regional house price dynamics and voting behavior in the fomc i introduction interest rate decisions by the federal open market committee fomc are not always made unanimously different individual views about the appropriate monetary policy stance may lead to the result that members cast dissenting interest rate votes in fomc meetings that is they opt for a higher or lower interest rate than proposed by the chairman of the fomc several studies find that fomc members have different views about the appropriate monetary policy when casting interest rate votes belden 1989 chappell and mcgregor 2000 chappell mcgregor and vermilyea 2005 2008 2012 gildea 1990 1992 havrilesky and gildea 1991 1995 havrilesky and schweitzer 1990 meade and sheets 2005 meade 2010 tootell 1991 1996 an important source of such dissenting votes may be the regional bias of the fomc member which is constituted by its regional affiliation several studies have examined the impact of the regional unemployment rate on the interest rate votes of fomc members while gildea 1992 meade and sheets 2005 and chappell mcgregor and vermilyea 2008 find that a higher regional unemployment rate relative to the national rate increases decreases fomc members preference for monetary easing tightening tootell 1991 finds no significant evidence 1 in this article we analyze whether fomc members align their interest rate voting behavior with house price developments of the federal reserve district they represent in addition to the regional unemployment rate studied so far in this way we can test whether regional house prices and or regional unemployment rates have a significant impact on the voting behavior of fomc members and we examine whether there are systematic differences between regional bank presidents and board members various studies have examined the link between monetary policy and asset price developments according to gilchrist and leahy 2002 there are some good reasons why central banks should align their monetary policies with asset prices first the consumer price index cpi or gross domestic product gdp deflator are incomplete measures since they only signal information on the prices of goods consumed today whereas a more complete measure would also signal future cost of living such as the information contained in asset prices alchian and klein 1973 second asset prices may be useful in forecasting inflation goodhart and hofmann 2000 third asset prices may directly affect real economic activity and inflation since for example wealthier consumers spend more which may affect price developments carroll otsuka and slacalek 2011 whether central banks should react to asset prices is however debated in the literature the traditional view is that central banks should only react to asset prices to the extent that they feed back into the conventional monetary policy goals inflation and output bernanke and gertler 1999 2001 on the contrary cecchetti et al 2000 conclude that it may be reasonable for central banks to react to asset prices in particular house prices in order to avoid the buildup of asset price bubbles as the burst of asset price bubbles may lead to financial crises reinhart and rogoff 2009 leaning against the buildup of extreme asset price changes may therefore be a reasonable choice for central banks as a part of their mission to manage systemic risk allen and carletti 2009 bordo and jeanne 2002 another rationale that central banks should take asset prices particularly house prices into account is that house prices have been shown to be suitable early warning indicators for the outbreak of the recent financial crisis kemme and roy 2012 several empirical papers analyze the impact of asset prices on interest rate setting rigobon and sack 2003 and dupor and conley 2004 find evidence that fomc interest rate decisions are influenced by equity prices on the contrary fuhrer and tootell 2008 find that fomc interest rate decisions are not a direct response to equity price movements and are an indirect response only to the extent that equity prices helped forecast the conventional monetary policy goals

consumption based approach to res e quantification insights from a pan european case study abstract the nexus between renewable electricity res e generation and interconnection is likely to play a large part in future de carbonised power systems this paper examines whether res e shares should be measured based on consumption rather than production with a european case study presented for the year 2030 the case study demonstrates the volume and scale of res e transfers and shows how countries have differing res e shares when comparing those derived based on the traditional production based approach to the alternative the proposed consumption based approach accounts for res e being imported and exported on an hourly basis across 30 european countries and highlights concerns regarding uncoordinated support mechanisms price distortions and cost inequality these concerns are caused by cross border subsidisation of electricity and this work proposes that an agency be appointed to administer regional res e affairs this agency would accurately quantify res e shares and remunerate producers from the country that consumed their electricity instead of where it has been produced policy would be enhanced by enabling more equitable and optimal electricity decarbonisation

effects of renewable energy sector development on electricity consumption growth nexus in the european union abstract the aim of this study is to assess the effect of renewable energy sector development on the relationships between electricity consumption and economic growth in the european union countries in the period between 1995 and 2015 a panel vector autoregressive model is used for testing granger causality and estimating impulse response functions the results indicate that the relationships between economic growth and electricity consumption depend on the level of renewable energy sector development the greater the share of the renewable energy sector in the economy is the more noticeable the mutual dependence between the economic growth and renewable electricity consumption is in countries with relatively well developed renewable energy sectors renewable electricity consumption boosts the economy and vice versa in the remaining countries economic growth and electricity consumption are independent empirical findings suggest that policymakers should develop strategies to implement clean energy policy aimed at stimulating the development of the renewable energy sector to support economic growth

growth and renewable energy in europe a random effect model with evidence for neutrality hypothesis this is an empirical study on the causal relationship between economic growth and renewable energy for 27 european countries in a multivariate panel framework over the period 1997 2007 using a random effect model and including final energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions and employment as additional independent variables in the model empirical results do not confirm causality between renewable energy consumption and gdp although panel causality tests unfold short run relationships between renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions and employment the estimated cointegration factor refrains from unity indicating only a weak if any relationship between economic growth and renewable energy consumption in europe suggesting evidence of the neutrality hypothesis which can partly be explained by the uneven and insufficient exploitation of renewable energy sources across europe

how economic growth affects emissions an investigation of the environmental kuznets curve in portuguese and spanish economic activity sectors abstract it is a disquieting reality that increased economic growth for many years now in the western world is at odds with environmental degradation in this paper the relationship between economic growth and environmental variables is analyzed under two non linear specifications a quadratic and a cubic specification the study is conducted for portugal and spain in the period 1975 2012 using data for 13 sectors gva is used as proxy for income while energy use and carbon dioxide account for environmental degradation there is evidence for an inverted u shaped ekc however there are also other inverted n shaped functions that explain the relationship between economic growth and emissions altogether empirical results do indicate particular differences between portuguese and spanish sectors the results are of interest not only for researchers but also for policy makers political mitigation measures are also analyzed

a real option model for renewable energy policy evaluation with application to solar pv power generation in china abstract this study proposes a policy evaluation model from the perspective of government and investors the proposed model which integrates american option method and two factor learning curve method can be used to evaluate the unit decision value and save path rate for renewable energy development and examine the existence of balance point of interest several uncertain factors including non renewable energy cost carbon price renewable energy cost and price subsidy are all considered in this model the model has been applied to evaluate the solar photovoltaic pv power generation in china our empirical results show that real option analysis roa is more effective than net present value analysis npv when handling uncertainty under current level of subsidy the government would suffer loss and the investors could benefit so that it is difficult to achieve the balance of interest during the planning period with the reduction of subsidy rate they can achieve the balance of interest

modeling the causal linkages between nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth in developed and developing countries abstract this article investigates the causal relationship between two types of energy variables and economic growth using dynamic simultaneous equation panel data models for 17 developed and developing countries our results indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running from nuclear consumption to economic growth in belgium and spain while a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to nuclear consumption is supported in bulgaria canada netherlands and sweden a bidirectional relationship appears in argentina brazil france pakistan and the usa while no causality exists in finland hungary india japan switzerland and the u k second the results for the second nexus among renewable energy and economic growth show that there is a unidirectional causality running from renewable consumption to economic growth in hungary india japan netherlands and sweden while there exist a unidirectional running from economic growth to renewable consumption in argentina spain and switzerland a bidirectional relationship is supported in belgium bulgaria canada france pakistan and the usa while no causality exists in brazil finland and switzerland third we find the existence of a bidirectional causality between nuclear consumption and economic and a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to renewable energy consumption for the global panel

