distributed energy infrastructure paradigm community microgrids in a new institutional economics context abstract this paper provides a theoretical framework based on new institutional economics nie concepts to guide the development of community microgrids given limited application thus far of such energy systems this paper also draws on empirical studies and experiences from the planning and development of other public community infrastructure and utility services in the development of this framework it links an efficient ownership and governance structure with transactional characteristics such as asset idiosyncrasy frequency and uncertainty defined in section 3 1 the key role of the customers and the microgrid service provider and more specifically their bilateral monopoly relationship and its effects on the choice of institutional structure is highlighted the paper examines the optimum conditions for public private or hybrid financial ownership and for unified or network governance through long term contracting this allows ex ante investment uncertainty and ex post appropriation risks to be efficiently managed the analysis suggests that long term contract completeness future demand for electricity and level of uncertainty are the determining factors in the selection of institutional structure this has significant real world implications for the communities seeking to achieve electricity self sufficiency and environmental benefits through community microgrids service providers and other private or public actors

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

the effects of policy incentives in the adoption of willow short rotation coppice for bioenergy in sweden abstract the effect of policy incentives in the development of short rotation willow plantations for bioenergy is studied by using an aggregate adoption model based on sigmoidal curves for the swedish municipalities a total of 56 municipalities were studied with 891 farmers that planted willow during the period 1986 1996 the model included variables related to the subsidies applied the taxation on fossil fuels the development of the wood fuel consumption by the district heating systems and the geographical and socio economic characteristics of the municipality results of the simulations using the model show an increment of almost 70 of farmers planting willow during the period studied when the subsidy and tax incentives and the increments of the wood fuel capacity by the district heating system took place this study gives tools for future policy implementations in order to achieve the goals of the energy strategies

diffusion of green power products in switzerland abstract as in many other european countries green electricity is an emerging product in switzerland as well although the market is yet to be liberalised more than 100 of the 1200 swiss electric utilities offer some sort of green electricity product to their customers successful companies like the municipal utilities of the cities of zurich and berne have reached customer response rates of up to 4 while still maintaining cost based pricing i e charging their customers price premiums of 400 700 per kwh while most of the products still rely on mainly photovoltaics some utilities have started to introduce mixed green electricity products also including wind power with a share of 60 in the swiss generation mix hydropower s role in the green electricity mix was also an issue to emerge causing controversial debate while being renewable hydropower is not considered environmentally benign by all the stakeholders and unlike new renewables solar wind biomass there is little room for new hydropower generation facilities in switzerland the green electricity labelling scheme naturemade tackles that issue the labelling organisation has evolved from a process with broad stakeholder involvement which included environmental ngos scientific institutions green electricity providers renewable energy advocates government bodies and consumer organisations the analysis in this paper is based on a diffusion theory framework it identifies and characterises different phases of past and future market development and stresses the importance of eco labelling as a tool to facilitate the transition from niche to mass market finally we also discuss conclusions that can be drawn from the swiss case towards market development and labelling on a european level

feed in tariffs with minimum price guarantees and regulatory uncertainty abstract the feed in tariff fit program is a popular policy for incentivizing new renewable energy projects because it establishes a long term contract with renewable energy investors this paper presents a novel model to analyze a fit contract with a minimum price guarantee i e a price floor regime from an investor s perspective the results show that a perpetual guarantee only induces investment for prices below the price floor when offering a risk free investment opportunity in contrast the finite guarantee may induce investment even when the revenue from the guarantee is lower than the investment cost when an investor faces a scenario with regulatory uncertainty a higher and more likely reduction in the price floor induces earlier investment for all cases investors postpone an investment decision when market conditions present a higher price volatility

on the equitability of progressive taxation abstract we propose the principle of equal sacrifice to determine the class of vertically inequitable progressive taxes a necessary condition for an income tax function to be equal sacrifice is formulated and hence a subclass of progressive taxes which cannot inflict the same sacrifice upon all individuals relative toanystrictly increasing and concave utility function is determined conversely it is shown in a general framework that any convex thus progressive tax function satisfies the principle of equal sacrifice our findings point to the fact that equal sacrifice under progressive income taxation depends heavily upon the degree of marginal rate as opposed to average rate progressivity journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d63 h20

