the limits of market oriented regulatory techniques the case of automotive fuel economy the search for more efficient market oriented regulatory techniques has produced significant recent advances in several areas among these would appear to be the corporate average fuel economy cafe approach to reducing gasoline consumption by the domestic automobile fleet the 1975 energy policy and conservation act required manufacturers to sell fleets with a sales weighted average of 18 miles per gallon in the 1978 model year 19 mpg in 1979 20 mpg in 1980 and 27 5 mpg in 1985 1 the standards for the four intervening years were subsequently set by the national highway traffic safety administration at 22 24 26 and 27 miles per gallon the advantages of the averaging approach over uniform vehicle standards or a gas guzzler tax are two fold first cafe permits each firm to increase its overall fuel efficiency in the cheapest manner since the costs of mileage improvements for different vehicles may be rather different 2 and second it permits the continuation of a diverse product mix to the consumer since a uniform standard would probably result in the demise of certain models these arguments for averaging are now so widely accepted that the principle is being proposed inter alia for automotive emissions standards as well that is instead of maximum allowable emissions for each and every model manufacturers could produce models with various levels of pollutants

the structure of energy efficiency investment in the uk households and its average monetary and environmental savings abstract socioeconomic and behavioural variables that influence the household s adoption of energy efficiency measures such as cavity and loft insulation and upgrades to the boiler are identified contrary to previous literature by extending brechling and smith s 1994 and hassett and metcalf s 1995 models it is shown that the application of the energy act 2011 which contains provisions on the green deal the new energy company obligation eco and the private rented sector needs to follow a tailored strategy to reach the low adoption households identified by my model moreover for the current adopters of the analysed measures average monetary and environmental adoption benefits are estimated based on parti and parti s 1980 demand model these estimates are smaller than their expected values showing an important energy efficiency gap in the sector particularly low cost measures can bring important savings that can help to meet the pay as you save rule i e the golden rule of the new regulation my model also shows that a poor state of dwelling repair can reduce the adoption benefits increasing the need of subsidies that will be financed through consumer s energy bills however this can increase the number of households in fuel poverty

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis reply to fare and grosskopf fare and grosskopf this issue claim that a single abatement factor suffices for modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production models and that the kuosmanen 2005 technology that uses multiple abatement factors is larger than necessary this article demonstrates by a numerical example that a single abatement factor does not suffice to capture all feasible production plans and that its use leads to the violation of convexity one of the maintained assumptions of the model we also prove that the kuosmanen technology is the correct minimum extrapolation technology under the stated axioms

white certificate schemes economic analysis and interactions with the eu ets this paper examines the economic environmental and distributional impacts of an idealised tradable white certificate twc scheme and shows how the impacts are modified when the scheme operates in parallel with the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets it uses simple graphical techniques to assess whether a twc scheme will increase decrease or have an ambiguous effect on electricity demand wholesale and retail electricity prices carbon emissions and investment in energy efficiency paying particular attention to the interpretation of additionality

optimal energy efficiency policies and regulatory demand side management tests how well do they match abstract under conventional models subsidizing energy efficiency requires electricity to be priced below marginal cost its benefits increase when electricity prices increase to finance the subsidy with high prices subsidies are counterproductive unless consumers fail to make efficiency investments when private benefits exceed costs if the gain from adopting efficiency is only reduced electricity spending capping revenues from energy sales may induce a utility to substitute efficiency for generation when the former is less costly this goes beyond standard decoupling of distribution revenues from sales requiring complex energy price regulation the models results are used to evaluate tests in the 2002 california standard practice manual for assessing demand side management programs its ratepayer impact measure test best conforms to the condition that electricity price is too low its total resource cost and societal cost tests resemble the condition for expanded decoupling no test incorporates optimality conditions apart from consumer choice failure

energy efficiency in china s iron and steel industry evidence and policy implications abstract currently the iron and steel industry isi accounts for more than 16 of china s total energy consumption improving energy efficiency ee and promoting energy savings in this industry have vital significance for china s further sustainable development using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2014 and meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper investigates ee and the energy saving potential ep of china s isi by considering regional technology heterogeneities the results show that 1 from 2001 to 2014 ee in china s isi achieved significant improvement technological progress is the most powerful driving factor while the declines in scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency are two obstructive factors 2 the sources of energy inefficiency ei show distinct spatial difference characteristics ei in the eastern region mainly stems from scale inefficiency and pure technical inefficiency while that in the central and western regions stems from three aspects of scale inefficiency pure technical inefficiency and technology gap and 3 there is considerable ep in china s isi which represents nearly 80 of isi s current total energy consumption because the sources of ep vary across regions the focus of future work for china s regional isi should also vary

energy saving in energy market reform the feed in tariffs option abstract the use of feed in tariffs fits is now widespread for renewable energy and under discussion for other low carbon electricity generation but not for energy efficiency there is a small literature on fits for electricity demand reduction but not energy efficiency more generally this paper considers the general application of fits on the demand side and sets out the economic arguments in the context of changing energy markets it then discusses the implications of some practical issues including the definitional problems arising from the difference between energy efficiency and demand reduction using experience from historical energy efficiency programmes it considers the public benefits payment methods and policy scope that need to be considered and how these might affect policy design it makes some provisional estimates of economically justified payments in the context of the proposed uk energy market reform it concludes that fits for energy saving might be a powerful tool for incentivising energy efficiency

a critical microeconomic analysis of modelling the interaction of wcts and eu ets abstract this paper presents an alternative approach to a graphical analysis of the interaction of white certificates with the eu emission trading scheme as the approach of sorrell et al 2009a contains the following aspects that require some clarification first the issue of a clearer distinction between conventional and alternative energy supply is brought up second the concept of a minimum requirement for energy demanded is discussed third the correlation between demand for energy and demand for energy efficiency measures is displayed in a more intuitive manner the effects of introducing wcts and eu ets into the market setting are then analyzed accordingly

redefining recs part 2 untangling certificates and emission markets abstract renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions markets are currently in a state of confusion regarding the treatment of renewable energy certificate recs how should emission trading schemes treat recs how can emission mitigation policies provide real incentives for renewable generation the objective of rec markets should be to promote additional renewable energy investments the author asserts that defining recs in terms of attributes especially off site attributes does not further this goal ambiguous language such as environmental attribute or environmental benefit creates confusion in the marketplace while failing to address the relevant coordination issues with renewable portfolio standard compliance markets voluntary emission offset markets or emission cap and trade markets specifically defining recs in terms of off site attributes creates a number of problems including that once an emissions cap and trade scheme is in place such definitions of a rec can become indefensible the author proposes to redefine recs in terms of on site attributes which resolves the aforementioned problems and allows compliance and voluntary renewable energy and emission markets to function without conflicts ideally environmental commodities should be homogeneous first best measures of the relevant environmental good as well as easily measured and verified the author proposes tradable environmental commodities that achieve these characteristics

