renewable energy expansion in the chilean power market a dynamic general equilibrium modeling approach to determine co2 emission baselines abstract over the last decade a high dependency on carbon intensive fuels in the chilean power sector has led to environmental concerns particularly regarding rapid growth in co2 emissions more recently the power sector has experienced significant structural changes with a rapid expansion of renewables in the energy matrix and this trend is expected to cause significant variations in future co2 emission baseline scenarios to investigate the economy wide impact of renewable energy expansions in chile s energy mix this research based on a computable general equilibrium cge model examines different co2 emission baseline scenarios however because traditional cge modeling approaches cannot capture the impact of a sector s recent structural changes we present a step by step approach to incorporate different energy matrices from an external engineering bottom up model into the cge model the results indicate that the business as usual bau scenario in which structural changes are not considered significantly overstates expected emissions conversely considering structural changes in our cge model shows chile advancing towards its declared nationally determined contribution ndc to reduce greenhouse gas emissions furthermore the methodology implemented in the study has the advantage of being a simple integrated approach that is coherent with current modeling capacities in many developing contexts

separability functional form and regulatory policy in models of interfuel substitution abstract counter intuitive results such as positive own price elasticities have been found in some studies of interfuel substitution this paper examines three possible reasons for this problem first including energy materials in petroleum and coal aggregates is found to contribute to incorrect signs second the mathematical properties of the translog function contribute to concavity violations in contrast the linear logit model of cost shares is found to provide more sensible estimates of own price elasticities across alternative model specifications finally natural gas curtailment policies and environmental regulations are found to be significant factors influencing us industrial fuel demand although omission of these factors does not directly contribute to curvature violations

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

focus re productivity sustainable relations both between society and nature and between the genders abstract the paper is embedded in the multiplicity of discourses concerned with a viable sustainable development of society and its economy it makes a case for a mode of economic activity geared to systematically integrating production and reproduction processes its starting hypothesis is that the persistent constantly changing and expanding crises that weigh so heavily on modern societies above all the ecological crisis and the crisis of reproductive work have their common origin in the separation of production from reproduction constitutive for industrial modernity a reformulation of the category of re productivity the idea of the unity of and at the same time the distinction between production and reproduction in the economic process could set the stage for us to review today s crisis phenomena relocalize problems and in this way to develop new solutions for them a sustainable society would be in a position to grasp and shape the economy as a re productive regulative system with economic space constituted consciously as a socioecological action space

a three level static milp model for generation and transmission expansion planning we present a three level equilibrium model for the expansion of an electric network the lower level model represents the equilibrium of a pool based market the intermediate level represents the nash equilibrium in generation capacity expansion taking into account the outcomes on the spot market and the upper level model represents the anticipation of transmission expansion planning to the investment in generation capacity and the pool based market equilibrium the demand has been considered as exogenous and locational marginal prices are obtained as endogenous variables of the model the three level model is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming milp problem the model is applied to a realistic power system in chile to illustrate the methodology and proper conclusions are reached

impact of forecast errors on expansion planning of power systems with a renewables target abstract this paper analyzes the impact of production forecast errors on the expansion planning of a power system and investigates the influence of market design to facilitate the integration of renewable generation for this purpose we propose a programming modeling framework to determine the generation and transmission expansion plan that minimizes system wide investment and operating costs while ensuring a given share of renewable generation in the electricity supply unlike existing ones this framework includes both a day ahead and a balancing market so as to capture the impact of both production forecasts and the associated prediction errors within this framework we consider two paradigmatic market designs that essentially differ in whether the day ahead generation schedule and the subsequent balancing re dispatch are co optimized or not the main features and results of the model set ups are discussed using an illustrative four node example and a more realistic 24 node case study