overall review of the overcapacity situation of china s thermal power industry status quo policy analysis and suggestions abstract china s thermal power industry has gone through the phases of rapid development in the last decade but the excessive enthusiasm of thermal power investment is making this industry overcapacity the unbalanced demand supply relationship in electric power market greatly affects the economic benefit of most thermal power plants in this paper we give an overall review of the overcapacity situation of china s thermal power industry which is supported by latest data then policy orientation and its effect is discussed it can be found out that policies on the respect of construction scale control renewable power integration feed in tariff reduction and environmental protection were considered as the main solution to relieve the over capacity situation finally we propose three suggestions for the future development of china s thermal industry

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

what drives people s opinions of electricity infrastructure empirical evidence from ireland abstract across the eu significant infrastructure investment is needed in both generation from renewable energy sources res and the electricity grid to meet the european targets on emission reduction and res expansion experiences show however that citizens may object to new energy infrastructure in their localities which may cause delays in achieving the targets to avoid delays it is crucial to understand what drives people s opinions to explore people s opinions of different electricity generation and transmission technologies in ireland we conducted a nationally representative survey concerning the drivers we distinguish between socio demographics technology specific perceptions and energy policy preferences our results show that people generally have positive views of res technologies while this indicates that irish citizens agree to move towards cleaner electricity sources we find reluctance amongst people to have these technologies located close to their places of residence we find that across most technologies the tradeoff people make between economic and environmental policy objectives drives their opinions of and their tendencies to oppose technology developments the significance of most socio demographic variables however is largely technology dependent this highlights that policy makers need to understand how people make tradeoffs between policy objectives and how these tradeoffs relate to their opinions of different technologies

a conceptual framework of adoption of an agricultural innovation abstract in this paper we present a conceptual framework of individual farmers decisions on adoption of a new innovation using the example of a new crop species this framework overcomes the shortcomings of a number of previous studies it represents the adoption of an innovation as a dynamic decision problem spanning at least several years the model allows for generation of potentially valuable information from trialing the innovation the value of such trials is due to development of skills e g in agronomic management of a crop as well as reduction in uncertainty about the innovation s long term profitability the framework also includes the farmer s personal perceptions managerial abilities and risk preferences in order to properly represent the adoption decision process the influences of socio demographic factors within the framework are discussed

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

nimby or not exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies local protests against renewable energy facilities have added fuel to the debate about the so called nimby not in my back yard effect this paper identifies six variables that can hamper the comparison between different public perception studies and offers two broad conclusions on aggregate proximity does have strong influence on public attitudes to proposed projects but the nature strength and spatial scale of this effect may vary according to local context and value of the land residents of stigmatised places are more likely to welcome facilities that are relatively green while people who derive a more positive sense of identity from particular rural landscapes are likely to resist such potential developments especially if they also live there secondly the fear of being branded a nimby and the positive ethics associated with the notion of renewable are both likely to colour the responses of many interviewees these aspects need to be clarified and accounted for in analyses of elicited responses both quantitative and qualitative if we are to improve our understanding of the social construction of individual attitudes in siting conflicts

wind farm externalities and public preferences for community consultation in ireland a discrete choice experiments approach abstract in ireland the deployment of onshore wind turbines has become progressively more difficult in some areas because of the potential negative externalities associated with their operation using a discrete choice experiment dce we employ a willingness to accept framework to estimate the external effects of wind turbines on local residents with the inclusion of community consultation and to quantify the compensation required to permit wind farms to be built in ireland our findings reveal that the majority of respondents are willing to make monetary tradeoffs to allow for wind power initiatives and we find that respondents require less compensation if provision is made for a community representative and setback distance is increased