transaction costs of tradable white certificate schemes the energy efficiency commitment as case study this paper analyses the nature and scale of transaction costs tcs borne by obliged parties under a tradable white certificate twc scheme taking the first phase of the energy efficiency commitment eecl in great britain as a case study several sources of tcs were considered such as search for information persuasion of customers negotiation with business partners and measurement and verification activities information was obtained through interviews and a questionnaire distributed to obliged parties results show that the most significant sources of tcs were related to search for information persuading customers and negotiating with managing agents contractors to implement energy efficiency measures perceived high tcs related to contract negotiation and liability risks slightly reduced the low trading level the scale of tcs was estimated to be around 10 and 30 of total investments costs for the lighting and insulation segments respectively the results indicate that despite the presence and scale of tcs the eecl scheme generated energy savings that yielded net societal benefits estimated financial benefits range from 0 6 to 6 p kwh for insulation and lighting savings respectively when avoided external costs due to electricity savings are included estimated economic benefits range from 3 to 8 p kwh several lessons from the eecl can be drawn for twc schemes among others it is found that informative policy instruments to raise awareness among end users are critical if a twc scheme is to deliver cost effective energy savings in all the nature and scale of tcs under twc schemes will differ because of a number of endogenous and exogenous determinants c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved less

shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis abstract for three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency the first main discussion is about the way of modeling bad undesirables as inputs or outputs or by transformation functions the second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs in addition we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology in this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign we argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal dual economic interpretation finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the law of one price loop rule

does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice an overview of the issues abstract payments for environmental services pes have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to translate external non market values of the environment into real financial incentives for local actors to provide environmental services es in this introductory paper we set the stage for the rest of this special issue of ecological economics by reviewing the main issues arising in pes design and implementation and discussing these in the light of environmental economics we start with a discussion of pes definition and scope we proceed to review some of the principal dimensions and design characteristics of pes programs and then analyze how pes compares to alternative policy instruments finally we examine in detail two important aspects of pes programs their effectiveness and their distributional implications pes is not a silver bullet that can be used to address any environmental problem but a tool tailored to address a specific set of problems those in which ecosystems are mismanaged because many of their benefits are externalities from the perspective of ecosystem managers pes is based on the beneficiary pays rather than the polluter pays principle and as such is attractive in settings where es providers are poor marginalized landholders or powerful groups of actors an important distinction within pes is between user financed pes in which the buyers are the users of the es and government financed pes in which the buyers are others typically the government acting on behalf of es users in practice pes programs differ in the type and scale of es demand the payment source the type of activity paid for the performance measure used as well as the payment mode and amount the effectiveness and efficiency of pes depends crucially on program design

bridging the industrial energy efficiency gap assessing the evidence from the italian white certificate scheme the italian white certificate scheme is the main national policy instrument to incentivise energy efficiency of the industrial sector with savings from white certificates amounting to 2 of italy s 2012 primary energy consumption the mechanism sets binding energy saving targets on electricity and gas distributors with at least 50 000 clients and includes a voluntary opt in model for participation from other parties this paper investigates and assesses the elements of the scheme that help overcome several barriers to deliver industrial energy efficiency results from a survey conducted among leading experts indicate that the italian system provides a strong financial incentive to energy efficiency investments covering a significant share of investment costs and thus reducing payback time moreover the scheme fosters the development of energy service companies escos which are key to developing installing and arranging finance for projects on the ground in conjunction with other policies the mechanism also raises awareness of energy efficiency investment opportunities thus helping overcome the market failure of insufficient information core challenges remain including tackling regulatory uncertainty and improving access to finance

liquidity constraints and deforestation the limitations of payments for ecosystem services abstract a popular environmental policy is to pay forest owners for avoiding deforestation on their land this is an example of payments for ecosystem services pes this paper shows that liquidity constraints can limit the effectiveness of pes programs if an individual would have cut down trees to sell them his opportunity costs are more front loaded than the stream of pes income if credit constrained he might decline the program even if the net present value npv of the pes income exceeds the npv of his opportunity costs i present evidence consistent with this prediction using data on forest owners in uganda

alternative measures of environmental technology structure in dea an application abstract the nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea literature on environmental efficiency ee considers handling undesirable outputs in two alternative ways either in their original forms with the assumption that these are weakly disposable or in various translated forms with the assumption that these are strongly disposable choosing a particular approach implies adoption of a particular distinct treatment of undesirable outputs and hence yields a distinct set of ee estimates to explore the effects of the interplay between choice of ee measure and specific treatment of undesirable outputs this paper attempts to generate all possible output oriented ee measures based on these two alternative approaches furthermore guided by the argument that slacks are important in identifying properly the efficiency behavior of firms it proposes two new alternative slacks based formulations of ee one based on the range directional model and the other on the generalized proportional distance function model using a confected data set of ten firms and a real life data set of 22 oecd countries our empirical analysis reveals that first ee scores are influenced not only by the choice of disposability assumption for undesirable outputs but also by the way these are treated in various translated forms second the choice of any particular treatment of undesirable outputs plays no role in influencing the rankings of firms and third our two new alternative ee formulations are at the least viable alternatives to existing ee measures in ranking firms according to their eco efficiency behavior

dea approach for unified efficiency measurement assessment of japanese fossil fuel power generation this study discusses a new dea data envelopment analysis approach to measure the unified operational and environmental efficiency of energy firms it is widely known that they produce not only desirable good outputs e g electricity but also undesirable bad outputs e g co2 as a result of their plant operations the proposed approach incorporates an output separation desirable and undesirable outputs for the performance evaluation of energy firms in addition to the output separation this study separates inputs into energy and non energy inputs consequently the proposed approach incorporates not only the output separation but also the input separation within a computational framework of dea non radial measurement this study compares the proposed approach with other previous dea approaches used for the performance evaluation of energy firms after the methodological comparison this study applies the proposed approach for measuring the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation this empirical study confirms that the implementation of kyoto protocol 2005 has not been effective on the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation during the observed period 2004 2008 although the empirical result is inconsistent with the current japanese environmental policy under kyoto protocol it contains policy implications for guiding the future direction of japanese environmental policy on the electric power industry

