the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

energy saving behavior and marginal abatement cost for household co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to measure consumers perceived net benefits or net costs of energy saving measures in using energy consuming durable goods using the estimated net costs and the volume of co2 reduced by the measures a marginal abatement cost mac curve for the average household s co2 emissions is produced an analysis using the curve suggests that in order to provide households with an incentive to take actions that can lead to co2 emission reductions in using energy consuming durables a high level of carbon price is needed in addition a regression analysis reveals that the net benefits of the measures are larger for households that put a higher priority on energy saving for those living in detached houses for those with a smaller number of persons living together and for those with less income the result of the analysis using the mac curve may suggest that promoting energy saving behavior will require not only a policy to provide economic incentives but also interventions to influence psychological factors of household behavior

asymmetric loan loss provision models abstract large net loan charge offs are frequently associated with large decreases in nonperforming loans and large increases in loan loss provisions inducing a v shaped relation between loan loss provisions and nonperforming loan changes failure to model the asymmetry attributable to net loan charge offs can change inferences about the presence of earnings management and the effects of delayed loan loss recognition in prior papers that assumed linearity future researchers should either include net loan charge offs in linear models of loan loss provisions or explicitly model the asymmetry induced by omitting net loan charge offs

genco s risk constrained hydrothermal scheduling this paper presents a stochastic midterm risk constrained hydrothermal scheduling algorithm in a generation company genco the objective of a genco is to maximize payoffs and minimize financial risks when scheduling its midterm generation of thermal cascaded hydro and pumped storage units the proposed schedule will be used by the genco for bidding purposes to the iso the optimization model is based on stochastic price based unit commitment the proposed genco solution may be used to schedule midterm fuel and natural water inflow resources for a few months to a year the proposed stochastic mixed integer programming solution considers random market prices for energy and ancillary services as well as the availability of natural water inflows and generators in monte carlo scenarios financial risks associated with uncertainties are considered by applying expected downside risks which are incorporated explicitly as constraints variable time steps are adopted to avoid the exponential growth in solution time and memory requirements when considering midterm constraints a single water to power conversion function is used instead of several curves for representing water head and discharge parameters piecewise linearized head dependant water to power conversion functions are used for computational efficiency illustrative examples examine gencos midterm generation schedules risk levels fuel and water usage and hourly generation dispatches for bidding in energy and ancillary services markets the paper shows that gencos could decrease their financial risks by adjusting expected payoffs

min max regret bidding strategy for thermal generator considering price uncertainty the electricity price volatility brings challenges to bidding strategies in the electricity markets in this paper we propose a minimax regret approach for a market participant to obtain an optimal bidding strategy and the corresponding self scheduled generation plans motivated by recently proposed robust optimization approaches our approach relies on the confidence intervals of price forecasts rather than point estimators we reformulate the minimax regret model as a mixed integer linear program milp and solve it by the benders decomposition algorithm moreover we design a bidding strategy based on the price forecast confidence intervals to generate the offer curve finally we numerically test the minimax regret approach in comparison with the robust optimization approach on three types of thermal generators by using real electricity price data from pjm to verify the effectiveness of our proposed approach

analysis of the residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior by incorporating multiple self selection effects abstract it is expected that the residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior might correlate with each other besides due to the existence of self selection effects the observed inter relationship between them might be the spurious result of the fact that some unobserved variables are causing both these concerns motivate us to 1 consider residential location choice and household energy consumption behavior for both in home appliances and out of home cars simultaneously and 2 explicitly control self selection effects so as to capture a relatively true effect of land use policy on household energy consumption behavior an integrated model termed as joint mixed multinomial logit multiple discrete continuous extreme value model is presented here to identify the sensitivity of household energy consumption to land use policy by considering multiple self selection effects the model results indicate that land use policy do play a great role in changing beijing residents energy consumption pattern while the self selection effects cannot be ignored when evaluating the effect of land use policy based on the policy scenario design it is found that increasing recreational facilities and bus lines in the neighborhood can greatly promote household s energy saving behavior additionally the importance of soft policy and package policy is also emphasized in the context of beijing

determinant factors of residential consumption and perception of energy conservation time series analysis by large scale questionnaire in suita japan in this study we examined determinant factors associated with the residential consumption and perception of savings of electricity and city gas this was based on data collected from a large scale questionnaire sent to households in suita osaka prefecture japan in two different years 2009 and 2013 we applied an ordered logit model to determine the overall trend of the determinant factors and then we performed a more detailed analysis in order to understand the reasons why the determinant factors changed between the two periods results from the ordered logit model reveal that electricity and gas consumption was primarily determined by such factors as household income number of family members the number of home appliances and the perceptions of energy savings there was not much difference between the two years although in 2013 household income did not affect the perception of energy savings detailed analysis demonstrated that households with high energy consumption and those with moderate consumption are becoming polarized and that there was a growing gap between consumption behavior and the perception of conservation the implications derived from the analyses provide an essential insight into the design of a municipal policy to induce lifestyle changes for an energy saving society