the impact of intermittently renewable energy on italian wholesale electricity prices additional benefits or additional costs abstract most studies of the literature find that the development of renewable energy sources determines a decrease in the wholesale prices some authors use this finding to state that the current subsidies for renewable technologies cannot be considered as excessive by carrying out a hybrid analysis both simulation and ex post empirical analyses of the case of photovoltaic energy in italy this article demonstrates that this result cannot be generalised under market power an increase in pv production can provide benefits in terms of a wholesale price decrease only beyond a specific threshold and especially if combined with other effects otherwise it is likely that pv development could imply an increase in prices therefore on the one hand caution is necessary when using the estimated change in wholesale prices to evaluate the net cost for consumers of the supporting policies for renewables either the simulation based models or the full empirical analyses may be misleading on the other hand if decarbonisation is the main objective the energy policies should be designed in order to assure a deep and balanced penetration of the clean technologies regardless of their estimated transitory impact on wholesale prices and in the meantime reviewing the organisation of power markets

reconsidering the european regulation of merchant transmission investment in light of the third energy package the role of dominant generators the regulation of merchant transmission investment mti has become an important issue in the eu electricity sector subsequent to the granting of authorizations by european authorities to five merchant projects britned estlink t heeast west cables norger and recently a merchant line connecting italy and austria the creation of a new agency for the cooperation of energy regulators acer at the eu level which has decision making powers on mti therefore presents a unique opportunity to question and re design the current european policy this paper shows that the recent decisions concerning mti may suffer a strong bias against dominant electricity generators while incumbent transmission system operators tsos or new entrant tsos are generally favored by national regulators and the european commission ec this strategy is misguided as it fails to recognize both the new incentives of generators to develop mti and the conflict of interest between the regulated and non regulated activities of incumbent tsos letting dominant generators undertake mti is indeed generally beneficial as long as potential abuses of dominance are mitigated to deter possible anti competitive effects we propose a new and feasible allocation of regulatory powers based on a clear demarcation between the market monitoring powers of acer and the antitrust powers of the ec 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

iso net surplus collection and allocation in wholesale power markets under lmp this study uses five bus and 30 bus test cases to explore iso net surplus congestion rent collections and allocations in wholesale power markets with grid congestion managed by locational marginal prices lmps price sensitivity of demand and generator learning capabilities are taken as experimental treatment factors a key finding is that conditions resulting in greater generator capacity withholding hence higher and more volatile lmps also result in greater iso net surplus collections that can be substantial in size a key conclusion is that iso net surplus collections should be used pro actively to mitigate the conditions encouraging generator capacity withholding and hence high and volatile lmps rather than to provide ex post support for lmp payment offsets and lmp volatility risk hedging as is currently the norm

sustainability driven entrepreneurship principles of organization design abstract concern about whether the social ecological processes that provide for human wellbeing can be sustained has given rise to sustainable development as a broad social goal as a dynamic force for change entrepreneurship is increasingly expected to contribute to this goal this article reports on the results of an intensive empirical study investigating the organization design expertise necessary for sustainability driven entrepreneurs to succeed in a competitive market context results reveal five principles of organization design that diverge in important ways from the conventional principles of entrepreneurship suggesting the expertise required for venture success differs depending on entrepreneurial values and motives

what is the value of the option to defer an investment in transmission expansion planning an estimation using real options abstract in deregulated markets transmission expansion planning tep is usually performed by a central network planner seeking to maximize social welfare in doing that the network planner commonly follows a traditional project valuation considering a discounted cash flow dcf methodology although incorporating uncertainty and reliability considerations accordingly once the optimal transmission expansion plan is determined the network planner frequently auctions the needed investments obligating the investor to execute the expansion in the fixed inflexible terms defined in the bidding process a key problem is that dcf does not take into account the responses of the planner when uncertainties are resolved because dcf evaluates the project with the information available today in tep managerial flexibility may be valuable because optimal decisions may change over time with the release of new information transmission investors may want to defer or expand according to such information the aim of this article is to estimate the value of adding some flexibility in tep through real options in particular by means of using a real option approach with binomial trees we study the benefits for a social network planner of having the option to defer some transmission investments our results suggest that incorporating flexibility in tep may increase social welfare