where to place the saving obligation energy end users or suppliers abstract obligations to save energy differentiate among other features by obliged parties these are obligations on energy suppliers and energy end users supplier obligations have been introduced in north america europe and australia under supplier obligations energy suppliers have to comply with mandatory energy saving targets and thus they implement directly or via third parties energy efficiency projects on their clients premises or they decide to trade certified project savings if this option is envisaged by their obligation scheme in several emerging schemes such as the uk carbon reduction commitment crc energy efficiency scheme the tokyo emission trading scheme or the perform achieve and trade pat scheme in india the obligation to reduce energy consumption is placed on large end users directly and end users are allowed to trade emissions allowances or energy saving certificates the paper starts with presenting these two conceptually different ways for introducing energy saving obligations then it analyses advantages and disadvantages of end users obligations compared to suppliers obligations the preliminary conclusion of the paper is that supplier obligations seem to be well suited for the residential sector but end user saving obligations may offer advantages when it comes to the industrial and commercial sectors

voluntary agreements with white certificates for energy efficiency improvement as a hybrid policy instrument in this paper we examine the implementation of a combined policy scheme that consists of a traditional instrument the voluntary agreements vas and an innovative one the white certificates whc the basic structure of this scheme is that energy suppliers who undertake an energy efficiency obligation under a white certificate scheme can make use of voluntary actions to enhance investments in innovative energy savings projects energy suppliers and other market parties can additionally or in parallel participate in voluntary agreements and set energy efficiency targets for fulfilling their voluntary agreement target these market parties can receive tax exemptions or receive white certificates that they can sell in the market transaction costs and baseline definition for demonstrating energy efficiency improvement deserve special attention this policy can assist a country to enhance energy efficiency improvement while it stimulates innovation cost effectiveness can be higher than the case of stand alone policy instruments since more financing options are available for more expensive projects nevertheless the added value of the scheme lies more in the implementation of innovative measures for enhanced energy efficiency furthermore market parties can discover more business opportunities in energy efficiency and establish a green image hence an integrated scheme should achieve higher political acceptability

white and green comparison of market based instruments to promote energy efficiency the white and green project completed under the eu save programme reviewed policies and measures to promote energy efficiency which involved analysing the experience with instruments that are already implemented and assessing innovative instruments that are proposed in particular the practicability of using white certificates energy efficiency along the same lines as green certificates renewable energy was explored several of the policies and measures were simulated using technical economic model of the markal family the results show that by 2020 it is possible to increase energy effiency by 15 at no cost without taking externalities into account if externalities are considered an increase of 30 35 with respect to the business as usual scenario is justified the wealth of information obtained through the models and analysis provides a set of recommendations for policy makers including 1 the need for closer co ordination between energy policies and environmental and climate policies 2 the opportunity to establish more ambitious targets for energy efficiency 3 the scope for increased eu co ordination 4 the extension of white certificates to the medium and low energy intensive industries 5 the need to support white certificates with accompanying actions such as running information campaigns promoting energy service companies and providing dedicated credit lines 6 the need to develop similar instruments for transport and 7 the continuing need for energy research and development c 2005 published by elsevier ltd

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

how much market do market based instruments create an analysis for the case of white certificates in the context of economic instruments for more energy efficiency and climate protection tradable certificates have been investigated for renewable energy and for a number of emissions in contrast tradable energy efficiency or white certificates have only lately been considered as a market based tool to foster energy efficiency as compared to standards and labelling for example theoretically there is little doubt about the advantages in practice however some fundamental problems arise critical issues are the design of an efficient artificial market for white certificates its compatibility with the european emissions trading system the identification of a suitable target group for an energy efficiency obligation and the measurement of energy savings as compared to a reference use of energy we use the theoretical framework of transaction cost economics to elaborate these issues we conclude that transaction costs and investment specificity will restrict markets for white certificates in practise long term contracts rather than spot trade will be the prevailing form of governance for energy efficiency investments

non parametric productivity analysis with undesirable outputs an application to the canadian pulp and paper industry this article extends the chavas cox approach to non parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology inner and outer non parametric technology bounds are constructed the methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the canadian pulp and paper industry conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth further there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on dea methods copyright 2001 oxford university press

markets for energy efficiency exploring the implications of an eu wide tradable white certificate scheme recent developments in european energy policy reveal an increasing interest in implementing the so called tradable white certificate twc schemes to improve energy efficiency based on three evaluation criteria cost effectiveness environmental effectiveness and distributional equity this paper analyses the implications of implementing a european wide twc scheme targeting the household and commercial sectors using a bottom up model quantitative results show significant cost effective potentials for improvements ca 1400 twh in cumulative energy savings by 2020 with the household sector gas and space heating representing most of the twc supply in terms of eligible sector fuel and energy service demand respectively if a single market price of negative externalities is considered a societal costeffective potential of energy savings above 30 compared to the baseline is observed in environmental terms the resulting greenhouse gas emission reductions are around 200mt co2 eq by 2010 representing nearly 60 of the eu kyoto target from the qualitative perspective several embedded ancillary benefits are identified e g employment generation improved comfort level reduced fuel poverty security of energy supply whereas an eu wide twc increases liquidity and reduces the risks ofmarket power autarky compliance strategies may be expected in order to capture co benefits nationally cross subsidies could occur due to investment recovery mechanisms and there is a risk that effects may be regressive for low income households assumptions undertaken by the modelling approach strongly indicate that high effectiveness of other policy instruments is needed for an eu wide twc scheme to be cost effective less

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

energy saving instrument escerts in india abstract there exists a large potential in india as far as achievement of energy efficiency is concerned and it is up to the indian policy makers regulators and obligated entities to ensure that india realizes this potential to the fullest a deep commitment towards this effect is not only beneficial for the country as a whole through reduction in its carbon foot print and reduced dependence on fuel imports but will also increase the competitive edge of our industries vis a vis other countries one of the instruments for improving the overall energy efficiency that has emerged in recent times is energy saving certificates escerts the staying power of european examples in italy uk and france has demonstrated that escerts can help initiate more efficiency projects this paper discusses escerts as an instrument for reducing the energy intensity of the high energy intensive indian industries under the light of the energy conservation act 2001 and perform achieve and trade scheme under nmeee and suggests a way forward for the escerts market in india

output and attribute based carbon regulation under uncertainty abstract output based carbon regulations such as fuel economy standards and the rate based standards in the clean power plan create well known incentives to inefficiently increase output similar distortions are created by attribute based regulations this paper demonstrates that despite these distortions output and attribute based standards can always yield strictly greater expected welfare than flat emission standards given uncertainty in demand for output or attributes assuming locally constant marginal damages for fuel economy standards the welfare maximizing amount of attribute or mileage basing is likely small relative to current policy for the electricity sector however an intensity standard may yield greater expected welfare than a flat standard