price based unit commitment with wind power utilization constraints this paper proposes an optimal bidding strategy for independent power producers ipps in the deregulated electricity market the ipps are assumed to be price takers whose objectives are to maximize their profits considering price and wind power output uncertainties while ensuring high wind power utilization the problem is formulated as a two stage stochastic price based unit commitment problem with chance constraints to ensure wind power utilization in our model the first stage decision includes unit commitment and quantity of electricity submitted to the day ahead market the second stage decision includes generation dispatch actual usage of wind power and amount of energy imbalance between the day ahead and real time markets the chance constraint is applied to ensure a certain percentage of wind power utilization so as to comply with renewable energy utilization regulations finally a sample average approximation saa approach is applied to solve the problem and the computational results are reported for the proposed saa algorithm showing the sensitivity of the total profit as the requirement of wind power utilization changes

conservatism and debt abstract despite the unquestionable influence of conservatism disagreement remains about what economic demands lead to financial reporting conservatism research examining lenders demands for reporting conservatism has been questioned for ignoring conservative contract modifications we document that these modifications exist but are not ubiquitous we find contract modifications are more likely when agency costs are higher and litigation tax and equity demands for conservatism are lower however we find a positive association between unexplained reporting conservatism and contract modifications suggesting contractual modifications alone do not fulfill lenders demands for conservatism

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

optimal response of a power generator to energy agc and reserve pool based markets the electric power industry all over the world is undertaking major regulatory and operational changes the understanding of power supply as a public service is being replaced by the notion that competitive markets constitute a more appropriate framework to supply reliable and cheap electric energy to consumers as mandated by ferc orders 888 and 889 this paper considers simultaneously energy agc and reserve markets in a pool framework it provides a tool to enable a power generator to determine optimally its degree of involvement in each one of these markets a real world case study is analyzed and results are presented

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

incorporating fuel constraints and electricity spot prices into the stochastic unit commitment problem the electric power industry is going through deregulation as a result the load on the generating units of a utility is becoming increasingly unpredictable furthermore electric utilities may need to buy power or sell their production to a power pool that serves as a spot market for electricity these trading activities expose utilities to volatile electricity prices in this paper we present a stochastic model for the unit commitment that incorporates power trading into the picture our model also accounts for fuel constraints and prices that may vary with electricity prices and demand the resulting model is a mixed integer program that is solved using lagrangian relaxation and bender s decomposition using this solution approach we solve problems with 729 demand scenarios on a single processor to within 0 1 of the optimal solution in less than 10 minutes our numerical results indicate that significant savings can be achieved when the spot market is entered into the problem and when stochastic policy is adopted instead of a deterministic one

the contracting benefits of accounting conservatism to lenders and borrowers abstract this paper examines the ex post and ex ante benefits of accounting conservatism to lenders and borrowers in the debt contracting process i expect conservatism to benefit lenders ex post through the timely signaling of default risk as manifested by accelerated covenant violations and to benefit borrowers ex ante through lower initial interest rates consistent with these predictions i find that more conservative borrowers are more likely to violate debt covenants following a negative price shock and that lenders offer lower interest rates to more conservative borrowers

risk constrained self scheduling of hydro wind units for short term electricity markets considering intermittency and uncertainty abstract in view of the intermittency and uncertainty associated with both the electricity production sector of restructured power system and their competitive markets it is necessary to develop an appropriate risk managing scheme so that it is desirable to trade off between optimum utilization of intermittent generation resources i e renewable energy resources uncertain market prices and related risks in order to maximize participants benefits and minimize the corresponding risks in the multi product market environment the main goal of this paper is to investigate risk management by introducing a novel multi risk index to quantify expected downside risk edr which is caused by both the wind power and market price uncertainties value at risk var method is used to assess the mentioned risk issue by the proposed weighted edr so that an optimal trade off between the profit and risk is made for the system operations also the roulette wheel mechanism is employed for random market price scenario generation wherein the stochastic procedure is converted into its respective deterministic equivalents moreover the autoregressive integrated moving average arima model is employed to characterize the stochastic wind farm wf generation by predetermined mean level and standard deviation of wind behavior as well as temporal correlation the problem is formulated as a mixed integer stochastic framework for a hydro wind power system scheduling and tested on a generation company genco

the impacts of china s household consumption expenditure patterns on energy demand and carbon emissions towards 2050 abstract this paper explores how china s household consumption patterns over the period 2005 2050 influence the total energy demand and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in two baseline scenarios and how it influences carbon prices as well as the economic cost in the corresponding carbon mitigation scenarios to this end we first put forward two possible household consumption expenditure patterns up to 2050 using the working leser model taking into account total expenditure increase and urbanization for comparison both expenditure patterns are then incorporated in a hybrid recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the results reveal that as income level increases in the coming decades the direct and indirect household energy requirements and co2 emissions would rise drastically when household expenditure shifts from material products and transport to service oriented goods around 21 000 mtce 1 of primary energy and 45 billion tons of co2 emissions would be saved over the 45 year period from 2005 to 2050 moreover carbon prices in the dematerialized mitigation scenario would fall by 13 in 2050 thus reducing the economic cost