ranking income distributions a large variety of policy questions involve choices between social states and a consequent ordering of the feasible alternatives when these social states are related to the levels of welfare experienced by individuals or households two central issues stand out in determining the relative desirability of different social outcomes one of these is the essentially positive exercise of achieving comparability between households with different characteristics such as composition or preferences operating in different environments for example facing different price structures the other concerns the normative judgments implicit in the evaluation of alternative allocations of resourcesthe emphasis placed on inequality between households and the extent to which greater inequality can be compensated by higher average living standards this paper focuses on the second of these issues and in doing so we abstract from the problem of household comparability by considering a population of n households identical in all respects except for their incomes the question of ordering social states then becomes one of ranking income distributions over a group of anonymous households or individuals borrowing the usual assumptions imposed on consumer preferences we may suppose that a social ordering of income distributions can be represented by a welfare function 2

toward a general theory of wage and price rigidities and economic fluctuations this paper begins with the hypothesis that large economic fluctuations the marked changes in the unemployment that characterize market economies are a consequence of problems of adjustment to disturbances especially adjustments of wages and prices two strands of work have addressed these problems of adjustment one focuses on rigidities downward rigidities in wages are at the center of traditional keynesian models the other focuses on the consequences of rapid changes particularly in asset prices in the context of markets with incomplete contracting imperfect indexing and imperfect capital markets while the second tradition traces its origins at least back to irving fisher s debt deflation theories it has been revived in the newkeynesian work of bruce greenwald and stiglitz 1988 1989 1990b 1993 1995 and others the fact that wages and prices did fall dramatically in the great depression by more than a third in the united states provided some of the impetus to the latter theory the major economic downturn this year in east asia with unemployment in indonesia soaring from 4 7 percent to 14 3 percent and output falling by at least 16 percent was accompanied by huge changes in prices over the first year of the crisis the current best estimate is that indonesian real wages fell by 40 60 percent world bank 1998 p 105 this result i would argue is better interpreted through the second strand of thought

coal power overcapacity and investment bubble in china during 2015 2020 abstract electricity consumption growth in china has experienced radical adjustment from high speed to medium speed with the advent of new economy normal however the investment enthusiasm on coal power remains unabated and leads to continuous operation efficiency deterioration in recent years in this paper we quantify the rational capacity and potential investment of coal power in china during the 13th fyp period 2016 2020 by employing power planning model and fully considering the power sector s contribution in the 15 non fossil primary energy supply target by 2020 we estimate that the reasonable capacity addition space of coal power ranges between 50 gw and 100 gw depending on the expected range of demand growth we find that if all the coal power projects submitted for environmental impact assessment eia approval were put into operation in 2020 capacity excess would reach 200 gw such huge overcapacity will bring forth disastrous consequences including enormous investment waste poor economic performance of generators and more importantly delay of low carbon energy transition finally policy recommendations are proposed to address this issue

reinterpreting the frisch parameter in the field of personal taxation a link between taxable capacity and social marginal utility in optimal taxation we give an objective meaning to the concept of taxable capacity and establish a theoretical link between optimal taxation theory ott and the proposals of the carter and meade reports solving at the same time kay s 2008 criticism to both approaches

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

economic impacts of debottlenecking congestion in the chinese coal supply chain abstract the fast pace of development in china s coal industry created bottlenecks in its transportation infrastructure these bottlenecks likely affected not only china s domestic coal market but also global coal markets in this paper we estimate the costs and consequences of these bottlenecks using a production and multimodal transportation model we find that coal transportation inefficiencies increased the price of chinese domestic coal at coastal locations and thereby influenced global seaborne coal prices according to our model results the resulting extra costs of coal supplied to the chinese economy totaled 228 billion renminbi rmb in 2011 and 105 in 2013 the subsequent debottlenecking on the other hand has reduced the price of chinese domestic coal delivered to coastal regions and contributed to the reduction in global seaborne coal prices since 2011 our analysis also suggests that current tariffs for coal transport with their embedded taxes to cover investments in rail capacity result in economic efficiencies similar to charging marginal transportation costs and that planners have not introduced distortions that impose significant additional costs on the chinese economy many projects that expanded transport capacity delivered strongly positive rates of return however some have poor or negative rates of return which can reflect either overinvestment or preinvestment in future needs