where the wind blows assessing the effect of fixed and premium based feed in tariffs on the spatial diversification of wind turbines abstract feed in tariffs fit are among the most important policy instruments to promote renewable electricity production the fixed price fit ffit which guarantee a fixed price for every unit of produced electricity and the premium based fit pfit which pay a premium on top of the market price are commonly implemented in the eu costs for balancing intermittent electricity production may be significantly higher with ffit than with pfit and ffit do not provide any incentive to produce electricity when marginal production costs are high in contrast pfit do provide strong incentives to better match renewable power output with marginal production costs in the system the purpose of this article is to assess the effects of the two tariff schemes on the choice of wind turbine locations in an analytical model we show that both the covariance between wind power supply and demand as well as between the different wind power locations matter for investors in a pfit scheme high covariance with other intermittent producers causes a decrease in market prices and consequently in revenues for wind power investors they are therefore incentivized to diversify the locations of wind turbines to decrease the covariance between different wind power production locations in an empirical optimization model we analyze the effects of these two different schemes in a policy experiment for austria the numerical results show that under a pfit scheme 1 spatial diversification is incentivized 2 the covariance of wind power production with marginal electricity production costs increases and 3 the variances of the wind power output and of residual load decrease if wind power deployment attains 10 of total national electricity consumption

electricity market integration redistribution effect versus resource reallocation in countries with a significant amount of low variable cost generation capacity the integration of electricity markets poses a real problem with respect to consumers interests in such cases consumers face a significant price rise compared with consumers in countries where low cost capacities are lacking this paper analyses this problem both in the short and long term focusing on a market dominated by nuclear and hydro production when there are too many restrictions on new capacity developments in low cost technologies market integration will lead to surplus redistribution without any production reallocation this really makes it legitimate to contemplate redistributive compensations towards local consumers in countries which benefited from low variable cost generators at the moment of liberalisation this paper examines two alternative ways of rent reallocation one by income with a windfall tax on nuclear producers and the allocation of this revenue to energy efficiency policy funds and another by price by giving drawing rights on the existing nuclear generators production to small commercial and domestic consumers at a level equivalent to the one necessary to maintain regulated prices 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the eu renewables directive what is the fuss about trading abstract considerable argument about trading in green electricity certificates gecs preceded the publication of the proposed eu renewables directive in early 2008 the proposed directive set a binding target of 20 per cent of eu energy to be derived from renewable energy by 2020 broken down into targets for each member state those arguing for trade in green certificates called certificates of guaranteed origin go included major electricity companies however the idea of mandatory trading was opposed by the main renewable energy industry lobby groups the proposed directive limited trading in accordance with the demands of the renewables industry pressure groups analysis suggests that if member states were forced to trade to achieve a mandatory target of 20 per cent target then gec prices would rise to high levels because the demand for tradeable certificates would be much higher than their supply trading is unlikely to improve the prospects for meeting the targets a system of nationally based feed in tariff systems would not face the problems of uncertain certificate prices faced by compulsory trading in gecs

the fed response to equity prices and inflation a number of researchers and market observers hold that the dramatic increase during the 1990 s and subsequent decline in u s stock prices were due to non fundamental factors such as irrational expectations or bubbles if this view is correct policymakers may be concerned with the real macroeconomic consequences of the stock market run up these might include overconsumption due to a perceived wealth effect or too much physical investment due to a lower financing cost of capital following this reasoning the federal reserve could raise the fed funds target rate to offset perceived non fundamental stock price increases this policy stance may seem particularly appealing if the fed s primary target low and stable inflation is already being achieved this paper studies how federal reserve interestrate policy from 1979 4 onward responds to an aggregate measure of stock market activity under high versus low inflation most existing research makes no distinction between policy across the highand low inflation times of the past 24 years two conventional findings of this existing research are that the federal reserve i raises the short term real interest rate in response to inflation and ii does not change policy in response to equity price movements 1

valuing investment decisions of renewable energy projects considering changing volatility abstract volatility is an important parameter when evaluating investments using the real options method for renewable energy investments the volatility of cash flow continuously changes because as new information and knowledge are gathered there is less foreseen variation this paper proposes an extended recombining trinomial tree model where the changing volatility is used to generate transition probabilities the changing volatility is generated using a consolidation process where multiple random variables including the market price of electricity carbon price and lending rate are integrated into a low dimension stochastic process a two factor learning curve is used to model the changes of investment cost we apply the proposed model to analyze solar photovoltaic pv power generation investment in china the results show volatility with changing feature compared with constant volatility changing volatility may advance investment decisions and change the project value complete grid parity policy in the solar pv industry is infeasible because the opportunity cost brought by the option of delaying cannot be offset the changing volatility may produce a lower and equally effective subsidy level compared with constant volatility a carbon emission trading scheme is helpful in advancing investments in renewable energy which is reflected in improvements in project value advancements in investment decisions and reductions in the required subsidy level

a challenging approach for renewable energy market development this study demonstrates a challenging production based and market driven approach for the development of renewable energy re market the organized data in our research show that the countries that adopt more re policies appear to generate more re products among those instruments incentives subsidies for production are common and decisive to the popularization of re products recently the primary re policy goal for governments is to promote re products by removing various barriers however the energy market should be liberalized as re products are ubiquitous and able to compete with fossil products the priority of instruments that governments are supposed to take in order are to remove incentives subsidies for fossil products to tax fossil products for the sake of reduction of greenhouse gases emissions and then to remove all incentives subsidies for both fossil and re products furthermore re products may have adverse resource and environmental consequences and this dilemma can be averted by taking net energy output as a standard in incentives subsidies instruments it was suggested that re markets are supposed to be classified into three market phases undeveloped developing and developed markets as a promising policy approach governments have to adopt suitable and flexible instruments to achieve policy goals in different re market phases

electricity generation mix and economic growth what role is being played by nuclear sources and carbon dioxide emissions in france abstract the gradual trend towards the electrification of economies has raised new challenges focusing on france this paper uses monthly data from january 2010 to november 2014 to study the challenge of the simultaneous integration of various sources of generation and their relationship with economic growth for the analysis of the dynamics of interaction between electricity sources the auto regressive distributed lag ardl bounds test approach was shown to be appropriate as it allows short and long run effects to be distinguished the results showed that nuclear energy has been a huge driver of economic growth in france and at the same time leads to an environment with lower co 2 emissions renewables were shown to exert a negative effect on economic growth which could be due to lack of investment in other sources of production due to the resilient position held by nuclear sources the substitution effect among sources is noticeable the robustness of the results was checked using annual data from 1970 until 2012 and the results were comparable to those from the monthly data

evaluating replacement project of nuclear power plants under uncertainty this paper investigates the valuation of a replacement project of nuclear power plants under the deregulated electricity market the replacement project consists of two components the decision to decommission an existing plant and the decision to construct a new plant in the replacement project the decommissioning decision should be made considering not only the profitability of the existing plant but also the profitability and costs of the construction of the new plant real options theory is used to determine the optimal timing of the decommissioning and construction in order to examine the effect of decommissioning time and decision making one we consider a time lag for these decision making times we show the dependence of the replacement project value on uncertainty and time lag