the energy and environmental impacts of italian households consumptions an input output approach abstract promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns is a key challenge for the future in order to use the earth resources efficiently to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to decouple the economic growth from the environmental degradation new or customized methods have to be applied to support decisions makers in the choice of environmental friendly products and to select policy priorities and sustainable strategies a modified input output model can aid to analyse the relationships among economic growth energy consumptions and pollutants in order to assess the energy and environmental impacts due to the actual production and consumption patterns the following paper introduces an energy and environmental extended input output model and combines it with the life cycle assessment lca methodology the authors apply this model to the italian context in order to assess the energy and environmental impacts related to the consumptions of the italian households in the period 1999 2006 and to identify the economic sectors involving the highest impacts the paper represents one of the first italian studies aimed at identifying those national economic sectors and final goods and services to be assumed prior in the definition of sustainable production and consumption strategies results show that about the 70 of the total energy needed to meet the household final demand of products is consumed by the productive sectors in particular tertiary electricity gas and vapour road transports and food and beverage sectors are the most contributors accounting for about 75 further the environmental impact analysis associated to italian households consumptions is carried out starting from three different data sources the results point out that to include emissions arising both from energy and non energy sources in the assessment of environmental impacts is of paramount importance to obtain reliable simulations of the link between households consumptions and energy and environmental performances

co2 emissions from household consumption in india between 1993 94 and 2006 07 a decomposition analysis abstract co 2 emission from anthropogenic activities is one of the major causes of global warming india being an agriculture dependent country global warming would mean monsoon instability and consequent food scarcity natural disasters and economic concerns however with proper policy interventions co 2 emissions can be controlled input output analysis has been used to estimate direct and indirect co 2 emissions by households for 1993 94 1998 99 2003 04 and 2006 07 complete decomposition analysis of the changes in co 2 emissions between 1993 94 and 2006 07 has been done to identify the causes into pollution energy intensity structure activity and population effects according to broad household consumption categories results indicate that activity structure and population effects are the main causes of increase in co 2 emission from household fuel consumption to identify the causes at the sectoral level a second decomposition has been done for changes between 2003 04 and 2006 07 to identify the causes in the next stage finally alternative energy policy options have been examined for each consumption category to reduce emissions combined strategies of technology upgradation fuel switching and market management in order to reduce co 2 emissions for sectors like batteries other non electrical machinery construction and electronic equipments including television for which all the effects are positive need to be adopted

risk constrained generation asset arbitrage in power systems a competitive generating company genco can maximize its payoff by optimizing its generation assets this paper considers the genco s arbitrage problem using stochastic price based unit commitment while considering the associated risks the genco may consider arbitrage opportunities in purchases from qualifying facilities qfs as well as simultaneous trades with spot markets for energy ancillary services fuel and emission allowance the tradeoff between maximizing expected payoffs and minimizing risks due to market price uncertainties is modeled explicitly by including the expected downside risk as a constraint the downside risk is defined as the unfulfilled profit the monte carlo simulation is applied to generate scenarios and scenario reduction techniques are applied to reduce the number of scenarios while maintaining a good approximation of the exact solution the proposed case studies illustrate the significance of arbitrage in multi commodity markets and the importance of considering the uncertainty of market prices

an ordinal optimization based bidding strategy for electric power suppliers in the daily energy market the deregulation and reconstruction of the electric power industry worldwide raises many challenging issues related to the economic and reliable operation of electric power systems traditional unit commitment or hydrothermal scheduling problems have been integrated with generation resource bidding but the development of optimization based bidding strategies is only at a very preliminary stage this paper presents a bidding strategy based on the theory of ordinal optimization that the ordinal comparisons of performance measures are robust with respect to noise and modeling error and the problems become much easier if the optimization goal is softened from asking for the best to good enough solution the basic idea is to use an approximate model that describes the influence of bidding strategies on the market clearing prices mcp a nominal bid curve is obtained by solving optimal power generation for a given set of mcps via lagrangian relaxation then n bids are generated by perturbing the nominal bid curve the ordinal optimization method is applied to isolate a good enough set s that contains some good bids with high probability by performing rough evaluation the best bid is then selected by solving full hydrothermal scheduling or unit commitment problems for each of the bids in s using ordinal optimization approach we are able to obtain a good enough bidding strategy with reasonable computational effort numerical results using historical mcps from the california market and a generation company with 10 units show that the ordinal optimization based method is efficient

application of information gap decision theory to risk constrained self scheduling of gencos in a competitive electricity market a generation company genco optimizes its operation schedules referred to as self scheduling in order to maximize its profit however various sources of uncertainty such as market price fluctuations or forced outage of generating units may impact the genco s profit in this paper a non probabilistic information gap model is proposed to model the uncertainties in short term scheduling of a genco the self scheduling problem is formulated for risk neutral risk averse and risk seeker gencos robustness of the decisions against low market prices are evaluated using a robustness model furthermore windfall higher profit due to unpredicted higher market prices is modeled using an opportunity function the proposed models are applied to a 54 unit thermal genco

