up of goodwill in a non coop scenario the retailer controls the advertising efforts while the manufacturer controls the quality improvements and wholesale price although improving quality positively contributes to goodwill it also increases the production cost thereby reducing the manufacturer s profit in a coop scenario the manufacturer supports the retailer s advertising while decreasing his investments in quality we investigate the conditions under which a coop program is beneficial when such a trade off occurs our results demonstrate that only when advertising significantly contributes to goodwill the manufacturer has an incentive to cooperate and a coop program turns out to be pareto improving conversely the retailer is always better off with a coop program moreover the channel is operational and marketing driven when quality effectiveness is high independent of advertising effectiveness or when both quality and advertising effectiveness are large in all other cases the channel is marketing driven

understanding cost reduction of china s biomass direct combustion power generation a study based on learning curve model abstract during the critical transition towards cleaner production cp the developing and transition countries should pay extra attention to displace traditional biomass utilization with cp concepts such as biomass direct combustion power bio dcp china has witnessed impressive growth in its bio dcp sector from 2006 to 2014 the further industrial expansion and policy making of bio dcp in china and other countries in transition call for a deeper understanding of cost reduction mechanisms in this study the learning curve models i e electricity production cost as a function of multiple factors including cumulative installed capacity operation maintenance costs feed in tariff and cogeneration were developed to i empirically estimate the learning rates of china s bio dcp and ii investigate the impacts of past technological developments and policies on the cost development main findings include i the overall learning rate of china s bio dcp is 4 54 over the period 2006 2014 ii the raised feed in tariff in 2010 shows a positive effect on the learning of bio dcp iii the circulating fluidized bed projects show a higher learning rate compared to that of the grate boiler projects based on the above results suggestions regarding the bio dcp s future development are offered including discriminative subsidies biomass waste supply chains cogeneration and multi industry parks

renewable energy technologies as beacon of cleaner production a real options valuation analysis for liberia abstract the importance of energy consumption for growth and development calls for improved decision support for a sustainable energy transition given africa s dependence on fossil fuels the economic and environmental savings from research development and deployment of renewable energy technologies may be substantial although the benefits of renewable energy technologies research development funding may appear to be low assuming immediate deployment the uncertainty in the non renewable energy price and the flexibility over timing makes research development program more appealing this study develops different scenarios in order to quantify benefits provided by research development funding for renewable power generation in liberia by using real options pricing approach to estimate the value of renewable energy technologies while taking into account the uncertainty of fossil fuel prices and learning by doing in renewable energy technologies the optimal solution shows that renewable energy technologies are economically attractive especially when external costs are internalized however annual research development funding is low and should be raised significantly in order to guarantee the highest possible investment incentives with minimal expenditures the study also hypothesizes that with the likelihood of renewable energy to replace non renewable energy renewable power use in liberia can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 13 9 by 2015 compared to the 2008 levels the key insight provided by the real options analysis in this study is that while renewable energy may have inherent limitations such as seasonality of supply low energy content and capacity factor issues they still hold a significant amount of value which can only be detected when externalities are internalized thus underscoring the need for external costs related policies

the dynamics of price quality and productivity improvement decisions abstract although quality has received significant attention during the last decades and its economic benefits are beyond any doubt lots of questions have remained unanswered as to how much when and in what to invest to maintain sustainable competitive advantage a model is introduced here to guide a firm in addressing these questions the firm produces a single product and operates in a market where monopolistic competition is effective demand for the product in the industry depends on both price and performance quality increasing productivity knowledge decreases unit production cost but demand for the company s product decreases over time as competitors will be able to offer products with similar performance productivity and quality knowledge can be developed through induced and autonomous learning in order to strengthen company position the paper provides an optimal control formulation of the problem and develops necessary conditions for optimality and characterizes the dynamics of optimal price quality and investment decisions