energy efficiency services for residential buildings market situation and existing potentials in the european union although a substantial economic energy saving potential exists in the residential sector of the european union the energy efficiency service ees market is much less developed in this market segment than in other demand sectors e g the industry or the public service sector this paper presents an analysis of the current situation and existing potentials for future expansion a specific analysis methodology has been developed and applied by a research consortium in 18 eu countries this methodology has mostly built upon an extensive review of the existing literature and on interviews of a large number of acknowledged experts its application has allowed identifying encouraging development trends in specific market segments where the possibility of aggregating the ees demand or of exploiting good relationships with customers have created interesting investment opportunities these trends have been observed in particular in germany denmark france flanders be hungary romania and uk the assessment performed has also allowed discussing a series of strategies and policy measures that can be adopted to overcome existing barriers to market development the general conclusion drawn in the paper is that energy efficiency policies supporting ees markets in the residential sector are highly needed although eu policies have typically a limited direct impact they can increase trust into eess and ees providers at the national level a stronger collaboration of governments or local administrations with banks to finance eess is still very necessary in many eu countries

energy supplier obligations and white certificate schemes comparative analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the european union eu have introduced market based policy portfolios based on quantified energy savings obligations on energy distributors or suppliers possibly coupled with certification of project based energy savings via white certificates and the option to trade the certificates or obligations the paper provides an up to date review and analysis of results to date of white certificate schemes in the eu in the eu supplier obligations and white certificate schemes have delivered larger savings than originally expected with obliged companies exceeding targets and in some cases at cost below what policy makers have anticipated supplier obligations foster the uptake of standardised energy efficiency actions often targeting smaller energy users residential sector lowering the transaction costs and contributing to market transformation the role of certificate trading is more ambiguous trading can bring benefits where the target is set sufficiently high with respect to the energy saving potential in the sectors covered theoretically trading may be better suited for broader systems with comprehensive coverage but even in smaller schemes trading may reduce the transaction costs of compliance for obliged actors without sufficient expertise on end use energy efficiency yet trading increases the administrative cost ratio of energy saving obligations

radial and non radial decompositions of luenberger productivity indicator with an illustrative application abstract viewing slacks as one possible source of inefficiency and that inputs have differential importance in the production process this paper develops based on the directional russell measure of inefficiency the non radial luenberger indicator this indicator is then shown as the sum of the individual input specific luenberger indicators the luenberger indicator and its various input specific indicators are also then shown as the composite measure of efficiency change and technical change this decomposition enables the researcher to empirically examine the contributions of each factor input towards the productivity change and its components efficiency change and technical change our proposed decomposition scheme is then empirically illustrated to analyze the eco productivity performance behavior of the 22 oecd countries during the period 1995 2004 our results indicate that first the productivity change estimates yielded from the non radial luenberger indicator are different from those yielded from its radial counterpart when slacks are present second most of these countries are found experiencing productivity growth due to technical progress alone and finally as regards the order of input specific contributions towards productivity growth capital contributes the most followed by savings in emissions and labor respectively

policy watch corporate average fuel economy standards initially the minimum corporate average fuel economy cafe program was promoted as a policy to reduce u s vulnerability to oil shocks in the past two years however concern about global warming has resulted in new political pressures to raise cafe once again to reduce the growth in u s emissions of carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas in this paper i do not attempt to provide a detailed critique of these two objectives i simply take the goals as given and draw upon estimates from the empirical literature to show that cafe is a very costly instrument for achieving them in addition i compare the costs of meeting the same objectives through a fuel or carbon tax

coal fires fresh air and the hardy british a historical view of domestic energy efficiency and thermal comfort in britain fuel poverty has been most commonly researched in the uk although it is experienced in other parts of europe to varying degrees boardman 1991 showed that energy inefficient buildings and heating systems are the most significant components of fuel poverty and highlighted the legacy of older buildings in this country that remain the majority of those now recognised as hard to treat this paper considers the historical context for fuel poverty as a particularly british phenomenon it examines claims that this is due to the mild climate and low indoor temperature expectations it is concluded that there are significant differences from the european situation the climate particularly its characteristic changeability has influenced building and heating methods and the low priority given to energy efficiency by legislators significantly economic priorities produced poor quality mass housing during the industrial revolution the availability of coal encouraged the use of open fires which demanded high ventilation rates the british do value warmth but older buildings designed for heating with radiant open fires are difficult to adapt to convective central heating lessons can be drawn for newly industrialised economies similarly producing poor quality mass housing with low priorities for energy efficiency

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations a review of european programmes abstract the economics of energy efficiency programmes have been subject to considerable academic debate lasting well over three decades now in this paper we contribute to this debate by reviewing the costs and benefits of a specific type of policy instrument that recently gained significant traction in europe energy efficiency obligations eeos following the introduction of the eu energy efficiency directive in 2012 the number of eeos in europe has grown from five schemes to now 16 eeos in operation or planned across the eu there is an emerging body of evidence on the costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations covering a wider range of eu countries which offers an opportunity to improve our understanding of the economics of energy efficiency obligations in this paper we draw on this new data and provide a a comparative analysis of the costs and benefits of eeos in a number of european countries b discuss the uncertainties and challenges around calculating the costs and benefits of energy efficiency obligations and c provide a categorisation of the multiple benefits often overlooked in cost benefit analyses

short run pricing strategies to increase corporate average fuel economy short run pricing strategies to increase corporate average fuel economy i introduction in 1974 the average fuel efficiency of new automobiles sold in the united states reached a low of 14 2 miles per gallon mpg close on the heels of the arab opec oil embargo of 1973 74 and the ensuing petroleum price shocks congress passed the 1975 energy policy and conservation act the act required each manufacturer to meet sales weighted corporate average fuel economy cafe standards beginning with 18 mpg in 1978 and gradually increasing each year to 27 5 mpg in 1985 figure 1 the expressed purpose of the cafe standards was to stimulate the development of technology to improve fuel efficiency the possibility of raising the relative prices of the least energy efficient models as a strategy to meet the standards was considered but only as a last resort 1 although there continues to be intense debate as to whether fuel price increases or the cafe regulations drove the fuel economy improvements of the 1970s and 80s several studies agree that improvements in automotive engineering and design rather than pricing strategies played an overwhelmingly dominant role 2 no empirical evidence supports the effectiveness of using pricing strategies to increase the overall level of automotive fuel economy every year since 1985 automobile manufacturers have successfully petitioned the national highway traffic safety administration which determines the level of the cafe standard to reduce the target from 27 5 to 26 mpg in 1986 88 and 26 5 mpg in 1989 in each case at least one manufacturer argued that it would be unable to meet the original target with its planned product offerings and would have to resort to other strategies that would result in unacceptable economic costs this paper explores a method of estimating the costs of achieving fuel economy goals when pricing strategies are used to alter the distribution of sales the method employs the closed form equation for consumers surplus derived from the multinational logit model of discrete choice discussed by mcfadden 1973 and assumes that manufacturers must bear the full cost of meeting the fuel economy target the estimated cost represents an upper bound on the losses firms would incur by setting prices to minimize loss of profit using econometric estimates of the sensitivity of vehicle choice to vehicle price together with market shares and fuel efficiencies for 1986 i estimate the costs of short term improvements in average fuel economy using pricing strategies for general motors ford and chrysler minor adjustments of up to 1 mpg cost 1 2 percent of the price of a 10 000 car for improvements of 2 mpg or more however pricing strategies become a costly way to improve fuel economy the technique also estimates the market shares for each car line that correspond to the pricing solution it thereby identifies which car lines would be most affected the technique produces precise price changes and market shares for each car line readers should not place too much weight on the apparent precision but should consider the estimates as an approximation the usefulness of which lies in measuring the difficulty of meeting fuel economy targets via pricing strategies alone one can compare the size of these estimates to the fines for failing to meet the standards 50 per mpg per car or to typical manufacturer rebates to stimulate sales often 100 to 2 000 per car ii a formulation of the pricing problem faced with the cafe requirements a firm can respond with engineering and design improvements or by raising the prices of less efficient models and lowering the prices of those that exceed the standard technological improvements generally require a lead time of three to five years very large fluctuations in fuel prices have occurred in far shorter perids figure 1 creating the risk that a manufacturer s product offering could be out of step with the market