monetary or environmental appeals for saving electricity potentials for spillover on low carbon policy acceptability abstract the acceptability of low carbon policies is an important precondition for energy system transitions such as the german energiewende this long term experimental study examines the potential for behavioural spillover on the acceptability of low carbon policies caused by a framed intervention to promote electricity saving behaviour clients of a german energy provider were randomly assigned to continuously receive electricity saving tips with either monetary framing saving potential in or environmental framing saving potential in co2 the control group did not receive any information in two follow up surveys four n 333 and nine months n 258 later participants rated the acceptability of several low carbon policies a pre survey assessed the personal ecological norm for saving electricity participants with strong personal ecological norms reported generally higher policy acceptability after environmental framing they also indicated higher acceptability compared to the monetary framing or control group these results indicate that information campaigns should be designed carefully in order to promote positive spillover effects environmental framing of private sphere behaviour can increase the disposition for further pro environmental behaviour in the public sphere e g policy acceptability when appealing to monetary benefits in pro environmental behaviour there is a risk of inhibiting positive spillover effects

intertemporal optimization of the coal production capacity in china in terms of uncertain demand economy environment and energy security abstract as coal is the main energy source in china coal overcapacity and undercapacity have negative impacts on the economy environment and energy security to reveal the optimal production capacity opc an intertemporal optimization model under uncertainty is established by a combined dynamic programming influence factor scenario analysis monte carlo method dp if sa mc the opcs in 1990 2025 are solved to minimize the expected cost to the economy and environment driven by the production capacity pc under energy security in addition we define and calculate the pc deviation pcd or the deviation of the actual pc apc from the opc the results show that compared with the apc the opc has advantages of more stable development more timely adjustment and lower cost and it provides cost savings of 302 857 billion yuan in 1990 2017 according to pcd china s coal industry existed under the risk of overcapacity in 1990 1999 and 2009 2017 and undercapacity in 2000 2008 and it can experience overcapacity for most of the time without capacity reduction policies in future the optimal management of the pc should be based on the opc and pcd over the next 5 10 years rather than the current capacity utilization rate and focus on overcapacity management in the long run

farm level constraints on the domestic supply of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract there are a number of estimates of the land area that could potentially be dedicated to perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus in the uk but little is known about how farmers will respond to the opportunities presented by these relatively novel crops perennial energy crops face competition from other arguably more flexible uses of farmland and if not seen as attractive propositions to individual farmers they will not be grown farmers decisions are therefore a key constraint on potential supply this paper reviews the policy background and considers whether policy is based on any consideration of likely supply response before presenting outcomes of focus groups composed of farmers who already grow or are considering growing perennial energy crops there appear to be a number of barriers to adoption in addition to concerns over the security of contracts the current high wheat price increases the opportunity cost of committing land to perennial energy crops there are also worries about the impact of willow roots on field drains and the cost of returning the land to other uses this paper outlines a number of issues of importance to policy makers and suggests future research needs

conceptualising multi regime interactions the role of the agriculture sector in renewable energy transitions abstract the agriculture sector plays an important role in renewable energy transitions owing to its historical involvement in managing key resources particularly land and biomass we develop the multi level perspective in relation to these emergent transition processes conceptualising transitions towards renewable electricity production as examples of multi regime interaction between national level agriculture and electricity regimes we focus particularly on the role of niche anchoring into multiple regimes as the mechanism through which multi regime interaction occurs utilising case studies in germany the czech republic and the united kingdom analysis suggests the birth of a new fiat regime oriented towards renewable electricity production we suggest that fiat regimes which are heavily dependent on policy supports are often multifunctional in nature in addition we argue that agriculture s inherent connection to land demonstrates one of the specific characteristics of fiat regimes fiat regimes are constructed largely in response to policy efforts to produce or protect public goods such as natural resources as opposed to market regimes based on technological developments findings demonstrate support for the special case of the agriculture sector in transition processes high degrees of policy involvement led to windows of opportunity created largely in response to national and international policy agendas and the multiple functions of agriculture were reflected in competition between agriculture and electricity sectors over natural resource access as renewable energy currently represents a secondary transition in the agriculture sector we suggest that further attention needs to be paid to the impact of fiat regime policies on secondary transition processes