risk constrained ftr bidding strategy in transmission markets in electricity markets financial transmission right is an important instrument for hedging congestion charges there are two types of financial transmission rights point to point right ftr and flow based right fgr this paper proposes a risk constrained ftr bidding strategy in transmission auction markets based on the forecasted lmp differences between sink and source points of certain ftrs bidders try to maximize their expected payoffs by taking into account the associated risks supposing the forecasted distribution of lmp differences and bidders risk preferences are known to respective bidders the ftr bidding problem is modeled as a bilevel optimization with the upper subproblem representing bidders and the lower subproblem representing the solution to the iso s ftr market clearing problem for maximizing the revenues collected from the ftr auction the bilevel optimization problem is solved by developing the sensitivity of a bidder s expected utility with respect to its bidding strategy a three bus system with four bidders is considered for illustrating the proposed method the numerical results discuss the distinction between ftr obligation and ftr option bidding strategies the results further demonstrate the impact of contingency constraints forecasted lmp differences and bidders preferred risk levels on ftr bidding strategies

market and political regulatory perspectives on the recent accounting scandals not surprisingly the recent accounting scandals look different when viewed from the perspectives of the political regulatory process and of the market for corporate governance and financial reporting we do not have the opportunity to observe a world in which either market or political regulatory processes operate independently and the events are recent and not well researched so untangling their separate effects is somewhat conjectural this paper offers conjectures on issues such as what caused the scandalous behavior why was there such a rash of accounting scandals at one time who killed arthur andersen the securities and exchange commission or the market did fraudulent accounting kill enron or just keep it alive for too long what is the social cost of financial reporting fraud does the united states in fact operate a principles based or a rules based accounting system was there market failure or was there regulatory failure or both was the sarbanes oxley act a political and regulatory overreaction does the united states follow an ineffective regulatory model

conditionally conservative fair value measurements abstract firms measure fair values using level 2 or 3 inputs when items do not trade in liquid markets limiting market discipline over the measurements we provide evidence that firms holding higher proportions of financial instruments measured at level 2 and 3 fair values report more conditionally conservative comprehensive income attributable to fair value measurements consistent with firms trying to mitigate investors discounting of the measurements we further predict and find that this conditional conservatism 1 increases with governance mechanisms that increase the strength and persistence of firms incentives to report conservatively and 2 decreases with firms earnings management incentives

understanding the spectrum of residential energy consumption a quantile regression approach abstract residential energy consumption accounts for 22 of the total energy consumption in the us however the impacts of local planning policies such as increasing density and changing the housing type mix on residential energy consumption are not well understood using residential energy consumption survey data from the energy information administration quantile regression analysis was used to tease out the effects of various factors on entire distribution on the energy consumption spectrum instead of focusing on the conditional average results show that while housing size matters for space conditioning housing type has a more nuanced impact self reported neighborhood density does not seem to have any impact on energy use furthermore the effects of these factors at the tails of the energy use distribution are substantially different than the average in some cases differing by a factor of six some not all types of multifamily housing offer almost as much savings as reduction in housing area by 100 m 2 compared to single family houses

energy consumption during cooking in the residential sector of developed nations a review abstract residential cooking is essential for the enhancement of safety and quality of a substantial number of food products but the energy requirements for cooking can be prodigious and individual household energy use varies considerably this review evaluates the current state of energy efficiency during household cooking in developed countries and identifies potential policy changes that may have an impact on reducing energy consumption the primary factors affecting energy consumption include 1 the production and transport efficiency of fuel sources electricity natural gas wood etc 2 the appliance or end use efficiency and 3 the behavior of the consumer during cooking regarding appliance efficiencies some improvements are plausible and policies should be directed towards reducing or alleviating stand by energy consumption in new products however the most promising energy conservation tactic is consumer behavior modifications since individual cooking practices can reduce expenditures by as much as 95 thus policies should be directed towards consumer education to have the most marked effect on household energy consumption although cooking is only one aspect of food production it is a universal requisite for food safety in the residential sector and implementing policies that reduce energy consumption during cooking may have an impact on global energy demands

bidding strategy of virtual power plant for participating in energy and spinning reserve markets part i problem formulation this paper addresses the bidding problem faced by a virtual power plant vpp in a joint market of energy and spinning reserve service the proposed bidding strategy is a non equilibrium model based on the deterministic price based unit commitment pbuc which takes the supply demand balancing constraint and security constraints of vpp itself into account the presented model creates a single operating profile from a composite of the parameters characterizing each distributed energy resources der which is a component of vpp and incorporates network constraints into its description of the capabilities of the portfolio the presented model is a nonlinear mixed integer programming with inter temporal constraints and solved by genetic algorithm ga

estimation and empirical properties of a firm year measure of accounting conservatism we estimate a firm year measure of accounting conservatism examine its empirical properties as a metric and illustrate applications by testing new hypotheses that shed further light on the nature and effects of conservatism the results are consistent with the measure c score capturing variation in conservatism and also predicting asymmetric earnings timeliness at horizons of up to 3 years ahead cross sectional hypothesis tests suggest firms with longer investment cycles higher idiosyncratic uncertainty and higher information asymmetry have higher accounting conservatism event studies suggest increased conservatism is a response to increases in information asymmetry and idiosyncratic uncertainty