the energy efficiency gap what does it mean abstract as renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues it has frequently been asserted that an energy efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use the critical questions is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency this paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are frequently brought to bear on this question by identifying the major conceptual issues that determine the set of feasible answers we identify five separate and distinct notions of optimality the economists economic potential the technologists economic potential hypothetical potential the narrow social optimum and the true social optimum each of these has associated with it a corresponding definition of the energy efficiency gap our analysis demonstrates that necessary preconditions for identifying the right measure of the energy efficiency gap include understanding and disentangling market failure and non market failure explanations for the gradual diffusion of energy efficient technologies

sustainability meta labelling an effective measure to facilitate more sustainable consumption and production abstract arguably one of the most prominent measures to facilitate more sustainable consumption and production has been the instrument of product labelling but with a plethora of labelling schemes having been implemented by various actors over the last decade many now accuse them of being confusing rather than facilitating as a result governments in france uk and germany as well as businesses such as walmart and non governmental organisations like wwf have begun to consider seriously the implementation of some form of meta scheme that condenses existing product labels and other communication measures into an overarching sustainability message yet so far in depth studies on the potential institutionalisation of a sustainability meta labelling scheme are missing drawing upon a novel theoretically integrative framework that combines theoretical arguments of constructivist institutionalism and institutional entrepreneurship with the concept of legitimacy this paper addresses this gap by exploring how the notion of sustainability meta labelling has so far been discussed and investigating the prospects for such an overarching scheme to become institutionalised empirically the paper bases on documentary analysis and elite interviews focussed on case studies of four existing product labelling schemes eu ecolabel eu energy label marine stewardship council and fairtrade label as well as the notion of sustainability meta labelling legitimacy constructions are demonstrated rather than shown to be highly dynamic and oftentimes inherently conflicting many of these conflicts thereby appear to be likely to increase rather than decrease with the implementation of an overarching sustainability meta labelling scheme in a sense this study shows that the very issue that is claimed to drive the establishment of a sustainability meta labelling scheme the different interpretations of the sustainable development concept through different product labels might in fact pose one of the main challenges for its institutionalisation and effectiveness in facilitating more sustainable consumption and production

renewable energy policies and contradictions in causality a case of next 11 countries abstract numerous studies on the causal relationship between economic growth energy consumption and carbon dioxide co2 emissions have shown divergence in policy recommendations which arises mainly due to the choice of methodology and the period of study this inconclusiveness in policy prescriptions might turn out to be critical when the renewable energy policies of the developing nations are considered our study analyses the causal relationship between economic growth carbon emissions fossil fuel and renewable energy consumption in next 11 countries during the period of 1990 2016 along with conducting parametric and non parametric causality tests together introducing the geweke 1982 causality test in the literature of energy economics we attempt to establish a wholesome aspect of policy design by comparing and complementing results of different causality analysis and how the causality directions should comply with the context setting our empirical evidence confirms that robust renewable energy policy can be designed by complementing the various causality test results rather than focusing on one particular causality test

equity and deprivation costs in humanitarian logistics abstract recently essential progress in quantitative modelling of humanitarian operations has been made through the introduction of the deprivation cost concept by holguin veras et al the incorporation of this concept within the overall objective of minimizing the so called social costs logistics costs plus deprivation costs promises to unify the objective functions of optimization models for humanitarian logistics applications although the deprivation cost concept is able to cover the majority of all those optimization criteria previously used in the literature in this field that are not yet covered by logistics costs the question whether it also addresses the criterion of equity fairness remains open in the first part of our work we show by analytical results that minimization of total deprivation cost under a fixed given budget can lead to arbitrarily unfair solutions for this reason we propose to extend the deprivation cost objective by a term proportional to the well known gini inequity index a computational solution procedure for a corresponding logistics model is presented and its merits compared to the utilitarian version are demonstrated at an illustration case with data from the nepal earthquake 2015 in particular it is shown that practically irrelevant final reductions of average deprivation costs result in substantial increases of inequity or vice versa at a low price of fairness dramatic reductions of the gini inequity index can be achieved