the adoption of switchgrass and miscanthus by farmers impact of liquidity constraints and risk preferences lignocellulosic biomass is expected to become a key feedstock for renewable energy production however the potential supply strongly depends on farmers willingness to grow the new perennial energy crops many economic assessments have been led at the farm level all based on the standard net present value approach this paper looks into the effect of farmers liquidity constraints and risk preferences on switchgrass and miscanthus adoption by farmers we study the problem of the land allocation between a traditional cropping system and an innovative one in a static framework using four intertemporal choice models we find that in central france agronomic and economic conditions switchgrass and miscanthus result to be less profitable in terms of annualised net margin than the usual rape wheat barley rotation nevertheless they can be highly competitive as diversification crops when appropriate contracts are offered to farmers despite the additional liquidity they require

the emergence and evolution of regional convergence clusters in china s energy markets employing the new regression tests for convergence club convergence and clustering proposed by phillips and sul 2007 this paper models and analyses the behaviour of china s energy sectors energy market convergence clusters are identified using new price data and their regional spatial distributions are mapped for four major fuel types coal gasoline diesel and electricity the findings are as follows i as yet there are no fully integrated national energy markets in china as more than one convergence cluster is identified for all four fuels ii some regional energy markets can be regarded as quite mature as evidenced by the existence of some highly concentrated convergence clusters connected geographically iii some regional markets remain in a state of transition as witnessed by convergence clusters that are scattered geographically and that are growing in membership iv it seems that there is more regional based integration for coal and electricity than for gasoline and diesel as more convergent clusters were identified for coal and electricity than for gasoline and diesel and v overall china still appears to be in the process of energy market integration as demonstrated by the number and evolution of convergence clusters over time

tax reform and progressivity the established theory of tax progressivity cannot handle basic tax reform questions such as whether an increase in personal allowances makes the tau system more progressive because the core results assume that tax liability is never zero this paper generalises the core theory to allow for zero tax payments and applies the new framework to the analysis of allowances income related deductions and tau credits log concavity of the tax schedule a property quite distinct from any existing notion of progressivity emerges as the critical determinant of whether the distribution of die tau burden becomes more progressive as allowances are increased

a review of international green power markets recent experience trends and market drivers green power marketing the act of differentially selling electricity generated wholly or in part from renewable sources has emerged in more than a dozen countries around the world almost two million customers worldwide buy green power today this paper reviews green power marketing activity in australia canada japan the us and in a number of countries in europe to gain an understanding of consumer demand for electricity generated from renewable sources it also examines key factors that influence market penetration of green power products such as product designs pricing incentives marketing strategies policies and product certification 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

current and future financial competitiveness of electricity and heat from energy crops a case study from ireland abstract it has been demonstrated that miscanthus and willow energy crop cultivation could be economically competitive with current agricultural land uses at a farm gate biomass price ranging from 70 to 130 t 1 dry matter styles d thorne f jones m b in review energy crops in ireland an economic comparison of willow and miscanthus production with conventional farming systems biomass and bioenergy may 2006 this paper uses the same farm gate prices to calculate the economic competitiveness of energy crop electricity and heat production using a net present value npv approach 20 year period 5 discount rate direct and gasified co firing of willow wood with coal would result in electricity generation 30 or 37 more expensive than coal generation at current coal and co 2 allowance prices and a farm gate biomass cost of 100 t 1 break even co 2 allowance prices are 33 and 37 t 1 respectively however co firing of miscanthus with peat is close to economic competitiveness and would require a co 2 allowance price of 16 t 1 to break even against a current price of 12 t 1 npv analyses indicate that wood heat is significantly cheaper than oil gas or electric heat excluding existing wood boiler installation subsidies discounted annual savings range from 143 compared with gas to 722 compared with electric heating at the domestic scale and from 3454 to 11 222 at the commercial scale inclusion of available subsidies improves the comparative economics of domestic wood heat substantially the economic advantage of wood heat is robust to variation in fuel prices discount rates and heat loads the greatest obstacles to energy crop utilisation include i a reluctance to consider long term economics ii possible competition from cheaper sources of biomass iii the need for a spatially coordinated supply and utilisation network