stochastic security constrained unit commitment this paper presents a stochastic model for the long term solution of security constrained unit commitment scuc the proposed approach could be used by vertically integrated utilities as well as the isos in electricity markets in this model random disturbances such as outages of generation units and transmission lines as well as load forecasting inaccuracies are modeled as scenario trees using the monte carlo simulation method for dual optimization coupling constraints among scenarios are relaxed and the optimization problem is decomposed into deterministic long term scuc subproblems for each deterministic long term scuc resource constraints represent fuel and emission constraints in the case of vertically integrated utilities and energy constraints in the case of electricity markets lagrangian relaxation is used to decompose subproblems with long term scuc into tractable short term mip based scuc subproblems without resource constraints accordingly penalty prices lagrangian multipliers are signals to coordinate the master problem and small scale subproblems computational requirements for solving scenario based optimization models depend on the number of scenarios in which the objective is to minimize the weighted average generation cost over the entire scenario tree in large scale applications the scenario reduction method is introduced for enhancing a tradeoff between calculation speed and accuracy of long term scuc solution numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for solving the stochastic security constrained unit commitment

discussion of acquisition profitability and timely loss recognition by j francis and x martin abstract francis and martin 2009 test whether accounting conservatism induces managers to make better acquisition decisions this discussion highlights three main issues first the hypothesized links between conservatism and future investments are potentially incomplete in particular the possibility that conservatism can have dysfunctional outcomes if acquisition decisions are based on anticipated earnings effects is ignored second the evidence is insufficient to infer a causal relation between conservatism and acquisition profitability third the hypothesis development fails to indicate whether timely loss recognition or the asymmetric timeliness of loss versus gain recognition is the more appropriate measure of conservatism given the context

expected value and chance constrained stochastic unit commitment ensuring wind power utilization this paper proposes an expected value and chance constrained stochastic optimization approach for the unit commitment problem with uncertain wind power output in the model the utilization of wind power can be adjusted by changing the utilization rate in the proposed expected value constraint meanwhile the chance constraint is used to restrict the probability of load imbalance then a sample average approximation saa method is used to transform the objective function the expected value constraint and the chance constraint into sample average reformulations furthermore a combined saa framework that considers both the expected value and the chance constraints is proposed to construct statistical upper and lower bounds for the optimization problem finally the performance of the proposed algorithm with different utilization rates and different risk levels is tested for a six bus system a revised ieee 118 bus system is also studied to show the scalability of the proposed model and algorithm

comparison of household consumption and regional production approaches to assess urban energy use and implications for policy assessment of urban energy use may proceed by a number of methods here we derive an energy account from local statistics and compare them with an input output io analysis as applied to melbourne australia these approaches highlight different aspects of urban energy use and comparable outputs are presented together to assess consistency to identify complementarities and discuss the insight each approach brings to understanding urban energy the io method captures the direct and embodied primary energy requirements of local household expenditure 235 8 gj capita year while the regional assessment more directly accounts for local production activity 258 1 gj capita year the parity of these results is unexpected for a developed city with a strong tertiary sector sectoral detail reveals differences between the primary energy required by melbourne s economic structure and that ultimately required through the full supply chain relating to household expenditure this is accompanied by an io analysis of the geography of melbourne s energy catchment it is suggested that the io consumption and regional production approaches have particular relevance to policies aimed at consumption behaviour and economic re structuring respectively their complementarity further suggests that a combined analysis would be valuable in understanding urban energy futures and economic transitions elsewhere

trade linked canada united states household environmental impact analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions abstract we compare energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions associated with total household expenditures and activities in canada and us in 1997 the first detailed estimate of environmental burdens for canadian households we estimate direct burdens from published government data and indirect burdens using an industry by commodity bi national economic input output life cycle assessment model developed in this study comparing 30 expenditure and two activity categories per capita us household expenditures were 70 higher while per capita household energy use and ghg emissions were only 10 and 44 higher respectively energy use dollar of expenditure was higher in most canadian categories while the average ratio of ghg emissions energy use was higher in the us 65 vs 50 kg eq co 2 gj due largely to a higher proportion of electricity from nonrenewable sources indirect environmental burdens represented 63 69 of total burdens and 62 70 of total burdens were associated with household operation and transportation key drivers of differences between energy profiles were higher per capita electricity use by canadian households and higher us household private health care expenditures and motor fuel use energy intensive production for export represented a higher proportion of canadian production resulting in less agreement between consumption and production based analyses for canada than us

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

genco s risk based maintenance outage scheduling this paper presents a stochastic model for the optimal risk based generation maintenance outage scheduling based on hourly price based unit commitment in a generation company genco such maintenance outage schedules will be submitted by gencos to the iso for approval before implementation the objective of a genco is to consider financial risks when scheduling its midterm maintenance outages the genco also coordinates its proposed outage scheduling with short term unit commitment for maximizing payoffs the proposed model is a stochastic mixed integer linear program in which random hourly prices of energy ancillary services and fuel are modeled as scenarios in the monte carlo method financial risks associated with price uncertainty are considered by applying expected downside risks which are incorporated explicitly as constraints this paper shows that gencos could decrease financial risks by adjusting expected payoffs illustrative examples show the calculation of genco s midterm generation maintenance schedule risk level hourly unit commitment and hourly dispatch for bidding into energy and ancillary services markets