the economic value of transmission lines and the implications for planning models abstract many connections between economic efficiency regulation the environment and energy markets are evident in the planning for transmission upgrades in an electricity network transmission owners have to make decisions about investing in new assets while facing uncertainty in the generation plans regulatory and environmental constraints and current system endowments in this paper we demonstrate an analytical method for determining the economic value of individual transmission lines in a meshed network by calculating the total welfare effects for the system while many regulators believe that traditional congestion rents provide the correct incentives for investing in transmission upgrades we show that the uncertainty in system conditions breaks down this paradigm the analysis uses an existing security constrained optimal power flow scopf model and a test network to demonstrate how the method can be used to determine the welfare effects of changing the capacity of selected transmission lines the results show that a substantial portion of the economic benefits for an individual line may come from maintaining system reliability when equipment failures occur furthermore these benefits can change dramatically when inherently intermittent sources of renewable generation are added to a network and the changes in benefits are not captured effectively by changes in the expected congestion rents

the substitution of information technology for other factors of production fueled by its constant technological and price improvements information technology it is displacing other inputs in the production of goods and services by 1994 it accounts for over 15 of fixed

review of grid tie micro generation systems without energy storage towards a new approach to sustainable hybrid energy systems linked to energy efficiency abstract this paper reviews the literature on the subject albeit approaching hybrid micro generation power systems from a systems thinking st and cybernetics standpoint viewing them as dynamically complex adaptive systems cas coupled with and supplying to a set of homes termed a sustainable block in a rural setting here homeostatic regulation hr and control play a vital role in reaching efficient equilibrium towards reconciling power supply and demand response management unlike most of the work reviewed in the literature the focus here is on supervisory control of grid connected micro generation systems without energy storage aiming towards building energy efficiency thriftiness and sustainability in energy consumption building on homeostatic control hc principles first introduced by f c schweppe in 1979 the paper explores the concepts of sustainability and sustainable hybrid energy systems shes applied to micro generation focusing on operational aspects rather than on socio economic environmental or regulatory ones a concrete theoretical model for building a shes is presented for a proposed grid connected renewable microgrid the model seeks to reconcile power supply and demand towards efficient equilibrium homeostasis proposing reward based criteria for controlling renewable electricity supply and consumption in rural communities in chile discussion and recommendations are also offered stating that energy sustainability es is essentially a systems issue and one where es is first and foremost a structural organizational and operational property which is in the very nature of the system itself it is built into it rather than explained by exogenous factors

separability and capital aggregation in sectoral models of us production separability plays a fundamental role in applied studies of production inasmuch as it provides for consistent aggregation and allows multi stage estimation of models with many inputs this paper examines whether two types of capital structures and equipment are weakly separable from labour and energy and materials in sectoral models of us production and provides an assessment of the effects of maintaining capital separability the study focuses on the elasticity of substitution as a measure of input association and associated standard errors and confidence intervals based on bootstrapping elasticity estimates and tests indicate that capital separability is generally inconsistent with data representing sectoral us production elasticity sign however appears robust to capital aggregation and performs especially well as an indicator of input association

do generation firms in restructured electricity markets have incentives to support social welfare improving transmission investments this paper examines the incentives that generation firms have in restructured electricity markets for supporting long term transmission investments in particular we study whether generation firms which arguably play a dominant role in the restructured electricity markets have the incentives to fund or support incremental social welfare improving transmission investments we examine this question in a two node network and explore how such incentives are affected by the ownership of financial transmission rights ftrs by generation firms in the analyzed two node network we show both i that the net exporter generation firm has the correct incentives to increase the transmission capacity incrementally up to a certain level and ii that although a policy that allocates ftrs to the net exporter generation firm can be desirable from a social point of view such a policy would dilute the net importer generation firm s incentives to support transmission expansion moreover if all ftrs were allocated or auctioned off to the net exporter generation firm then it is possible to increase both consumer surplus and social welfare while keeping the net exporter generation firm revenue neutral

confidence intervals for elasticity estimators in translog models this paper examines the distribution fu nctions of elasticity estimators in translog demand models the authors consider the normaland ratio of normals distributions and present confidence intervals for the elasticity estimators the results suggest that only elasticity estimato rs based on the means of the actual cost shares are likely to follow either the normal or ratio of normals distribution function examination of three published empirical studies demonstrates that inferences regarding the values of elasticities cannot be made from point estimates alone and suggests a trade off between the level of aggregation and the width of confidence intervals for the elasticit y estimators copyright 1986 by mit press