payments for environmental services in costa rica costa rica pioneered the use of the payments for environmental services pes approach in developing countries by establishing a formal country wide program of payments the psa program the psa program has worked hard to develop mechanisms to charge the users of environmental services for the services they receive it has made substantial progress in charging water users and more limited progress in charging biodiversity and carbon sequestration users because of the way it makes payments to service providers using approaches largely inherited from earlier programs however the psa program has considerable room for improvement in the efficiency with which it generates environmental services with experience many of these weaknesses are being gradually corrected as the psa program evolves towards a much more targeted and differentiated program an important lesson is the need to be flexible and to adapt to lessons learned and to changing circumstances

comparison of energy efficiency subsidies under market power abstract energy efficiency subsidies are very popular all over the world for energy conservation and emission reduction by using a game theory model this article captures the differences of two important types of subsidies fixed subsides and output subsidies some interesting conclusions are achieved and some social phenomena are rationally explained firstly increasing total subsidies increases the number of subsidized firms moreover fiercer competition produces more firms to be subsidized thus the number of subsidized firms depends on the competition in this industry secondly output subsidies achieve a higher consumer surplus and a lower producer surplus than do fixed subsidies therefore consumers like output subsidies while firms like fixed subsidies finally output subsidies achieve a more favorable environmental impact and subsidize more firms than do fixed subsidies that is the environmental effects of output subsidies dominate those of fixed subsidies in summary based on both the effects on the environment and the consumer surplus this article supports output subsidies and explains the advantages of output subsidies

residential energy use abstract the energy information administration recently published data they collected from the national interim energy consumption survey niecs niecs includes detailed information on 4081 individual households demographic characteristics energy related features of the structure heating equipment and appliances therein recent conservation actions taken by the household and fuel consumption and costs for the april 1978 march 1979 one year period this data set provides a new and valuable resource for analysis we summarized and analysed the niecs data on household energy consumption total energy use electricity use and use of the primary space heating fuel the regression equations constructed explain roughly half the variation in energy use among households these equations contain 10 or fewer independent variables the most important of which are fuel price year house was built floor area and heating degree days

efficiency based rank assessment for electric power industry a combined use of data envelopment analysis dea and dea discriminant analysis da abstract this study discusses a combined use of dea data environment analysis and dea da discriminant analysis to determine the efficiency based rank of energy firms this type of performance evaluation is important because we often have a difficulty in accessing a large sample on energy firms to derive reliable empirical results the proposed approach is useful in dealing with such a limited number of energy firms often found in previous dea studies on energy industries in the world the proposed approach uses dea to classify energy firms into efficient and inefficient groups based upon their efficiency scores then it utilizes dea da to assess their efficiency scores and ranks in this stage we can find an adjusted efficiency score for each energy firm the proposed approach provides us with the following analytical capabilities all of which cannot be found in a conventional use of dea in assessing energy firms first the proposed dea approach can avoid zero in all multipliers on efficient energy firms by incorporating scsc strong complementary slackness condition so that it can handle an occurrence of multiple reference sets and multiple projections the dea result classifies all energy firms into efficient and inefficient groups second dea da applied to the two groups evaluates all energy firms by an industry wide evaluation not depending upon a limited number of efficient energy firms in a reference set as found in a conventional use of dea the analytical capability can reduce the number of efficient energy firms third the proposed approach can provide their efficiency based ranking scores finally we can conduct a rank sum test based upon their ranking scores to obtain a statistical inference as an application this study uses the proposed approach to examine the performance of japanese electric power industry we find two economic implications one of the two implications is that no major change has occurred in the operational performance of japanese electric power industry because of japanese sluggish economy from 2005 to 2009 the other implication indicates that there are strategic differences in the operation of japanese electric power firms after the liberalization

environmental assessment by dea radial measurement u s coal fired power plants in iso independent system operator and rto regional transmission organization abstract the economic concept of weak and strong disposability on undesirable outputs dominated the previous discussions on dea data envelopment analysis radial measurement for environmental assessment this study reexamines the economic concept from the perspective of corporate strategies on how to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the economic concept of disposability conventionally accepted by production economists is replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy that a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector the firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation meanwhile the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified operational and environmental performance by utilizing new technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two types of disposability this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability by dea radial models to document the practicality of the proposed dea environmental assessment this study applies it to compare the performance of u s coal fired power plants under isos rtos independent system operators regional transmission organizations with that of the other power plants not belonging to any organization this study identifies two empirical findings one of the two findings is that the latter coal fired power plants outperform the former power plants belonging to isos rtos in terms of three efficiency measures this result indicates that isos and rtos do not provide an effective coordination for coal fired power plants at the level that can be found in the other power plants the other finding is that there is technological improvement in the operation of coal fired power plants