enterprise investment local government intervention and coal overcapacity the case of china abstract long term management of china s coal overcapacity depends on the targeted policy guidance on industry production capacity expansion in the overcapacity formation process in this study coal enterprise and local government are treated as game participants and a three stage dynamic game model has been developed to depict the boosting effect of the game behavior of coal enterprise s and local government s capacity investments in different markets of supply and demand the results are shown in the following 1 local government has been the behind the scenes operator of over investment and redundant construction and its excessive interventions in coal industry investment have been the primary cause of overcapacity formation 2 when the market is in short supply coal enterprise s optimal behavior is to continuously increase the rate of investment growth until it reaches the threshold to obtain the maximum excess profits ultimately leading to overinvestment in the industry and 3 the key factors affecting the game abilities of coal enterprise and local government are the market s self regulation and the central government s supervision intensity although the chinese government a highly vertically oriented bureaucratic structure is implementing a mandatory de capacity policy to alleviate the intensity of excessive coal capacity it is not a long term regularization on the supply side reform

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

economic growth regional disparities and energy demand in china abstract using the panel data of 27 provinces between 1978 and 2008 we employed a instrumental regression technique to examine the relationship between economic growth energy demand production and the related policies in china the empirical results show that forming a cross province integrated energy market will in general reduce the response of equilibrium user costs of energy products to their local demand and production through cross regional energy transfer including both energy trade and cross regional reallocation in particular reducing transportation costs and improving marketization level are identified as two important policy instruments to enhance the role of energy market integration the findings support the argument for a more competitive cross province energy transfer policies and calls for more developed energy connectivity and associate institutional arrangements within china these policy implications may also be extended to the east asia summit region where energy market integration is being actively promoted

spatial processes in urban energy transitions considering an assemblage of socio energetic nodes urban and energy transitions are increasingly seen as being deeply intertwined the way this relation impacts our approach to energy transition is a current issue for research implementing renewable energy sources in built up areas challenges incumbent supply chains and large technical systems especially for electricity gas and heat approaches to transition such as the multi level perspective mlp highlight the transformation of socio technical regimes but have been criticised for overstating stability of regime and for overlooking spatial and consequently urban processes other concepts are required in order to understand local and non local relationships between niches and regimes this paper suggests a constructivist and pragmatic concept for urban energy transition the socio energetic node sen thanks to which actors and artefacts can be traced within energy networks the sen is a group of elements which collects converts and or supplies energy built by a decision maker interacting with stakeholders and regime rules having identified sens in four french eco districts we observed how they took shape around continuous energy flows and across decision making boundaries highlighting how spatial scale and place specificity impact on energy transition