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

decision support tool for assessing future nuclear reactor generation portfolios abstract capital costs fuel operation and maintenance o m costs and electricity prices play a key role in the economics of nuclear power plants often standardized reactor designs are required to be locally adapted which often impacts the project plans and the supply chain it then becomes difficult to ascertain how these changes will eventually reflect in costs which makes the capital costs component of nuclear power plants uncertain different nuclear reactor types compete economically by having either lower and less uncertain construction costs increased efficiencies lower and less uncertain fuel cycles and o m costs etc the decision making process related to nuclear power plants requires a holistic approach that takes into account the key economic factors and their uncertainties we here present a decision support tool that satisfactorily takes into account the major uncertainties in the cost elements of a nuclear power plant to provide an optimal portfolio of nuclear reactors the portfolio so obtained under our model assumptions and the constraints considered maximizes the combined returns for a given level of risk or uncertainty these decisions are made using a combination of real option theory and mean variance portfolio optimization

technology choice under several uncertainty sources abstract we analyze a model of irreversible investment with two sources of uncertainty a risk neutral decision maker has the choice between two mutually exclusive projects under input price and output price uncertainty we propose a complete study of the shape of the rational investment region and we prove that it is never optimal to invest when the alternative investments generate the same payoff independently of its size a key feature of this bidimensional degree of uncertainty is thus that the payoff generated by each project is not a sufficient statistic to make a rational investment in this context our analysis provides a new motive for waiting to invest the benefits associated with the dominance of one project over the other as an illustration we apply our methodology to power generation under uncertainty

valuation of projects for power generation with renewable energy a comparative study based on real regulatory options abstract this comparative study evaluates an investment project on renewable energy based on wind power we have conducted the study in three european union countries denmark finland and portugal we have modelled the main uncertainties that affect this kind of project such as the cost and production of electric power investment costs and consumer price index for each of these countries we have analysed the mechanisms of public support for wind energy we have identified the real options included in the regulatory frameworks of these three countries and assessed how they affect the expanded net present value of the project to this end we have used two different methods of option valuation the monte carlo method and the binomial method we have proved that the obtained results using both methods are quite similar finally we have evaluated the public incentives for wind energy offered in each of these three countries and concluded that in economic terms finland is the country with the strongest support for this kind of energy followed by denmark and in the last place portugal

valuing modularity as a real option we provide a general valuation approach for capital budgeting decisions involving the modularization in the design of a system within the framework developed by baldwin and clark baldwin c y k b clark 2000 design rules the power of modularity mit press cambridge ma we implement a valuation approach using a numerical procedure based on the least squares monte carlo method proposed by longstaff and schwartz longstaff f a e s schwartz 2001 valuing american options by simulation a simple least squares approach rev financial stud 14 1 113 147 the approach is accurate general and flexible

energy consumption prices and economic growth in three ssa countries a comparative study in this paper we examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in three sub saharan african countries namely south africa kenya and congo drc we incorporate prices as an intermittent variable in a bivariate setting between energy consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate framework using the ardl bounds testing procedure we find that the causality between energy consumption and economic growth varies significantly across the countries under study the results show that for south africa and kenya there is a unidirectional causal flow from energy consumption to economic growth however for congo drc it is economic growth that drives energy consumption these findings have important policy implications insofar as energy conservation policies are concerned in the case of congo drc for example the implementation of energy conservation policies may not significantly affect economic growth because the country s economy is not entirely energy dependent however for south africa and kenya there is a need for more energy supply augmentations in order to cope with the long run energy demand in the short run however the two countries should explore more efficient and cost effective sources of energy in order to address the energy dependency problem

where do all the windmills go influence of the institutional setting on the spatial distribution of renewable energy installation abstract promoting renewable energy sources is one policy response to climate change not only is there currently a debate over the best policy instrument it is also discussed whether the renewable energy production should be expanded centralized at locations with the highest production potential or decentralized close to load it is yet not fully understood what influences the spatial distribution of renewable energy installation i assess the effect of subsidy scheme and market design on the spatial distribution of wind energy installations by comparing a feed in tariffs versus market premiums and b uniform versus nodal pricing the analysis is based on theoretical considerations and using a six node test model that reflects the consumption and renewable resource distribution in several countries and regions the institutional setting has great influence on the spatial distribution and resulting system costs with uniform pricing a market premium only leads to a more decentralized expansion of renewable energy production than a tariff when sites share similar wind conditions spatially more distributed expansion of wind power performs better in terms of total costs and share of wind power in final demand when networks are restricted

parametric study of variable renewable energy integration in europe advantages and costs of transmission grid extensions abstract wind and solar energy will play an important role in the decarbonization of the european electricity generation however high shares of these variable renewable energies vres challenge the power system considerably due to their temporal fluctuations and geographical dispersion in this paper we systematically analyze transmission grid extensions as an integration measure for vres in europe we show the effects of grid extensions for fundamental properties of the power system as a function of the penetration and mix of wind and solar energy backup capacity requirements and overproduction are reduced with a powerful overlay transmission grid we determine the costs of the grid extensions in dependence of the vre penetration and mix and find that the grid integration costs remain below 25 of the vre investment costs for all conceivable vre configurations furthermore robust design features of future power systems in terms of grid geometry and flexibility requirements for backup technologies are identified we apply a spatially and temporally highly resolved techno economic model of the european power system for our analysis

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

estimating the value of wind energy using electricity locational marginal price abstract there is an increasing interest in adding renewables such as wind to electricity generation portfolios in larger amounts as one response to concern about atmospheric carbon emissions from our energy system and the resulting climate change most policies with the aim of promoting renewables e g rps fit do not explicitly address siting issues which for wind energy are currently approached as the intersection of wind resource land control and transmission factors this work proposes the use of locational marginal price lmp the location and time specific cost of electricity on the wholesale market to signal locations where generation can address electricity system insufficiency after an examination of the spatial and temporal behavior of lmp in michigan over the first two years of wholesale market operation this work combines lmp with wind speed data to generate a value metric high value sites in michigan tend to be sites with higher wind speeds with the bulk of value accruing in the fall and winter seasons

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

the market value of variable renewables the effect of solar wind power variability on their relative price this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the market value of variable renewable energy vre the inherent variability of wind speeds and solar radiation affects the price that vre generators receive on the market market value during windy and sunny times the additional electricity supply reduces the prices because the drop is larger with more installed capacity the market value of vre falls with higher penetration rate this study aims to develop a better understanding on how the market value with penetration and how policies and prices affect the market value quantitative evidence is derived from a review of published studies regression analysis of market data and the calibrated model of the european electricity market emma we find the value of wind power to fall from 110 of the average power price to 50 80 as wind penetration increases from zero to 30 of total electricity consumption for solar power similarly low value levels are reached already at 15 penetration hence competitive large scale renewable deployment will be more difficult to accomplish than as many anticipate

is energy security a driver for economic growth evidence from a global sample abstract this study examines whether energy security contributes to economic growth for a global sample of 74 countries covering the period from 2002 to 2013 the benchmark model is built based on an extended version of the cobb douglas production function ten measures of energy security are employed to capture five aspects of energy security including availability accessibility acceptability affordability and develop ability besides the whole sample we also conduct the panel data analysis on subsamples of countries based on different income levels using panel corrected standard errors pcse and feasible generalized least squares fgls techniques that correct for heterogeneity and autocorrelation and produce robust standard errors the empirical results appear to be relatively robust to these two estimation techniques overall we find that energy security enhances economic growth for both the whole sample and subsamples of countries meanwhile energy insecurity measured by energy intensity and carbon intensity variables has a negative impact on economic growth the results vary across subsamples for several cases the findings imply that at the global level energy for economic development energy security and climate change mitigation should be pursued as integrated themes since there are linkages among these three agendas