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

tariff regulation with energy efficiency goals we study the optimal tariff structure that could induce a regulated utility to promote energy efficiency by its customers given that it is privately informed about the effectiveness of its effort on demand reduction the regulator should optimally offer a menu of incentive compatible two part tariffs if the firm s energy efficiency activities have a high impact on demand reduction the consumer should pay a high fixed fee but a low per unit price approximating the tariff structure to a decoupling policy which strengthens the firm s incentives to pursue energy conservation instead if the firm s effort to adopt energy efficiency actions is scarcely effective the tariff is characterized by a low fixed fee but a high price per unit of energy consumed thus shifting the incentives for energy conservation on consumers the optimal tariff structure also depends on the cost of the consumer s effort in case the consumer can also adopt energy efficiency measures and on the degree of substitutability between the consumer s and the firm s efforts

an ex ante evaluation of a white certificates scheme in the netherlands a case study for the household sector increased efficiency of energy demand is generally recognized as a very cost effective strategy to reduce energy requirements and the related environmental impacts e g the greenhouse effect in order to improve energy efficiency the use of innovative market mechanisms such as the white certificates whc has been proposed the basic idea underlying this policy instrument is that specific energy saving targets are set for energy suppliers or energy distributors these requirements must be fulfilled in a predefined time frame the focus of this paper is on the effect on energy efficiency improvement on the behavior of the end consumers and the market of energy efficiency measures furthermore we study the possible effects of whc in the netherlands by means of a theoretical analysis and an empirical bottom up model we compare concrete energy efficient technologies in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency improvement in combination with existing dutch policies for energy efficiency improvement in the built environment the contribution of this innovative scheme could enhance the accomplishment of energy efficiency targets in this paper two packages of energy saving measures of a whc scheme are studied for dutch households the costs of these technologies are estimated through the use of different discount rates which imply overcoming of the market barriers through the use of the whc a scheme that includes all available technologies as flexible options appears as a realistic solution and can generate cost effectively up to 180 pj primary energy savings and 4550 m cumulative net savings in the year 2020 at a discount rate of 5 under the precondition that the policy and administrative costs can be kept low

european policy approaches to promote servicizing servicizing is a business model that holds the potential to support a shift towards more sustainable production and consumption by selling to the consumer the product s function rather than the material product itself this can offer direct environmental benefits by reducing the material and energy intensity of market transactions servicizing based business offers are starting emerging on the market but public policy support could accelerate this process this article is a review of the state of the art in the field and of relevant policy initiatives addressing servicizing conducted for that project it aims to explore where and how public policy supports or steers markets toward servicizing solutions the article examines the development of the servicizing concept and identifies where and when policy support for servicizing is merited it also reviews several existing policy instruments to support servicizing on european national and local municipal levels policy initiatives include r d support energy efficiency obligation schemes chemicals waste and transportation policies the conclusions focus on the possibilities and limits of public policy support and promotion of servicizing

social equity issues in the distribution of feed in tariff policy benefits a cross sectional analysis from england and wales using spatial census and policy data abstract the feed in tariff has become a popular policy instrument globally for deploying clean energy often involving substantial public spending commitments yet relatively little attention has been paid to how payments made under this policy type get distributed across socioeconomic groups this paper links information on individual domestic photovoltaic pv installations registered under the feed in tariff for england and wales to spatially organised census data this makes it possible to observe which socioeconomic groups are benefitting most and least under the policy comparing the observed benefit distribution to a counterfactual distribution of perfect equality a moderate to high level of inequality is found cross sectional regressions suggest that settlement density home ownership status physical dwelling type local information spillovers and household social class shaped this outcome greater sensitivity to these factors in policy design could improve distributional outcomes under feed in tariff policies in england and wales and beyond

poor energy poor energy saving obligations distributional effects and the malfunction of the priority group abstract the european union s energy efficiency directive forces the member states to install energy efficiency obligation schemes in a first step this paper identifies the distributional effects caused by this policy instrument which occur when energy efficiency measures are implemented phase of delivery and when its costs are passed on to the society phase of financing in the phase of delivery suppliers prefer to implement measures at the property of those customers which enable them to minimise their costs i e enterprises with large energy savings potentials and high income households who can contribute a greater share of the costs in the phase of financing distributional effects occur when the costs of the scheme are passed on from the obliged suppliers to their customers primarily affecting less competitive customers i e households and small enterprises in the british scheme the so called priority group was installed in order to decrease distributional effects and to support energy poor households in a second step this paper evaluates approaches to reduce energy poverty and indicates ineffectiveness high transaction costs and incoherency with the aims of the obligation scheme alternative approaches to tackle energy poverty are briefly described

definitions of fuel poverty implications for policy abstract this paper outlines why the definition of fuel poverty is important in policy formulation and describes how the government s current definitions evolved from the original concept it discusses the determination of income and fuel costs and the possibilities for a relative and common european measure it examines problems inherent in assessing fuel costs as a percentage of income and puts forward the arguments for a budget standard approach the paper illustrates how the size of the problem depends on the definition and chosen threshold and suggests advantages for a rating scale it illustrates how the income composition and thresholds also govern the distribution of the target populations and the relative importance of the main causal factors and examines the consequent policy implications it explores the definition of vulnerable households and the importance of severity and questions whether the uk fuel poverty strategy is targeted at households least able to afford their fuel costs as the name implies or primarily those at risk from excess winter and summer mortality and morbidity finally after examining the role of supplementary indicators it looks at the opportunities for changing the definition and comments on the government review of the definition and targets

examining the drivers of total factor productivity change with an illustrative example of 14 eu countries abstract based on the different models developed by korhonen and luptacik korhonen p luptacik m 2004 eco efficiency analysis of power plants an extension of data envelopment analysis european journal of operational research 154 437 46 this contribution centers on the development of an intertemporal comparison in order to analyze eco efficiency change over time in this setup two model variants by korhonen and luptacik 2004 are used in order to provide deeper insights concerning the driving forces for the change in the eco efficiency which bias in technical change can be observed is it more input saving or pollution reducing for illustration purposes the proposed approach is used to analyze the performance of 14 countries of the european union for the period 1995 2004 an average eco productivity growth of 22 is observed the estimated contribution of improved use of input is 20 and that of reduced relation of greenhouse gas emissions is 23 therefore it is concluded that on average the eco productivity growth is more driven by improved environmental conditions

compliance choice analysis for india s thermal power sector in the market based energy efficiency regime abstract india has recently introduced a market based scheme perform achieve and trade to realize emission reduction by enhancing energy efficiency in the case of thermal power plants investment in energy efficiency projects using clean coal and buying energy saving certificates are the available compliance options for complying with the scheme these options are associated with specific forms of cash flows that depend on the uncertain price of energy saving certificates and clean coal premium this paper uses a monte carlo based decision tree approach to find the optimal compliance options for an efficient and a less efficient thermal power plant the decision tree evaluates different sequences of compliance options in three consecutive pat cycles by using the discounted cash flows and their associated probabilities the study shows that investment in energy efficiency is optimal in the first pat cycle for the inefficient plant only the threshold certificate price for the efficient plant is substantially higher than the inefficient plant implying that the real efficiency improvement is likely to take place in the low efficiency plants the study also indicates that the investment in high efficiency plants is not optimal over a wide range of certificate prices and the incremental cost of clean coal