the role of income in energy consumption behaviour evidence from french households data the main purpose of this paper is to characterise quantitatively the impact of income on household energy consumption in the residential and transport sectors starting from the data collected in a paper survey we analyse the extent of the constraint experienced by households in terms of equipment purchasing behaviour and daily energy consumption this analysis shows that the least well off households are particularly constrained since the share of their budget represented by these energy services is very large 15 25 and this corresponds to a level of energy service well below that of the better off households the case of space heating shows a factor of 2 in terms of level of comfort achieved between the extreme 10 percentiles these households also face a strong capital constraint for equipment purchases this leads either to a large increase in the required rate of return or to a reduction in the proportion of households that are prepared to replace their equipment earlier the least well off households are thus doubly constrained since it is more difficult for them to invest in our opinion it is crucial to take into account this observation in the context of political measures aimed at reducing households co2 emissions

impact of natural gas system on risk constrained midterm hydrothermal scheduling this paper studies the impact of natural gas ng contracts and constraints on a genco s midterm risk constrained hydrothermal scheduling problem the ng contracts and constraints are modeled as a set of linear equations the proposed model utilizes the stochastic price based unit commitment pbuc the pbuc hourly solution considers uncertainties of market prices for energy and ancillary services uncertainties of natural water inflows and random ng infrastructure interruptions in monte carlo scenarios illustrative examples analyze the genco s risk levels when considering midterm schedules for generating units target payoffs and usages of water inflow ng and other thermal resources simulation results show that a genco s midterm schedules and financial risks could be impacted significantly with the consideration of ng contracts and constraints

a bibliometric review energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector residential sector has been one key sector for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions due to its significant contribution to global warming researchers in different countries have studied household energy consumption patterns and greenhouse gas emissions in order to promote low carbon lifestyles however few review papers have been published in this regard leading to a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements hence by using a bibliometric approach this paper aims to review the existing literature and examine the evolution of such a field so that the research trends can be uncovered including popular research methods citation analysis is performed to assess the influence of most productive journals countries territories and authors network analysis is also conducted to evaluate the relationship among different countries territories authors and keywords research outcomes of this paper present a comprehensive research picture on residential energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ree related papers published from 1997 to 2016 the most productive journals countries territories authors are also analyzed based on citation analysis and network analysis in addition results also revealed that behavioral analysis input output analysis life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis are the most commonly used methods in this field results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers interested in the ree related field

understanding discretion in conservatism an alternative viewpoint various studies have investigated variation in reporting conservatism with pre specified contractual incentives lawrence et al forthcoming hereafter lss propose a model to control for normal or non discretionary conservatism while testing for variation in conservatism with contractual forces which they characterize as discretionary variation our objective is to further the discussion on discretion in conservatism by relying on lss and incorporating insights from related studies to shed light on the rationales and relative importance of various controls for normal conservatism suggested by lss furthermore our perspective on discretion in conservatism is distinct from the one developed by lss in some crucial respects ultimately leading us to question the nature of the boundary between discretionary and non discretionary conservatism

residential energy consumption in urban china a decomposition analysis abstract residential energy consumption rec is the second largest energy use category 10 in china and urban residents account for 63 of the rec understanding the underlying drivers of variations of urban rec thus helps to identify challenges and opportunities and provide advices for future policy measures this paper applies the lmdi method to a decomposition of china s urban rec during the period of 1998 2007 at disaggregated product activity level using data collected from a wide range of sources our results have shown an extensive structure change towards a more energy intensive household consumption structure as well as an intensive structure change towards high quality and cleaner energy such as electricity oil and natural gas which reflects a changing lifestyle and consumption mode in pursuit of a higher level of comfort convenience and environmental protection we have also found that china s price reforms in the energy sector have contributed to a reduction of rec while scale factors including increased urban population and income levels have played a key role in the rapid growth of rec we suggest that further deregulation in energy prices and regulatory as well as voluntary energy efficiency and conservation policies in the residential sector should be promoted

arima models to predict next day electricity prices price forecasting is becoming increasingly relevant to producers and consumers in the new competitive electric power markets both for spot markets and long term contracts price forecasts are necessary to develop bidding strategies or negotiation skills in order to maximize benefit this paper provides a method to predict next day electricity prices based on the arima methodology arima techniques are used to analyze time series and in the past have been mainly used for load forecasting due to their accuracy and mathematical soundness a detailed explanation of the aforementioned arima models and results from mainland spain and californian markets are presented

strong formulations for multistage stochastic self scheduling unit commitment with the increasing penetration of renewable energy into the power grid system the volatility of real time electricity prices increases significantly this brings challenges for independent power producers to provide optimal bidding strategies the traditional approaches of only attending the day ahead market might not be profitable enough without taking advantage of real time price volatility in this paper we study the optimal bidding strategies for the independent power producers utilizing self scheduling strategies to participate in the real time market considering real time electricity price volatility with the objective of maximizing the total expected profit considering the correlations of renewable energy generation outputs among different time periods the correlations of real time prices are captured in our modeling framework in which we explore a multistage stochastic scenario tree to formulate the price uncertainties accordingly the derived multistage stochastic self scheduling unit com

the impact of household consumption patterns on emissions in spain abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between household consumption patterns and pollution in the spanish economy the analysis was carried using a social accounting matrix sam for the spanish economy prepared for 1999 taking the final demand of households as the exogenous account in the sam framework and combining this with the information provided by the household budget continuous survey on income and consumption ine 1999 we analyse the pollution produced by both the economy and households in order to satisfy consumption requirements we also consider the effects of income inequality on expenditure levels establishing a link between income level consumption patterns propensity to consume and co2 emissions