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

a model of sequential investment abstract this paper specifies a model of a two stage sequential investment where the stages take time to complete it presents algebraic solutions for an individual firm s optimal sequential investment with costless suspension without suspension in the intermediate case of costly suspension and for aggregate investment with suspension the first stage trigger is below the second stage trigger for sufficiently long lags and high levels of output price uncertainty thus the firm may carry out exploratory investment we also evaluate the comparative statics of investment and show how the patterns of project costs and lags affect the incentive to invest

securing a bioenergy future without imports the uk has legally binding renewable energy and greenhouse gas targets energy from biomass is anticipated to make major contributions to these however there are concerns about the availability and sustainability of biomass for the bioenergy sector a biomass resource model has been developed that reflects the key biomass supply chain dynamics and interactions determining resource availability taking into account climate food land and other constraints the model has been applied to the uk developing four biomass resource scenarios to analyse resource availability and energy generation potential within different contexts the model shows that indigenous biomass resources and energy crops could service up to 44 of uk energy demand by 2050 without impacting food systems the scenarios show residues from agriculture forestry and industry provide the most robust resource potentially providing up to 6 5 of primary energy demand by 2050 waste resources are found to potentially provide up to 15 4 and specifically grown biomass and energy crops up to 22 of demand the uk is therefore projected to have significant indigenous biomass resources to meet its targets however the dominant biomass resource opportunities identified in the paper are not consistent with current uk bioenergy strategies risking biomass deficit despite resource abundance

transmission and generation investment in electricity markets the effects of market splitting and network fee regimes abstract we propose an equilibrium model that allows to analyze the long run impact of the electricity market design on transmission line expansion by the regulator and investment in generation capacity by private firms in liberalized electricity markets the model incorporates investment decisions of the transmission system operator and private firms in expectation of an energy only market and cost based redispatch in different specifications we consider the cases of one vs multiple price zones market splitting and analyze different approaches to recover network cost in particular lump sum generation capacity based and energy based fees in order to compare the outcomes of our multilevel market model with a first best benchmark we also solve the corresponding integrated planner problem using two test networks we illustrate that energy only markets can lead to suboptimal locational decisions for generation capacity and thus imply excessive network expansion market splitting heals these problems only partially these results are valid for all considered types of network tariffs although investment slightly differs across those regimes

the causal relationship between renewable electricity generation and gdp growth a study of energy sources abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between economic growth and electricity generation from renewable sources biomass geothermal hydroelectric solar waste and wind across 20 oecd countries over 1990 to 2008 the results from a commonly used panel error correction model find a a bidirectional relationship between aggregate renewable generation and real gdp b biomass hydroelectricity waste and wind energy exhibit a positive long run relationship with gdp c hydroelectricity and waste generation exhibit a short run positive bidirectional relationship with gdp growth and d biomass hydroelectric and waste electricity generation have the largest impact on real gdp in the long run we extend the analysis to consider the possibility of structural breaks and cross sectional dependence accounting for cross sectional dependence we find that in the short run increases in biomass and waste generation negatively affect gdp while aggregate renewable and hydroelectricity increase gdp energy conservation policies will positively impact gdp if the policies cause decreases in biomass or waste energy but increase hydroelectricity and wind energy

choice of nuclear power investments under price uncertainty valuing modularity this work aims at examining how to compare two investment projects in the electricity market the first project is a flexible sequence of small nuclear power plants whereas the second is a nuclear power plant of large capacity we measure the option value generated by the modularity of the first project given the uncertain future competitive price of electricity using a realistic calibration of the model we show that the option value of modularity has a sizeable effect on the optimal dynamic strategy of the producer in particular in terms of the optimal timing of the decision to invest in the first module

the merit order effect of wind and photovoltaic electricity generation in germany 2008 2016 estimation and distributional implications abstract generation from renewable energy sources in germany has experienced a considerable uptake in recent years mainly responsible for this development is the german renewable energy sources act erneuerbare energien gesetz eeg this paper considers redistributive implications of the eeg for different electricity consumers using time series regression analysis we show that electricity generation by wind and pv has reduced spot market prices considerably by 6 mwh in 2010 rising to 10 mwh in 2012 we use these results to build a near term forecasting tool for merit order effects projected to reach 14 16 mwh in 2016 on the other hand the costs of the eeg are passed forward to consumers in the form of a surcharge our findings highlight significant redistributive transfers under the current design of the eeg in particular some energy intensive industries are benefiting from lower wholesale electricity prices whilst being largely exempted from contributing to the costs of the scheme we also highlight implications of our results for other areas for reform of the eeg such as adequate remuneration mechanisms that ensure efficient operation and investment decisions are made under the scheme more generally these findings suggest that policy makers need to integrate distributional assessments into policy design and implementation

real option valuation of power transmission investments by stochastic simulation abstract network expansions in power markets usually lead to investment decisions subject to substantial irreversibility and uncertainty hence investors need valuing the flexibility to change decisions as uncertainty unfolds progressively real option analysis is an advanced valuation technique that enables planners to take advantage of market opportunities while preventing or mitigating losses if future conditions evolve unfavorably in the past many approaches for valuing real options have been developed however applying these methods to value transmission projects is often inappropriate as revenue cash flows are path dependent and affected by a myriad of uncertain variables in this work a valuation technique based on stochastic simulation and recursive dynamic programming called least square monte carlo is applied to properly value the deferral option in a transmission investment the effect of option s maturity the initial outlay and the capital cost upon the value of the postponement option is investigated finally sensitivity analysis determines optimal decision regions to execute postpone or reject the investment projects

on the causal dynamics between emissions nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth this paper examines the causal relationship between co2 emissions nuclear energy consumption renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a group of 19 developed and developing countries for the period 1984 2007 using a panel error correction model the long run estimates indicate that there is a statistically significant negative association between nuclear energy consumption and emissions but a statistically significant positive relationship between emissions and renewable energy consumption the results from the panel granger causality tests suggest that in the short run nuclear energy consumption plays an important role in reducing co2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption does not contribute to reductions in emissions this may be due to the lack of adequate storage technology to overcome intermittent supply problems as a result electricity producers have to rely on emission generating energy sources to meet peak load demand

quantifying the long term economic benefits of european electricity system integration abstract this paper aims to quantify the long term economic benefits that arise from an increasing integration of the pan european electricity system by means of comparing model based decarbonization scenarios developed with the model limes eu it explicitly accounts for the interplay between transmission infrastructure and renewable generation capacity expansion we confirm earlier findings that on aggregate pan european transmission capacity expansion constitutes a no regret option for integrating increasing shares of variable renewables it leads to positive social returns on investment in all mitigation scenarios under analysis however the reduction in total discounted system costs stemming from transmission capacity expansion is modest in magnitude over the period 2010 2050 it reaches a maximum of 3 5 for a case with massive expansion compared to one in which the status quo remains in technical terms this means that the optimum is rather flat and taking into account regional and local benefits and distributional aspects could alter the evaluation of the economic benefits a crucial finding is that the configuration of pan european transmission infrastructure and the importance of specific country connections i e a southern versus a northern solution hinges on the relative development of specific investment costs for solar and wind technologies over the next decades

renewable energy oil prices and economic activity a granger causality in quantiles analysis this paper analyzes the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption oil prices and economic activity in the united states from july 1989 to july 2016 considering all quantiles of the distribution although the concept of granger causality is defined for the conditional distribution the majority of papers have tested granger causality using conditional mean regression models in which the causal relations are linear we apply a granger causality in quantiles analysis that evaluates causal relations in each quantile of the distribution under this approach we can discriminate between causality affecting the median and the tails of the conditional distribution we find evidence of bi directional causality between changes in renewable energy consumption and economic growth at the lowest tail of the distribution besides changes in renewable energy consumption lead economic growth at the highest tail of the distribution our results also support the unidirectional causality from fluctuations in oil prices to economic growth at the extreme quantiles of the distribution finally we find evidence of lower tail dependence from changes in oil prices to changes in renewable energy consumption our findings call for government policies aimed at developing renewable energy markets to increase energy efficiency in the u s