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

rewarding energy savings rather than energy efficiency exploring the concept of a feed in tariff for energy savings abstract financial incentives are important for overcoming certain market barriers to improved energy efficiency and for the adoption of energy efficient technologies financial incentives are mainly focused on the introduction of specific technologies rather than behavioural change while the declared goal of financial support schemes very often is to save energy or reduce harmful emissions rather than to foster new technologies per se it is often encountered that such financial support for energy efficient technologies may not ensure real energy savings due to the rebound effect and various market barriers in the area of renewable energies it is common for financial support to be given to power producers for the verified production of renewable electricity in the form of a guaranteed financial incentive feed in tariff in the energy efficiency policy research little attention has been paid to the possible use of a feed in tariff in the form of a financial incentive based on the kwh saved by the end user this paper discusses the possible setup of a feed in tariff designed to reward energy savings

rationality of energy efficiency improvement targets under the pat scheme in india a case of thermal power plants abstract the market based perform achieve and trade scheme was introduced in india to enhance the energy efficiency of energy intensive sectors and for thermal power plants by reducing their specific energy consumption within the framework of a tradable certificate scheme international experience suggests that effectiveness of such schemes is greatly influenced by the assigned targets of the obligated units setting rational targets is thus a key aspect of successful implementation of the scheme in the present study we examine the rationality of the targets set for the power sector of india based on comparing it with energy saving potential of the plants and the targets assigned to the respective plants data envelopment analysis models are used to determine relative efficiency and energy saving potential the study results indicate that in most cases i the targets are much less than the actual potentials of the thermal power sector ii there exist substantial inefficiencies within the system in both energy use and managerial dexterity and iii if the sector realizes its full potential then the energy saving certificate market may witness a surplus of 4 7 million certificates on account of thermal power sector alone

the cost effectiveness of conservation payments international donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low income nations the most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities such as ecotourism that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product we demonstrate that paying for ecosystem protection directly can be far more cost effective although direct payment initiatives have imposing institutional requirements we argue that all conservation initiatives face similar challenges thus conservation practitioners would be well advised to implement the first best direct payment approach rather than a secondbest policy option an empirical example illustrates the spectacular cost savings that can be realized by direct payment initiatives

getting more carbon bang for your buck in acre state brazil abstract acre state in brazil is at the forefront of efforts to institutionalize jurisdictional scale policies that aim to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd given limited redd funds and uncertain returns from alternative land uses this paper estimates the minimum incentive payment acre s government would have to pay forest landowners in each of its 22 municipalities to ensure forest conservation despite lower profits but with lower conversion costs and more stable returns over time relative to corn and coffee production cattle pasture generates the highest returns in 19 municipalities municipalities are ranked according to their relative policy costs a ranking which is compared to the distribution of forest carbon stocks across acre finally the relative cost per tonne of carbon is derived which enables the identification of a group of 13 municipalities with the greatest potential for carbon bang for a given buck

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

the effectiveness of payments for environmental services we adopt a theory based approach to synthesize research on the effectiveness of payments for environmental services in achieving environmental objectives and socio economic co benefits in varying contexts our theory of change builds on established conceptual models of impact pathways and highlights the role of 1 contextual dimensions e g political institutional and socio economic conditions spatial heterogeneity in environmental service values and provision costs and interactions with pre existing policies and 2 scheme design e g payment type and level contract length targeting and differentiation of payments in determining environmental and socio economic outcomes to shed light on the overall effectiveness of payment schemes and its determinants we review counterfactual based empirical evaluations comparative analyses of case studies and meta analyses our review suggests that program effectiveness often lags behind the expectations of early theorists however we also find that theory has advanced sufficiently to identify common reasons for why payment schemes fail or succeed moreover payment schemes are often rolled out along with other policy instruments in so called policy mixes advances in theory and evaluation research are needed to improve our understanding of how such policy mixes interact with the targeted social ecological systems 2017

the impact of institutional and land use change on local incomes in chilean patagonia many developing rural economies depend on natural capital stocks for generating income and wealth however common property natural resources are often over exploited one method of solving over ex

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis with undesirable outputs environmental economics and natural resources group at wageningen university in the netherlands weak disposability of outputs means that firms can abate harmful emissions by decreasing the activity level modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis has caused some confusion this article identifies a dilemma in these approaches conventional formulations implicitly and unintentionally assume all firms apply uniform abatement factors however it is usually cost effective to abate emissions in those firms where the marginal abatement costs are lowest this article presents a simple formulation of weak disposability that allows for non uniform abatement factors and preserves the linear structure of the model

policy watch the economics of fuel economy standards one of the most hotly contested of all energy policy issues involves corporate average fuel economy or cafe standards for new cars and light duty trucks tighter standards would reduce gasoline consumption and hence both greenhouse gas emissions as well as this country s vulnerability to oil price shocks but they would also increase the price of new vehicles worsen traffic congestion and depending on how they are phased in possibly even reduce occupant safety these effects are amenable to economic analysis and we review the evidence to date bearing on this interesting and important question

automobile quality choice under pollution control regulation in this paper we develop a modified quality choice model to study the effects of various mobile source air pollution control regulations we have a single producer that supplies a fixed number of car types two but faces a spectrum of consumers differing in their valuation of car quality the car manufacturer chooses the quality levels of the two car types as well as the sales mix between the two types and the size of the market it wishes to supply by endogenizing both the sales mix and the market size while still allowing quality to be a choice variable we are able to more completely analyze the impact of any car pollution control regulation existing studies of this impact either focus on the model line adjustment response shifts in the quality array or on the price adjustment response changes in the sales mix and market size in allowing for both the model line and the price adjustment options we find that the corporate average fuel efficiency cafe standard is unambiguously welfare superior to the low emission vehicle quantity constraint lev and zero emission vehicle zev programs we also show that the effects of the cafe standard are not equivalent to those of a fuel tax as previously found and that for a given car pollution target the former is preferred to the latter

new directions for household energy efficiency evidence from the uk the market rarely delivers energy efficiency improvements spontaneously as there is no market push consumers are not providing a pull towards energy efficiency usually because they are ignorant of or indifferent to the range on the market or the energy implications of their purchases whilst consumers are concerned about climate change and generally understand the causal role of fossil fuels they believe either that they have done everything or that one person cannot make a difference without a positive design focus from manufacturers or a clear demand from consumers no part of the market will deliver energy efficiency naturally policy has to provide the drive within the uk the opportunities to introduce policies based on higher energy prices are constrained by the impact these have on low income households this means that product policy market transformation has to be the main delivery mechanism for domestic energy efficiency in the uk the policies adopted so far in the uk and eu have been successful with existing products but have not prevented the development of new profligate equipment this limited success demonstrates the need for european policy to be more forceful and for policy to involve engagement with manufacturers about the products they are planning to introduce to motivate consumers policy should focus on carbon and incorporate feedback without these developments and considerably more activity by the european commission and member states energy efficiency will not contribute its potential to the uk target of 60 reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050