normative contestation in transitions in the making animal welfare concerns and system innovation in pig husbandry previous studies of system innovations mainly focused on historical cases that were driven by commercial motivations of pioneers and entrepreneurs this article investigates a system innovation in the making that is driven by normative concerns such as sustainability or animal welfare initially formulated by outsiders like special interest groups our central research question is how when and why is normative contestation of existing regimes effective in influencing the orientation of transitions in the making the conceptual framework enriches innovation studies and the multi level perspective with insights from social movement theory smt and political science smt is used to analyze the build up of normative pressure through framing resource mobilization and political opportunity structures from political science we use the notion of multiple streams in our analysis a problem regulatory market and technology stream the research design consists of a comparative case study of pig husbandry systems one case analyses the sub sector of pregnant sows where normative pressures after several decades led to the changes advocated by the contestants the second case concerns the sub sector of pig fattening where normative pressure was less successful the difference is partly explained by the normative pressure for pregnant sows being larger than for fattening pigs the other part of the explanation is that in the first case normative pressure aligned better with the three other streams regulatory market and technology to lead to the changes desired by the contestants 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the influence of a renewable energy feed in tariff on the decision to produce biomass crops in ireland abstract a target of 30 per cent substitution of biomass for peat in the three peat fired power stations from 2015 has been set by the irish government however a knowledge gap exists on the extent to which irish farmers would actually choose to grow these crops an extension of the renewable energy feed in tariff refit scheme to include the co firing of biomass with peat in electricity generation would enable the power stations to enter into power purchase agreements ppas these offer a fixed price to farmers for biomass feedstock the decision to adopt biomass is represented as a constrained problem under certainty with the objective of profit maximisation the results showed that the price offered under a ppa has a large effect on the economic returns from biomass crops the price that the power stations previously estimated they would be able to pay at 46 and 48 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively was used as a starting point at this price the number of farmers who would choose to adopt biomass production is insufficient to achieve the national co firing target the target could be achieved at 70 and 65 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively

redistributive effects of minimal equal sacrifice taxation we examine the circumstances under which minimal equal sacrifice taxation reduces income inequality focusing on absolute sacrifice and relative inequality we show that after tax incomes are more equally distributed than before tax incomes and that after tax inequality decreases with the revenue to be raised if and only if the elasticity of the marginal utility of income is decreasing however other things equal after tax inequality is shown to decline as the utility function becomes more concave we investigate next how these conclusions extend when one takes the absolute inequality view and considers that it is the relative loss in utility that has to be equalized across individuals

allocation of coal de capacity quota among provinces in china a bi level multi objective combinatorial optimization approach abstract coal de capacity or capacity cut is an important part of china s energy transition formulating a quota allocation scheme for coal de capacity is the key to realizing smooth exit of coal overcapacity this study proposes a novel method of allocation of coal de capacity quota among provinces based on bi level multi objective combinatorial optimization in this bi level optimal allocation scheme boas the upper level is the central government and the lower level is the provincial governments the results indicate that because of the different costs of coal de capacity in each province the execution rate of each province for tasks assigned by the central government is quite different compared with the government allocation scheme gas and the single level optimal allocation scheme soas the growth rate of total factor productivity of the boas increases by 2 14 and 0 60 respectively the total de capacity cost of boas has reduced 64 billion yuan and 19 billion yuan respectively and the environmental benefits of boas has increased 73 billion yuan and 71 billion yuan respectively the gini coefficient of boas calculated by various indexes is less than 0 3 placing the scheme within the category of considerable or absolute fairness in addition the proposed allocation model truly reflects the complex dynamics of the game process of china s coal overcapacity governance system and can provide a more effective decision making reference for the chinese government in formulating the allocation scheme of coal de capacity

can energy price regulations smooth price fluctuations evidence from china s coal sector abstract due to the dominance of coal in china s energy mix coal prices have always been a challenging part of pricing reform the recent frequent government interventions raise the key research questions what is the actual impact of price policies on coal price fluctuations and how can forward looking pricing policies be made by proposing a novel classification of coal pricing policies and introducing an expectation and forward looking coefficient the paper examines the relationship between coal price fluctuations and pricing policies using the generalized method of moments gmm method it shows that the lagging coal price and coal demand play a positive role in regulating coal prices while coal supply and marketization have significantly negative effects on coal price fluctuations the heterogeneous impacts of price policies are due to differences in market players expectations policy instruments and the methods of policy release in addition china s coal pricing policy portfolio from 2013 to 2016 exerted synergy effects on the restraint of coal price fluctuations as the forward looking coefficient was considerably low the government s intervention behaviors were obviously biased towards ex post facto responses the paper suggests short run and long run policies to advance marketization of coal prices amid the energy transition

planning siting and the local acceptance of wind power some lessons from the french case abstract after some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders 1995 2000 french politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed in tariffs december 2000 and wind power development zones july 2005 the new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity the paper examines french wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy planning and siting part 1 we particularly focus on the recent french legislative debate which led to the adoption of the new policy framework part 2 the french case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy the policy outcome which we call flexible decentralized planning is both interesting and ambiguous it is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions it is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical the final decision power is left in state planners hands making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place