can deployment of renewable energy put downward pressure on natural gas prices abstract high and volatile natural gas prices have increasingly led to calls for investments in renewable energy one line of argument is that deployment of these resources may lead to reductions in the demand for and price of natural gas many recent us based modeling studies have demonstrated that this effect could provide significant consumer savings in this article we evaluate these studies and benchmark their findings against economic theory other modeling results and a limited empirical literature we find that many uncertainties remain regarding the absolute magnitude of this effect and that the reduction in natural gas prices may not represent an increase in aggregate economic wealth nonetheless we conclude that many of the studies of the impact of renewable energy on natural gas prices appear to have represented this effect within reason given current knowledge these studies specifically suggest that a 1 reduction in us natural gas demand could lead to long term average wellhead price reductions of 0 8 2 and that each megawatt hour of renewable energy may benefit natural gas consumers to the tune of at least 7 5 20

capacity switching options under rivalry and uncertainty abstract deregulated infrastructure industries exhibit stiff competition for market share firms may be able to limit the effects of competition by launching new projects in stages using a two stage real options model we explore the value of such flexibility we first demonstrate that the value of investing in a sequential manner for a monopolist is positive but decreases with uncertainty next we find that a typical duopoly firm s value relative to a monopolist s decreases with uncertainty as long as the loss in market share is high intriguingly this result is reversed for a low loss in market share we finally show that this loss in value is reduced if a firm invests in a sequential manner and specify the conditions under which sequential capacity expansion is more valuable for a duopolist firm than for a monopolist

a real options model for renewable energy investment with application to solar photovoltaic power generation in china this paper proposes a real options model for evaluating renewable energy investment by considering uncertain factors such as co2 price non renewable energy cost investment cost and market price of electricity a phase out mechanism is built into the model to reflect the long term changes of subsidy policy we apply the proposed model to empirically evaluate the investment value and optimal timing for solar photovoltaic power generation in china our empirical results show that the current investment environment in china may not be able to attract immediate investment while the development of carbon market helps advance the optimal investment time a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the dynamics of investment value and optimal timing under the changes of unit generating capacity subsidy level market price of electricity co2 price and investment cost it is found that the high investment cost and the volatility of electricity and co2 prices are not conducive to attract immediate investment instead increasing the level of subsidy promoting technological progress and maintaining the stability of market are useful to stimulate investment

the impact of policy actions and future energy prices on the cost optimal development of the energy system in norway and sweden abstract this paper studies the effects of policy actions on the energy systems in norway and sweden including a nuclear shutdown a cancelation of restricted hydropower and an expansion of export capacity to europe this study apply a stochastic times model that considers the short term uncertainty in electricity supply and value the flexibility of hydro reservoirs it is the first time this approach is used to quantify the effects of these policy actions on cost optimal investments and operations to consider the uncertainty of the energy market we analyse the policy actions under four different price developments for biomass fossil fuels and electricity the results demonstrate that our stochastic approach provides different model decisions compared to the traditional deterministic approach further we show that the future role of the large hydro reservoirs in norway and sweden depends both on the adopted policy actions and on future energy prices and that the policy actions have a significant impact on the development of the energy system this insight is valuable when considering the development and management of the hydro reservoirs it is also valuable for other european countries so that they can evaluate the interplay of the hydro reservoirs with other energy storage options

is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random this study investigated factors influencing the adoption or intention to adopt renewable portfolio standards rps by individual states in the united states u s theory of adoption of innovation was applied as a conceptual framework a logistic model was used to achieve the task gross state product gsp growth rate of population grp political party dominancy education level natural resources expenditure and share of coal in electricity generation were used as explanatory variables results indicated that the model predicts the dependent variable state s choice of adopting or not adopting rps 82 times correctly out of 100 results also suggested that education followed by political party dominancy gsp and grp are shown to have large impacts on the probability of rps adoption

nuclear reactors construction costs the role of lead time standardization and technological progress this paper provides the first comparative analysis of nuclear reactor construction costs in france and the united states studying the cost of nuclear power has often been a challenge owing to the lack of reliable data sources and heterogeneity between countries as well as the long time horizon which requires controlling for input prices and structural changes we build a simultaneous system of equations for overnight costs and construction time lead time to control for endogeneity using expected demand variation as an instrument we argue that benefits from nuclear reactor program standardization can arise through short term coordination gains when the diversity of nuclear reactors technologies under construction is low or through long term benefits from learning spillovers from past reactor construction experience if those spillovers are limited to similar reactors we find that overnight construction costs benefit directly from learning spillovers but that these spillovers are only significant for nuclear models built by the same architect engineer a e in addition we show that the standardization of nuclear reactors under construction has an indirect and positive effect on construction costs through a reduction in lead time the latter being one of the main drivers of construction costs conversely we also explore the possibility of learning by searching and find that contrary to other energy technologies innovation leads to construction costs increases

the role of feed in tariff in the curtailment of wind power in china abstract while china s wind power initiative has experienced rapid growth serious curtailment issues persist though some studies have investigated this matter we explain this phenomenon from the novel perspective of excess capacity we first set up a theoretical model to explore the mechanism behind excess investment and find that the sticky feed in tariff fit and declining costs of wind power generate high mark up for wind power investors leading to a higher probability of excessive investment the theoretical prediction is empirically tested with a probit and tobit model using provincial level data between 2009 and 2016 the estimation results show that a 0 1 yuan increase in the mark up leads to a 2 3 increase in the rate of curtailed wind power based on the estimation results we simulate several scenarios to assess quantitatively how an improved policy design could have alleviated the curtailment issue simply increasing the frequency of the fit rate adjustment while maintaining the same subsidy reduction level between 2009 and 2016 could have reduced the curtailed wind power by 23 to 27 billion kwh accounting for 15 17 of actual curtailed wind power if the policy were better designed to reflect the declining trend of wind power costs more accurately the curtailment rates could have been further reduced by 2 81 corresponding to a reduction in wasted wind energy of 43 billion kwh or 28 of actual curtailment although accepting curtailment for a certain period could help to accelerate renewable energy deployment our analysis shows that the fit policy design could have been improved to reduce welfare loss these findings can not only assist the chinese government in framing effective policies but also may be applied to other emerging technologies or industries that require subsidy support

energy consumption and economic growth nexus in portugal italy greece spain and turkey an ardl bounds test approach 1965 2009 abstract the paper examines the nexus between primary energy consumption and growth in portugal italy greece spain and turkey pigst with annual time series data from 1965 to 2009 pigst are southern european economies which have experienced several episodes that make them of particular interest to the study of periods of economic expansion and stagnation an ardl bounds test approach is a suitable technique to examine energy growth nexus within the context of countries with both sporadic shocks outliers and permanent shocks structural breaks empirical results suggest bidirectional causality between energy and growth in both the long run and short run supporting the feedback hypothesis the results reveal themselves to be robust to panel framework an energy conservation policy will reduce gdp growth while a saving phenomenon is observed since one additional unit of product requires less than one unit of energy

low or no subsidy proposing a regional power grid based wind power feed in tariff benchmark price mechanism in china abstract the chinese government plans to adopt a low or no subsidy policy mechanism on renewable energy power development in the future to achieve a balance between reducing financial burden on the government and ensuring profitability of investors as well as to account for the regional differences in china a novel regional wind power grid feed in tariff benchmark price mechanism by net present value npv method and real option ro method is proposed in this paper the results voice support on the appropriateness of gradually decreasing the wind feed in tariff fit benchmark price to as low as the coal fired fit the proposed fit price level is presented as a price range on the basis of a guaranteed internal rate of return irr falls in between 8 to 15 for wind power investors the results indicate that the current fit price should be readjusted and redistributed although the fit price in central and south china grids is recommended to be relatively high the npv of wind farm project value in six regional grids are at the same level