risk assessment in energy trading this paper provides a state of the art summary of risk assessment in energy trading techniques from financial engineering are needed by electric energy companies to manage price risk these tools are needed by suppliers distributors and traders in a competitive electric power marketplace tools that have been adapted to the specific environment of the electric power system include portfolio analysis and hedging instruments this paper provides a comprehensive critical literature survey of what has been applied to date in the power markets and which areas continue to need additional research one example market scenario is used throughout the paper to demonstrate the usefulness of the risk assessment methods

economic impact of electricity market price forecasting errors a demand side analysis several techniques have been proposed in the literature to forecast electricity market prices and improve forecast accuracy however no studies have been reported examining the economic impact of price forecast inaccuracies on forecast users therefore in this paper the application of electricity market price forecasts to short term operation scheduling of two typical and inherently different industrial loads is examined and the associated economic impact is analyzed using electricity market price forecasts as the expected next day electricity prices optimal operating schedules and the associated costs are determined for each load these costs are compared with those of a perfect price forecast scenario in which actual prices are used to determine the operating schedules numerical results and discussions are provided based on price forecasts with different error characteristics

asymmetric timeliness of earnings market to book and conservatism in financial reporting abstract using an accounting conservatism theory that reflects accounting s role in practice we investigate the relation between two extensively used measures of conservatism asymmetric timeliness of earnings and the market to book ratio mtb we predict and observe that when asymmetric timeliness is measured cumulatively over long periods its relation with end of period mtb is positive when asymmetric timeliness is measured over short periods its dependence on beginning of period composition of equity value ev is responsible for its negative association with mtb further asymmetric timeliness appears to measure conservatism more efficiently when it is estimated cumulatively over multiple periods

non discretionary conservatism evidence and implications a large body of accounting research finds that various contracting incentives lead managers to engage in conservative accounting practices we extend existing research by modeling the impact of extant accounting rules on conservative accounting accounting rules typically require assets to be written down when their fair values drop sufficiently below their book values we document evidence of the resulting non discretionary conservatism and show that it appears to explain some of the results from previous research on contracting incentives

stochastic multiobjective market clearing of joint energy and reserves auctions ensuring power system security in this paper a stochastic multiobjective framework is proposed for day ahead joint market clearing the proposed multiobjective framework can concurrently optimize competing objective functions including augmented generation offer cost and security indices overload index voltage drop index and voltage stability margin besides system uncertainties including generating units and branches contingencies and load uncertainty are explicitly considered in the stochastic market clearing scheme the solution methodology consists of two stages which firstly employs roulette wheel mechanism and monte carlo simulation mcs for random adaptive 24 h scenario generation wherein the stochastic multiobjective market clearing procedure is converted into its respective deterministic equivalents scenarios in the second stage for each deterministic scenario a multiobjective mathematical programming mmp formulation based on the epsiv constrained approach is implemented for provision of spinning reserve sr and nonspinning reserve nsr as well as energy the mmp formulation of the market clearing process is optimized while meeting ac power flow constraints and expected interruption cost eic the ieee 24 bus reliability test system rts 24 bus is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method

strategic bidding under uncertainty a binary expansion approach this work presents a binary expansion be solution approach to the problem of strategic bidding under uncertainty in short term electricity markets the be scheme is used to transform the products of variables in the nonlinear bidding problem into a mixed integer linear programming formulation which can be solved by commercially available computational systems the be scheme is applicable to pure price pure quantity or joint price quantity bidding models it is also possible to represent transmission networks uncertainties scenarios for price quantity plant availability and load financial instruments capacity reinforcement decisions and unit commitment the application of the methodology is illustrated in case studies with configurations derived from the 80 gw brazilian system

asymmetric timely loss recognition adverse shocks to external capital and underinvestment evidence from the collapse of the junk bond market abstract using the collapse of the junk bond market in the early 1990s as an exogenous shock to external capital i document in both difference in differences and triple difference designs that speculative grade firms that recognize economic losses in a timely manner experience a smaller reduction in investment following the collapse the effect is more pronounced for speculative grade firms with a low level of asset liquidation value using the excess bond premium as a proxy for fluctuations in the supply of capital i also extend the generalizability of my findings to a broader sample of 84 421 firm years over the 1972 2011 period

the impact of household behavioral changes on ghg emission reduction in lithuania abstract it is commonly understood that households must change their behavior to reduce problems related increased energy consumption and climate change therefore in the search of cheap ghg emission reduction measures households are an important target group because they are responsible for more than 20 of total energy consumption in developed countries in addition waste management and responsible consumption of products are the key issues in ghg emission reduction the aim of the paper is to assess ghg emission reduction potential in households in terms of behavioral changes towards sustainable consumption the review of literature on analysis of households behavioral changes impact on ghg emission reduction was performed the daily survey of household agenda and energy use records were performed in lithuania for two scenarios baseline and ghg emission reduction scenario including energy saving ghg emission reduction potential in household was assessed based on daily survey data and energy consumption records by applying carbon calculator based on modified coefficients evaluated ghg emission reduction potential in households was compared with ghg emission reduction potentials in other sectors of lithuania based on analysis performed in the paper the tools to promote household behavioral changes towards sustainable consumption were proposed

price maker self scheduling in a pool based electricity market a mixed integer lp approach this paper addresses the self scheduling problem faced by a price maker to achieve maximum profit in a pool based electricity market an exact and computationally efficient mixed integer linear programming milp formulation of this problem is presented this formulation models precisely the price maker capability of altering market clearing prices to its own benefits through price quota curves no assumptions are made on the characteristics of the pool and its agents a realistic case study is presented and the results obtained are analyzed in detail