energy efficiency in swedish industry a firm level data envelopment analysis this paper assesses energy efficiency in swedish industry using unique firm level panel data covering the years 2001 2008 the efficiency estimates are obtained for firms in 14 industrial sectors by using data envelopment analysis dea the analysis accounts for multi output technologies where undesirable outputs are produced alongside with the desirable output the results show that there was potential to improve energy efficiency in all the sectors and relatively large energy inefficiencies existed in small energy use industries in the sample period also we assess how the eu ets the carbon dioxide co2 tax and the energy tax affect energy efficiency by conducting a second stage regression analysis to obtain consistent estimates for the regression model we apply a modified input oriented version of the double bootstrap procedure of simar and wilson 2007 the results of the regression analysis reveal that the eu ets and the co2 tax did not have significant influences on energy efficiency in the sample period however the energy tax had a positive relation with the energy efficiency

efficiency assessment and benchmarking of thermal power plants in india abstract per capita consumption 1 of electricity in india is many folds lesser than canada usa australia japan chaina and world average even though total energy shortage 2 and peaking shortage 3 were recorded as 11 2 and 11 85 respectively in 2008 09 reflecting non availability of sufficient supply of electricity performance improvement of very small amount can lead to large contribution in financial terms which can be utilized for capacity addition to reduce demand supply gap coal fired thermal power plants are main sources of electricity in india in this paper relative technical efficiency of 60 coal fired power plants has been evaluated and compared using ccr and bcc models of data envelopment analysis target benchmark of input variables has also been evaluated performance comparison includes small versus medium versus large power plants and also state owned versus central owned versus private owned result indicates poor performance of few power plants due to over use of input resources finding reveals that efficiency of small power plants is lower in comparison to medium and large category and also performance of state owned power plants is comparatively lower than central and privately owned study also suggests different measures to improve technical efficiency of the plants

from demand side management dsm to energy efficiency services a finnish case study abstract energy conservation is expected to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and energy security traditionally energy companies have had strong role in providing demand side management dsm measures however after energy market liberalization in europe energy companies dsm activities declined in response the eu issued directive 2006 32 ec on energy end use efficiency and energy services esd to motivate energy companies to promote energy efficiency and conservation closely followed by directive 2012 27 eu on energy efficiency eed requiring the setting up energy efficiency obligation schemes despite strong political and economic motivation energy companies struggle to develop energy efficiency services in liberalised energy markets due to conflicting institutional demands which arise from contradicting policy requirements and customer relations the main challenges in developing new innovative energy efficiency services evidenced by an in depth case study were 1 the unbundling of energy company operations which makes it difficult to develop services when the contribution of several business units is required and 2 the distrust among energy end users which renders the business logic of energy saving contract models self contradictory on the basis of the research avenues out of these dilemmas are suggested

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

a multi criteria evaluation framework for tradable white certificate schemes recent years have witnessed regained political momentum on energy efficiency and interest in establishing markets is growing as a result tradable white certificate twc schemes of differing design have been implemented in great britain italy and france much attention is being paid to justifying and evaluating such schemes in this paper we develop and apply a multi criteria framework for evaluating twc schemes an approach that attempts to cover their individual design features a broad evaluation is conducted regarding energy saving and environmental effectiveness economic efficiency cost effectiveness transaction costs political feasibility administrative burden and technical change the results show the design and performance of twc schemes to be case and context specific and generalisations are thus inappropriate this evaluation supports the cost effectiveness modelled for the british scheme and the assumption that a twc scheme is an economically efficient policy instrument for the other more complex twc schemes more data and experience are needed to judge their ex post merit on the whole the proposed multi criteria evaluation requires considerable data and complementary methods however the framework improves the understanding of the broad effects and attributes of twc schemes it deals with various empirical and normative aspects that can be applied in their evaluation

slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance we develop two slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance on the basis of environmental dea technology of the two measures one is a composite index with a higher discriminating power for modeling economic environmental performance and the other can be used to estimate the impacts of environmental regulations we apply the proposed measures to model the co2 emissions of 30 oecd countries from 1998 to 2002 and present the results obtained

incentives for conservation and quality improvement by public utilities the author examines the design of incentive programs to motivate regulated utilities to supply both basic service e g electricity supply local telephone service and service enhancements e g energy conservation services improved clarity and speed of voice communication the optimal regulatory programs are shown to vary greatly depending upon the information available to the regulator the price of the basic service may optimally be distorted above or below marginal cost to better motivate the supply of the service enhancement policy prescriptions are compared with current programs and proposals to promote energy conservation 35 refs 2 figs

fuel poverty and energy efficiency obligations a critical assessment of the supplier obligation in the uk energy efficiency obligations or white certificates are increasingly used to reduce carbon emissions while the energy efficiency obligations were originally intended as carbon reduction and not fuel poverty policies due to recognition of the potential for regressive outcomes they often include provisions for vulnerable and low income customers intuitively reducing carbon emissions and alleviating fuel poverty seem to be two sides of the same coin there are however considerable tensions between the two when addressed through energy efficiency obligations particularly arising from the potentially regressive impacts of rising energy prices resulting from such obligations but also the complexity of targeting fuel poor households and the implications for deliverability despite those tensions the uk government decided to use energy efficiency obligations the supplier obligation as the main policy for reducing fuel poverty in light of the proposals this paper provides an analysis of the main tensions between carbon reduction and fuel poverty alleviation within energy efficiency obligations outlines the fuel poverty provisions of the british supplier obligation assesses its rules for identifying the fuel poor and provides a critical analysis of the planned policy changes based on this analysis alternative approaches to targeting fuel poverty within future supplier obligations are proposed

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

estimating the cost savings and avoided co2 emissions in brazil by implementing energy efficient policies abstract investing more in renewable energy sources and using this in a rational and efficient way is vital for the sustainable growth of world energy efficiency ee will play an increasingly important role in future generations the aim of this work is to estimate how much the pnef national plan for energy efficiency launched by the brazilian government in 2011 will save over the next 5 years by avoiding the construction of additional power plants as well as the amount of the co2 emission the marginal operating cost is computed for medium term planning of the dispatching of power plants in the hydro thermal system using stochastic dynamic dual programming after incorporating stochastic energy efficiencies into the demand for electricity we demonstrate that even for a modest improvement in energy efficiency 1 in the optimistic scenario by comparison the new belo monte hydro electric plant will cost r 26 billion to be repaid over a 30 year period i e r 867 million in 5 years so in brazil ee policies are preferable to building a new power plant