exploiting the oil gdp effect to support renewables deployment the empirical evidence from a growing body of academic literature clearly suggests that oil price increases and volatility dampen macroeconomic growth by raising inflation and unemployment and by depressing the value of financial and other assets surprisingly this issue seems to have received little attention from energy policy makers in percentage terms the oil gdp effect is relatively small producing losses in the order of 0 5 of gdp for a 10 oil price increase in absolute terms however even a 10 oil price rise oil has risen at least 50 in the last year alone produces gdp losses that could they have been averted would significantly offset the cost of increased re deployment this paper draws on the empirical oil gdp literature which we summarize to show that i by displacing gas and oil renewable energy investments can help nations avoid costly macroeconomic losses produced by the oil gdp effect and ii that these avoided losses represent a significant external macroeconomic benefit of such investments we show that a 10 increase in re share avoids gdp losses in the range of 29 53 billion in the us and the eu 49 90 billion for oecd these avoided losses offset one fifth of the re investment needs projected by the erec and half the oecd investment projected by a g 8 task force for the us the figures further suggest that each additional kw of renewables on average avoids 250 450 in gdp losses a figure that varies across technologies as a function of annual capacity factors we approximate that the offset is worth 200 kw for wind and solar and 800 kw for geothermal and biomass while we focus only on renewables the gdp offset will apply in some measure to other non fossil technologies including energy efficiency dsm and nuclear the societal valuation of non fossil alternatives must reflect these avoided gdp losses whose benefit is not fully captured by private investors this said we fully recognize that wealth created in this manner does not directly form a pool of public funds that is easily earmarked for renewables support finally the oil gdp relationship has important implications for correctly estimating direct electricity generating cost for conventional and renewable alternatives and for developing more useful energy security and diversity concepts we also address these issues

a quantile approach to identify factors promoting renewable energy in european countries this paper analyses the impact of several factors on the use of renewable energy sources in a set of european union countries by applying a quantile regression approach we find that different factors are effective for different levels of renewable energy commitment and the magnitudes of some effects evolve in accordance with the level of renewable energy sources used consequently some policies that do not take into account the different stages could carry different effects the results suggest that the lobbying effect of the established industries hampers the development of renewable sources and that this effect is greater for lower initial level of renewable energy use the results reveal that environmental concerns have not yet achieved enough pressure to stimulate major developments on renewables we include two new drivers geographic area and european union directive 2001 77 ec that directive was effective in signaling the commitment to renewables namely for countries with lower renewables use

market failures of market coupling and counter trading in europe an illustrative model based discussion the horizontal integration of the energy market and the organization of transmission services remain two open issues in the restructured european electricity sector the coupling of the french belgian and dutch electricity markets the trilateral market in november 2006 was a real success the extension of the system to germany in november 2010 also proceeded smoothly and the intent is to continue with the same market architecture but market coupling is based on a zonal system which has often failed in meshed grids this may cast doubts on what will happen in the future when electricity demand picks up again and wind develops the nodal system has generally been more successful than zonal architectures but its implementation is not currently foreseen in the eu this paper analyzes versions of market coupling that differ by the organization of counter trading while underplayed in current discussions counter trading could become a key element of market coupling as its geographic coverage expands and wind penetrates we simplify matters by assuming away strategic behavior between the energy and counter trading markets and conduct the analysis on a stylized six node example taken from the literature we simulate market coupling for different assumptions of zonal decomposition and coordination of transmission system operators tsos we show that these assumptions matter even in the absence of strategic behavior market coupling can be quite vulnerable to the particular situation on hand countertrading can work well or completely fail and it is not clear beforehand what will prevail our analysis relies on standard economic notions such as social welfare and generalized nash equilibrium but the use of these notions is probably novel the nodal organization is the reference first best scenario different zonal decompositions and degrees of coordination are then studied with respect to this first best solution

is renewable energy effective in promoting growth abstract this paper applies panel data techniques to analyze the role of the various energy sources in economic growth for a set of 24 european countries 1990 2007 controlling for energy consumption and energy dependency the results suggest that the negative effect of the use of renewables supplants the positive effect of creating income by exploiting a natural resource locally and thus growth does not appear to improve with the change towards renewables the high costs of promoting renewables are probably being placed excessively upon the economy namely by increasing the costs of electricity tariffs thus inducing a deceleration in economic activity fossil fuels lead to dissimilar effects on growth while natural gas does not appear to be relevant in explaining growth coal hampers the capacity for growth whereas the use of oil stimulates that growth this is in line with productive structures that are deeply grounded in fossil fuels particularly oil

an investigation of renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus using industrial and residential energy consumption abstract our study shows that links between economic growth and energy consumption both expressed in per capita terms differed for renewables and non renewables for income panels over the period 1971 to 2011 renewables are mainly found to support the neutrality hypothesis only renewable totals in low and lower middle income llmi countries are found to drive economic growth the feedback growth and conservative hypotheses strongly feature with non renewables total and industrial our results are derived by linking different definitions of energy consumption with economic growth for 89 countries divided into llmi upper middle income umi and high income hi panels

impact of intermittent non conventional renewable generation in the costs of the chilean main power system abstract chile has recently approved a law aiming a target for electricity generation with non conventional renewable energy ncre of 20 by year 2025 it is anticipated that most of this ncre generation will be provided by intermittent energy sources wind and solar photovoltaic pv the economic consequences of intermittent ncre penetration in the chilean central interconnected system sic are assessed the ncre penetration is simulated with a 10 year horizon 2017 2027 considering four scenarios of ncre penetration 10 15 20 and 30 of total generation the authors model the hydro thermal operation of the power system and analyze spot prices total operation costs and capacity factors results show that the average spot price in the sic when having an optimal minimum cost generation mix is 89 7 us mwh as intermittent ncre penetration increases some thermal base load units capacity factors change producing an increase in the generation cost additional transmission capacity is also needed elevating the total cost the average incremental cost of integrating intermittent ncre generation is 65 8 us mwh when increasing ncre penetration from 10 to 30 the effect of fossil fuel price fluctuation is also addressed two policy guidance elements are presented intermittency should be reduced by diversifying the renewable portfolio and penetration costs of intermittent ncre generation have to be incorporated into their investment or operation costs

economic growth and energy consumption revisited evidence from linear and nonlinear granger causality the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is considered as an imperative issue in energy economics previous studies have ignored the nonlinear behavior which could be caused by structural breaks in this study both linear and nonlinear granger causality tests are applied to examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for a sample of asian newly industrialized countries as well as the u s this study finds evidence supporting a neutrality hypothesis for the united states thailand and south korea however empirical evidence on philippines and singapore reveals a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to energy consumption while energy consumption may have affected economic growth for taiwan hong kong malaysia and indonesia policy implications are also discussed

feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard an empirical test of their relative effectiveness in promoting wind capacity development abstract this paper examines the relative effectiveness of feed in tariff fit and renewable portfolio standard rps in promoting wind capacity development using panel data conservative estimates suggest that on average across countries fit increases total wind capacity more than rps by a magnitude of about 1800 mw when using time variant policy indicators the difference between the two policies increases to nearly 2000 mw roughly 8 of 2009 cumulative capacity in germany as for annual wind capacity since 2005 this paper has found no significant difference between fit and rps it is also found that wind energy development responds to high electricity demand and high oil dependence

the influence of spatial effects on wind power revenues under direct marketing rules abstract in many countries investments in renewable technologies have been accelerated by fixed feed in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources res while fixed tariffs accomplish this purpose they lack incentives to align the res production with price signals today the intermittency of most res increases the volatility of electricity prices and makes balancing supply and demand more complicated therefore support schemes for res have to be modified recently germany launched a scheme which gives wind power operators the monthly choice to either receive a fixed tariff or to risk a subsidized access to the wholesale electricity market this paper quantifies revenues of wind turbines under this new subsidy and analyzes whether when and where producers may profit we find that the position of the wind turbine within the country significantly influences revenues in terms of eur mwh the results are important for wind farm operators deciding whether electricity should be sold in the fixed feed in tariff or in the wholesale market however no location is persistently i e in every calendar month of the year above the average this limits the effect of the new subsidy scheme on investment locations and long term improvements in the aggregated wind feed in profile