competition in a duopoly with sticky price and advertising abstract this paper develops a differential duopolistic game where price is sticky and firms can invest in market enlarging promotional activities which have a public good nature one finding indicates that advertising and not output as in fershtman and kamien econometrica 55 1987 1151 1164 is responsible for the higher stationary price found in the open loop equilibrium relative to the linear feedback one that is free riding is more intense when firms play linear markov feedback strategies however the collusive outcome can be approximated and opportunism eliminated if firms can engage in preplay negotiations where they select a nonlinear markov perfect strategy for output and advertising achieving the collusive outcome requires as in the folk theorem for infinitely repeated games the discount rate to be sufficiently small

consumers perceptions and misperceptions of energy costs this paper presents three initial stylized facts from the vehicle ownership and alternatives survey voas a nationally representative survey that elicits consumers beliefs about gasoline prices and the relative energy costs of autos with different fuel economy ratings first american consumers devote little attention to fuel costs when purchasing autos second consistent with a cognitive bias called mpg illusion consumers underestimate the fuel cost differences between low mpg vehicles and overestimate the differences between high mpg vehicles third americans mean and median expected future gas prices were above current prices and predictions of the futures market at the time of the survey although it is often argued that misperceived energy costs justify policies to encourage the sale of energy efficient durable goods these results show that misperceptions and expectations that differ from market information could either increase or decrease energy efficiency

environmental value chain in green sme networks the threat of the abilene paradox abstract demand side policies are an important complement to subsidies in fostering green product service markets green public procurement gpp in particular presents valuable characteristics in terms of directionality volumes and measurability despite being widely analysed from a public perspective gpp development is still under explored from a corporate point of view to shed some light on the strategic attitude of firms towards gpp this paper discusses an exploratory research in the field of road construction an inductive analysis of direct observations and theoretical contributions suggests the potential for the so called abilene paradox to hamper gpp opportunities for small and medium enterprises in fact in times of crisis increased pressures to improve performance and reduce risk resistance to change and strategic myopia can easily impair inter organizational interactions and thus prevent potentially innovative networks from pressuring public investments in green supply chains the related policy suggestions represent a first attempt to enter the realm of systemic approaches to gpp

could myopic pricing be a strategic choice in marketing channels a game theoretic analysis abstract we identify the conditions under which a myopic pricing behavior could be a profit enhancing tool in the distribution channel a channel member is myopic when he ignores the evolution of the retail prices when actual and past retail prices affect consumers purchasing decisions a differential game is formulated where channel members control transfer and retail prices we start by examining a bilateral monopoly and then introduce competition at the manufacturing level the competing manufacturers play a la nash and can be both myopic both farsighted or one myopic while the other is farsighted we show that for a bilateral monopoly myopia enhances total channel profit when the effect of the reference price is small enough this remains true under competition at the manufacturing level when products are differentiated enough

opf for reactive pricing studies on the ngc system retail transmission services like those being provided by the national grid company ngc in england and wales pose new challenges for the pricing of reactive power supply a reactive power market approach has been proposed by ngc and continues to be evaluated such an approach includes a novel requirement for transmission constrained economic dispatch of var a problem in the security constrained optimal power flow opf class the problem formulations handled by the opf package in use could not accommodate ngc s requirements this paper describes the reactive pricing problem being addressed the modeling requirements and the resulting extensions made to the opf formulation and package it discusses the test results obtained to date on the ngc system

review of policies and measures for energy efficiency in industry sector abstract energy efficiency in industry plays key roles in improving energy security environmental sustainability and economic performance it is particularly important in strategies to mitigate climate change the evidence of great potential for cost effective efficiency derived reductions in industrial energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions have prompted governments to implement numerous policies and measures aimed at improving their manufacturing industries energy efficiency what can be learned from these many and varied initiatives this paper provides foundation for policy analysis for enhancing energy efficiency and conservation in industry by surveying more than 300 policies encompassing about 570 measures implemented by governments in iea countries brazil china india mexico russia and south africa it outlines the measures main features their incidence of use and their connections with specific technical actions and key stakeholders i e how and where measures affect the energy efficiency of industry it also examines the key features underlying the measures success 1 potential to reduce energy use and co2 emissions cost efficiently 2 ease of policy development execution and assessment and 3 ancillary societal effects

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