unintended consequences of china s coal capacity cut policy in early 2016 china introduced additional capacity cut policies to rebalance supply in the coal market to match demand that had been reduced by slow economic growth and strict environmental regulation ensuing disruptions to the coal market caused these policies to be revised and subsequently discarded as decision makers tried to find a balance between efficient supply economic and social stability and environmental sustainability this paper explores the causes of these unintended consequences using an extended version of the kem china model the results reveal that full and partial compliance with the capacity cut policies results in a significant gap between supply and demand this suggests that implementation of the policy was technically infeasible even allowing for a significant increase in coal prices and economic costs besides significant differences in coal prices and output profiles are registered across the country we argue that the heterogeneous nature of the chinese coal market and policy compliance was a major factor leading to the unintended consequences rendering a single national price benchmark inappropriate as a policy gauge we propose that the capacity cut policy should be differentiated across regions and even types of coalmines market approaches would be preferable to the command and control instruments and policy distortions that cause excess capacity should be removed

is small beautiful a multicriteria assessment of small scale energy technology applications in local governments in its 2003 white paper the uk government set ambitious renewable energy targets local governments and households have an increasing role in the overall energy system as consumers suppliers of smaller scale applications and citizens discussing energy projects in this paper we consider if small scale or large scale approaches to renewable energy provision can achieve energy targets in the most socially economically and environmentally see effective way we take a local case study of renewable energy provision in the metropolitan borough of kirklees in yorkshire uk and apply a multi criteria decision analysis methodology to compare the small scale schemes implemented in kirklees with large scale alternatives the results indicate that small scale schemes are the most see effective despite large scale schemes being more financially viable the selection of the criteria on which the alternatives are assessed and the assigned weights for each criterion are of crucial importance it is thus very important to include the relevant stakeholders to elicit this information

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

nontaxable income and necessary consumption the rousseau s paradox of fiscal egalitarianism this article compares a tax method featuring flat rates and fixed allowances equal for all taxpayers surplus income tax method sitm procedure with a tax method featuring also flat rates and increasing personal allowances ipas to meet the amounts of necessary consumption required by the different living standards discretionary income tax method ditm procedure our results show that the ditm procedure generates an after tax income distribution less unequal and superior in terms of social welfare moreover the assumption for comparison purposes of identical total tax revenues leads to the corollary that the flat tax rate under the ditm is necessarily larger than the one under the sitm being thus the former taxmethod is more progressive than the latter these results imply an obvious paradox considering the commonly accepted principle that basic necessities are the same for everyone rousseau 1755 based on the results obtained in this article we have labelled this paradox as the rousseau s

multi regime dynamics in the analysis of sectoral transformation potentials evidence from german utility sectors abstract network bound infrastructure systems as electricity gas water and telecommunications are currently undergoing transformations on various levels and dimensions liberalization technological innovations and socio cultural dynamics are part of this for analyzing these ongoing transformation dynamics as well as exploring future developments of utility systems a theoretical concept is necessary which spans production consumption and governance different levels and also different sectors this paper argues that the multi level perspective is a fruitful starting point allowing the identification of interrelated transformation dynamics in production consumption and governance but that multi regime dynamics need more emphasis particularly in a future oriented analysis

individual acceptance of the biogas innovation a structural equation model abstract the rapid spread of biogas production in germany has resulted in an increased public debate over this new business branch today the production of biogas is much more controversially debated than several years ago at the same time it could be proven that even among farmers themselves the acceptance of biogas production in some regions is somewhat dampened due to accompanying collateral damages therefore the goal of this paper is to identify relevant influencing factors that determine the acceptance of the innovation biogas among farmers by applying a causal analysis initial results among the five investigated determinants show that not only an individual attitude toward biogas but also the farmers personal innovativeness strongly and significantly influences an individual s acceptance of the innovation biogas