renewable energy consumption economic growth nexus for china abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in china for the period 1977 2011 autoregressive distributed lag approach ardl to cointegration and johansen cointegration techniques are employed by including intermittent variables namely carbon dioxide emissions and labor we also employed granger causality test in order to determine the direction of the causality among the variables the results show that there is a bi directional long term causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth this finding implies that growing economy in china is propitious for the development of renewable energy sector which in turn helps to boost economic growth we also find that labor influences renewable energy consumption in the short term however there is no evidence of long or short run causality between carbon emissions and renewable energy consumption this implies that actual level of renewable energy in china is still insignificant and not considerably exploited in order to contribute to the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions

preemption and rent dissipation under price competition abstract we study a simple duopoly model of preemption with multiple investments and instantaneous price competition on a market of finite size driven by stochastic taste shocks different patterns of equilibria may arise depending on the importance of the real option effect if the average growth rate of the market is close to the risk free rate or if the volatility of demand shocks is high no dissipation of rents occurs in equilibrium despite instantaneous price competition if these conditions do not hold the equilibrium investment timing is suboptimal and the firms long run capacities may depend on the initial market conditions our conclusions contrast sharply with standard rent dissipation results

how market design shapes the spatial distribution of power plant curtailment costs abstract when multiple power plants are curtailed at the same time and in the same region electricity system costs rise if transmission lines are congested these costs might be amplified and spatially more concentrated because there are less spatial spill overs we study how such costs and their distribution depend on the market design nodal pricing or uniform pricing we extend the literature on curtailment by considering space and market design and the literature on market design by considering curtailment we expose a dc load flow model for germany to severe correlated curtailment scenarios we find that additional costs are moderate for the simulated week curtailment of 9 3 non renewable capacity reduces welfare by 2 7 uniform pricing with nodal pricing welfare loss can be reduced by 1 5 distributional differences are multiple times larger for nodal pricing producer surplus rises more and costs are spatially more concentrated at the curtailed power plants consumer surplus becomes lower the difference is unlikely to justify changes of the current market design if also wind or photovoltaic feed in is unavailable economic impacts can decrease or increase but remain in the same order of magnitude the spatial electricity system structure matters more than the volume of curtailment

investment and upgrade in distributed generation under uncertainty the ongoing deregulation of electricity industries worldwide is providing incentives for microgrids to use small scale distributed generation dg and combined heat and power chp applications via heat exchangers hxs to meet local energy loads although the electric only efficiency of dg is lower than that of central station production relatively high tariff rates and the potential for chp applications increase the attraction of on site generation nevertheless a microgrid contemplating the installation of gas fired dg has to be aware of the uncertainty in the natural gas price treatment of uncertainty via real options increases the value of the investment opportunity which then delays the adoption decision as the opportunity cost of exercising the investment option increases as well in this paper we take the perspective of a microgrid that can proceed in a sequential manner with dg capacity and hx investment in order to reduce its exposure to risk from natural gas price volatility in particular with the availability of the hx the microgrid faces a tradeoff between reducing its exposure to the natural gas price and maximising its cost savings by varying the volatility parameter we find that the microgrid prefers a direct investment strategy for low levels of volatility and a sequential one for higher levels of volatility

spatial relationship between economic growth and renewable energy consumption in 26 european countries abstract the relationship between economic growth gdp and renewable energy consumption in different regions has been studied using diverse methods and data however most of these studies focus on the temporal aspect but do not explain the spatial relationship between gdp and renewable energy since they assume that each country is an island unto itself and do not consider the possible spatial relationship between neighbouring countries in this study we have used a spatial durbin model with panel data to investigate the spatial dependence between gdp and renewable energy consumption for 26 european countries over the period 1991 2015 we conclude that spatial dependence leads to a change in renewable energy consumption that affects the gdp of neighbouring countries specifically a 1 increase in the renewable energy consumption of one country will increase economic growth by up to 0 054 in the gdp of its neighbouring countries

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from 11 sub sahara african countries abstract the paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries in sub saharan africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire gambia ghana senegal sudan and zimbabwe moreover this test suggests that energy consumption has a significant positive long run impact on economic growth in ghana kenya senegal and sudan granger causality test based on vector error correction model vecm shows bi directional relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for gambia ghana and senegal however granger causality test shows that economic growth granger causes energy consumption in sudan and zimbabwe the neutrality hypothesis is confirmed in respect of cameroon and cote d ivoire the same result of no causality was found for nigeria kenya and togo the result shows that each country should formulate appropriate energy conservation policies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition

sequential investment in renewable energy technologies under policy uncertainty although innovation and support schemes are among the main forces that drive investment in renewable energy re technologies both involve considerable uncertainty we develop a real options framework to analyse the impact of technological policy and electricity price uncertainty on the decision to invest sequentially in successively improved versions of a re technology technological uncertainty is reflected in the random arrival of innovations and policy uncertainty in the likely provision or retraction of a subsidy that takes the form of a fixed premium on top of the electricity price we show that greater likelihood of subsidy retraction provision lowers raises the incentive to invest and by comparing a stepwise to a lumpy investment strategy we show how an embedded option to adopt an improved technology version mitigates the impact of subsidy retraction on investment timing specifically we show how stepwise investment facilitates earlier technology adoption compared to lumpy investment and that under stepwise investment technological uncertainty accelerates technology adoption thus further offsetting the incentive to delay investment in the light of subsidy retraction

estimating the environment kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from latin america and the caribbean countries this study explores the effect of economic growth gdp renewable energy consumption re and financial development fd on co2 emission co2 in latin america and caribbean countries to achieve this goal a panel co2 model was built over the period 1980 2010 the kao cointegration test results revealed that the variables are cointegrated the fully modified ols fmols results indicated an inverted u shape relationship between co2 and gdp thus confirming the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis furthermore fmols results also revealed that fd can improve environmental quality by its negative long run effect on co2 however re has no long run effect on co2 indicating that the re does not contribute to co2 reduction the vecm granger causality results revealed feedback causality between gdp re fd and co2 in both short and long run additionally granger causality results also revealed that re gdp and fd can be a good solution to reduce environmental damage since they have a causal effect on co2 this study shows the investigated countries should increase their banking loans on green energy energy efficiency and energy saving projects to reduce environmental damage in addition the above recommendation can increase the contribution of renewable energy in reducing environmental damage

ordinary and special regimes of electricity generation in spain how they interact with economic activity abstract the purpose of this paper is to review the literature focused on the energy electricity growth nexus highlighting how the focus has shifted from aggregated energy electricity consumption towards specific energy sources moreover it aims to shed light on the relationships between different energy electricity sources and economic growth empirically the paper focuses on the analysis of interactions between electricity generation in spain under both the special regime sr and the ordinary regime or and their relationship with economic activity data for spain is studied for a time span from january 2003 to january 2016 the toda yamamoto causality test is carried out to check for causality relationships additionally both short and long run effects are assessed by using the ardl bounds test approach overall the results reveal high internal consistency when comparing the ardl results with the causality analysis the substitution effect was detected between or and sr however the negative effect of the sr on economic activity deserves special attention by energy policymakers this paper argues that the main challenge of renewable sources for policymakers is their cost effectiveness

renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus evidence from a threshold model abstract the existing literature on renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus produces mixed results as the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth can be either positive negative or not significant this paper examines the causal link between renewable energy use and economic growth by employing a threshold model using a 103 country sample in the 1995 to 2015 period we find that the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth depends on the amount of renewable energy used our results demonstrate that the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is positive and significant if and only if developing countries or non oecd countries surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption however if developing countries use renewable energy below a given threshold level the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is negative however we also find that renewable energy consumption has no significant effect on economic growth in developed countries and a positive and significant effect on economic growth in oecd countries the findings of this paper suggest that for developing countries to realize positive economic growth from their investment to renewable energy they need to surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption

monetary policy and dividend growth in germany long run structural modelling versus bounds testing approach this study examines the long run relationship between monetary policy and dividend growth in germany for this purpose cointegration is tested for between both variables in the period 1974 to 2003 however problems related to spurious regression arise from the mixed order of integration of the series used from mutual causation between the variables and from the lack of a long run relationship among the variables of the model these problems are addressed by applying the bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition to a more standard long run structural modelling approach in principle both procedures are capable of dealing with the controversial issue of the exogeneity of monetary policy vis a vis dividend growth however the structural modelling approach still leaves a certain degree of uncertainty about the integration properties of the interest rate and the dividend growth hence one feels legitimized to refer to the bounds testing procedure and to conclude that in the longer term short t

the economic impacts of a submarine hvdc interconnection between norway and great britain in the present paper we analyze the profitability of different hvdc interconnection alternatives between norway and great britain for present and future scenarios the analysis is done from a merchant and a social welfare perspective the analyses include interconnections between norway and scotland and southern great britain respectively as well as an alternative link to a future offshore wind farm from a social welfare perspective the northern interconnection alternative is profitable under all sets of assumptions the southern alternative is profitable under present conditions but less than the northern alternative the alternative link to the offshore wind park is not profitable but this result is highly dependent on market conditions from a merchant perspective none of the alternatives is profitable clearly illustrating that leaving investments to commercial parties does not realize all projects that increase social welfare

nuclear power understanding the economic risks and uncertainties abstract this paper identifies the fundamental elements and critical research tasks of a comprehensive analysis of the costs and benefits of nuclear power relative to investments in alternative baseload technologies the proposed framework seeks to i identify the set of expected parameter values under which nuclear power becomes cost competitive relative to alternative generating technologies ii identify the main risk drivers and quantify their impacts on the costs of nuclear power iii estimate the nuclear power option value iv assess the nexus between electricity market structure and the commercial attractiveness of nuclear power v evaluate the economics of smaller sized nuclear reactors vi identify options for strengthening the institutional underpinnings of the international safeguards regime and vii evaluate the proliferation resistance of new generation reactors and fuel cycles

energy consumption and economic growth the experience of african countries revisited abstract the aim of this paper is to re examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for seventeen african countries in a multivariate framework by including labor and capital as additional variables we apply the variance decomposition analysis due to pesaran and shin pesaran m h and shin y generalised impulse response analysis in linear multivariate models economics letters 1998 58 17 29 to evaluate how important is the causal impact of energy consumption on economic growth relative to labor and capital the results of our multivariate modified granger causality analysis due to toda and yamamoto toda h y and yamamoto t statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated process journal of econometrics 1995 66 225 250 tend to reject the neutrality hypothesis for the energy income relationship in fifteen out of the seventeen countries in contrast results of our variance decomposition analyses show that in eleven out of the seventeen countries energy is no more than a contributing factor to output growth and not an important one when compared to capital and labor labor and capital are the most important factors in output growth in fifteen out of the seventeen countries however these results should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to support the inference that energy consumption plays a minor role in the economic growth of african countries

generation capacity expansion in liberalized electricity markets a stochastic mpec approach this paper proposes a bilevel model to assist a generation company in making its long term generation capacity investment decisions considering uncertainty regarding the investments of the other generation companies the bilevel formulation allows for the uncoupling of investment and generation decisions as investment decisions of the single investing generation company are taken in the upper level with the objective to maximize expected profits and generation decisions by all companies are considered in the lower level the lower level represents the oligopolistic market equilibrium via a conjectured price response formulation which can capture various degrees of strategic market behavior like perfect competition the cournot oligopoly and intermediate cases

spatial dependencies of wind power and interrelations with spot price dynamics abstract wind power has seen strong growth over the last decade and increasingly affects electricity spot prices in particular prices are more volatile due to the stochastic nature of wind such that more generation of wind energy yields lower prices therefore it is important to assess the value of wind power at different locations not only for an investor but for the electricity system as a whole in this paper we develop a stochastic simulation model that captures the full spatial dependence structure of wind power by using copulas incorporated into a supply and demand based model for the electricity spot price this model is calibrated with german data we find that the specific location of a turbine i e its spatial dependence with respect to the aggregated wind power in the system is of high relevance for its value many of the locations analyzed show an upper tail dependence that adversely impacts the market value therefore a model that assumes a linear dependence structure would systematically overestimate the market value of wind power in many cases this effect becomes more important for increasing levels of wind power penetration and may render the large scale integration into markets more difficult

renewable electricity generation in germany a meta analysis of mitigation scenarios german energy policy targets envision a share of electricity from renewable energy sources res e of at least 80 in 2050 how can the transformation of the german electricity sector be achieved and at what costs this paper addresses these questions by means of a meta analysis of 10 recent model based mitigation scenarios for germany it turns out that the scenarios exploit the three basic strategic options of increasing the share of res e domestic res e generation electricity demand reductions and res e imports to substantially different extents domestic res e generation increases in all scenarios particularly from onshore and offshore wind scenarios that rely heavily on reducing electricity demand require a relatively low expansion of domestic res e generation despite detailed technical analyses insights on the costs of the transformation remain limited a discussion of underlying scenario assumptions reveals that it is unclear whether i res e and system integration technology development will be as cost competitive as postulated ii implicitly assumed institutional requirements will be realized and iii relevant actors in the transformation process will be incentivized accordingly therefore future research should pursue a thorough assessment of strategic options for transforming the german electricity system that consistently integrates technologies institutions and actors

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

entry into the electricity market uncertainty competition and mothballing options the present paper analyzes the entry strategies into the electricity market of two firms that have power plants under price uncertainty and competition we consider the symmetric and asymmetric two firms which have either a thermal power plant or a nuclear power plant the differences between the thermal power plant and the nuclear power plant such as the cost structure and operational flexibility are modeled the threshold values of market entry are calculated for each firm with either the thermal power plant or the nuclear power plant as the leader or the follower we show the dependence of cost structures on entry thresholds of the leader and the follower into the electricity market for various market and cost conditions the diagrams of the leader are also shown

investments of uncertain cost abstract this paper examines irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete and are subject to two types of cost uncertainty the first is technical uncertainty i e uncertainty over the physical difficulty of completing a project which is only resolved as the investment proceeds the second is input cost uncertainty i e uncertainty over the prices of construction inputs or over government regulations affecting construction costs which is external to the firm these two types of uncertainty have very different effects on the investment decision a simple investment rule is derived that maximizes firm value and is used to analyze the decision to start or continue building a nuclear power plant during the 1980s

system friendly wind power how advanced wind turbine design can increase the economic value of electricity generated through wind power abstract previous studies find that the economic value of electricity usd mwh generated by wind power drops with increasing market share different measures can help mitigate the value drop including electricity storage flexible conventional plants expansion of transmission and demand response this study assesses another option a change in design of wind power plants advanced wind turbines that are higher and have a larger rotor compared to rated capacity lower specific rating generate electricity more constantly than classical turbines recent years have witnessed a significant shift towards such advanced technology our model based analysis for northwestern europe shows that such design can substantially increase the spot market value of generated electricity at a 30 penetration rate the value of 1 mwh of electricity generated from a fleet of advanced turbines is estimated to be 15 higher than the value of 1 mwh from classical turbines the additional value is large whether compared to wind generation costs to the value drop or to the effect of alternative measures such as electricity storage extensive sensitivity tests indicate that this finding is remarkably robust the increase in bulk power value is not the only advantage of advanced turbines additional benefits might accrue from reduced costs for power grids and balancing services to fully realize this potential power markets and support policies need to be appropriately designed and signal scarcity investors