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

accounting discretion in fair value estimates an examination of sfas 142 goodwill impairments this study examines statement of financial accounting standards 142 adoption decisions focusing on the trade off between recording certain current goodwill impairment charges below the line and uncertain future impairment charges included in income from continuing operations we examine several potentially important economic incentives that firms face when making this accounting choice we find evidence suggesting that firms equity market concerns affect their preference for above the line vs below the line accounting treatment and firms debt contracting bonus turnover and exchange delisting incentives affect their decisions to accelerate or delay expense recognition our study contributes to the accounting choice literature by examining managers use of discretion when adopting a mandatory accounting change and by developing and testing explicit cross sectional hypotheses of the determinants of firms preferences for immediate below the line versus delayed above the line expense recognition

risk constrained bidding strategy with stochastic unit commitment this paper develops optimal bidding strategies based on hourly unit commitment in a generation company genco that participates in energy and ancillary services markets the price based unit commitment problem with uncertain market prices is modeled as a stochastic mixed integer linear program the market price uncertainty is modeled using the scenario approach monte carlo simulation is applied to generate scenarios scenario reduction techniques are applied to reduce the size of the stochastic price based unit commitment problem and postprocessing is applied based on marginal cost of committed units to refine bidding curves the financial risk associated with market price uncertainty is modeled using expected downside risk which is incorporated explicitly as a constraint in the problem accordingly the proposed method provides a closed loop solution to devising specific strategies for risk based bidding in a genco illustrative examples show the impact of market price uncertainty on genco s hourly commitment schedule and discuss the way gencos could decrease financial risks by managing expected payoffs

linear complementarity models of nash cournot competition in bilateral and poolco power markets two cournot models of imperfect competition among electricity producers are formulated as mixed linear complementarity problems lcps and a simple example is presented to illustrate their application the two models simulate bilateral markets the models include a congestion pricing scheme for transmission but other transmission pricing approaches can also be represented in this framework the two models differ from each other in that one has no arbitrage between nodes of the network while in the other model arbitragers erase any noncost based differences in price the latter bilateral model turns out to be equivalent to a cournot model of a poolco the models differ from other cournot market models in that they include both of kirchhoff s laws via a dc approximation can include arbitragers possess unique solutions and are readily solved by efficient lcp algorithms the key assumption that permits their formulation as lcps is that each producer naively assumes that its output will not affect transmission prices

scenario analysis of the new energy policy for taiwan s electricity sector until 2025 for this study we constructed the following three case scenarios based on the taiwanese government s energy policy a normal scenario the 2008 sustainable energy policy convention scenario and the 2011 new energy policy scenario we then employed a long term generation expansion planning gep optimization model to compare the three case scenarios energy mix for power generation for the next a15 years to further explore their possible impact on the electricity sector the results provide a reference for forming future energy policies and developing strategic responses

why are losses less persistent than profits curtailments vs conservatism it is well documented that losses are less persistent than profits and that stock prices anticipate the lower persistence of losses yet the underlying explanation for these results is unclear one explanation lies in the abandonment option whereby firms with losses are more likely to curtail operations e g hayn hayn c 1995 the information content of losses j accounting econom 20 2 125 153 another explanation involves timely loss recognition stemming from conservative accounting e g basu basu s 1997 the conservatism principle and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings j accounting econom 24 1 3 37 we provide direct evidence that curtailments are an important factor contributing to the lower persistence of losses an implication of our results is that popular measures of conservatism such as the measure proposed by basu also reflect curtailments this paper was accepted by suraj srinivasan accounting

multimarket optimal bidding for a power producer this paper considers a profit maximizing thermal producer that participates in a sequence of spot markets namely day ahead automatic generation control agc and balancing markets the producer behaves as a price taker in both the day ahead market and the agc market but as a potential price maker in the volatile balancing market the paper provides a stochastic programming methodology to determine the optimal bidding strategies for the day ahead market uncertainty sources include prices for the day ahead and agc markets and balancing market linear price variations with the production of the thermal producer results from a realistic case study are reported and analyzed conclusions are duly drawn

optimal response of a thermal unit to an electricity spot market this paper addresses the optimal response of a thermal unit to an electricity spot market the objective is to maximize the unit profit from selling both energy and spinning reserve in the spot market the paper proposes a 0 1 mixed integer linear programming approach that allows a rigorous modeling of i nonconvex and nondifferentiable operating costs ii exponential start up costs iii available spinning reserve taking into account ramp rate restrictions and iv minimum up and down time constraints this approach overcomes the modeling limitations of dynamic programming approaches and is computationally efficient results from realistic case studies are reported