transition towards a low carbon economy a computable general equilibrium analysis for poland in the transition to sustainable economic structures the european union assumes a leading role with its climate and energy package which sets ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by 2020 among eu member states poland with its heavy energy system reliance on coal is particularly worried on the pending trade offs between emission regulation and economic growth in our computable general equilibrium analysis of the eu climate and energy package we show that economic adjustment cost for poland hinge crucially on restrictions to where flexibility of emission abatement revenue recycling and technological options in the power system we conclude that more comprehensive flexibility provisions at the eu level and a diligent policy implementation at the national level could achieve the transition towards a low carbon economy at little cost thereby broadening societal support

electricity supply security and the future role of renewable energy sources in brazil abstract hydropower is the backbone of the brazilian electricity generation sector even though the use of this resource is advantaged in terms of greenhouse gas emissions last years severe droughts have exposed the country s huge dependency on hydroelectricity brazil s electricity supply system has shown to be vulnerable to electricity shortages and has demanded significant overhaul in order to address its challenges the present paper provides a comprehensive review of the current status of the brazilian electricity sector and discusses diversification of electricity generation mix as a strategy to improve electricity supply security in the country an overview of the main features of the energy sources applied in brazil is also presented through a review of the latest available generation data the central section of this work is a discussion of the main causes of the current crisis and the future role of renewable energy sources in a 10 year perspective

a general equilibrium analysis on the impacts of regional and sectoral emission allowance allocation at carbon trading market abstract it is critical to adapt to climate change and reduce the overall carbon emissions china announced its nationally determined contributions ndc at the paris climate conference in 2015 the carbon cap and trade scheme which plays a key role in carbon emissions abatement is an effective policy for china to achieve its ndc this study focuses on the allocation of regional and sectoral initial carbon emission allowances in shanghai an impact evaluation on the macro economy carbon trading markets and participating sectors for the year 2030 was conducted by applying a computable general equilibrium cge model the results show that the carbon cap and trade scheme would cause a 3 4 gdp loss and an 8 9 welfare loss in 2030 the carbon price would be 161 2 usd t and 147 2 usd t under the two representative scenarios the allocation of initial allowances would have a significant impact on both carbon market scale and sectoral trading behaviors the power generation sector and the petrol oil sector would undertake the greatest output loss while the metal smelting sector would become the main seller furthermore the initial allowances allocation under a certain abatement target would hardly affect sectoral production but remarkably affect trade behaviors at the carbon trading markets

bi level game approaches for coordination of generation and transmission expansion planning within a market environment the main purpose of this paper is to develop methodologies for simultaneous generation and transmission expansion planning problem of power networks while investigating interactions between these two important sections in the proposed methodologies a transmission operator to operating under different incentives decides about investment in transmission network while anticipating the outcome of a purely competitive electricity market where several rival generation firms complete with each other to determine operating level of their generators amount of their sales and amount of their investment in generation capacity the proposed methodologies rely on bi level programming models whose upper level model represent the problem of investment in transmission by to and the lower level problems represent market outcomes obtained from clearing the market these bi level models are reduced to mixed integer linear and nonlinear programming using the duality theory and karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions the results of the proposed models are analyzed and compared using two illustrative examples

the substitution of information technology for other factors of production a firm level analysis fueled by its constant technological and price improvements information technology it is displacing other inputs in the production of goods and services by 1994 it accounts for over 15 of fixed investments by the u s private sector and the ratio of new it investments to labor costs is approaching 5 1990 dollar basis the ability to take advantage of improvements in it is determined in part by the substitutability of it for other factors of production this paper builds on the empirical framework of brynjolfsson and hitt brynjolfsson e l hitt 1995 information technology as a factor of production the role of differences among firms econom innovations and new tech 3 183 199 and extends it to jointly estimate output and substitution elasticities using the ces translog production function our primary source of it related data is the idg computerworld annual survey data on is spending by large u s firms for the period 1988 to 1992 previously analyzed by brynjolfsson and hitt brynjolfsson e l hitt 1995 information technology as a factor of production the role of differences among firms econom innovations and new tech 3 183 199 brynjolfsson e l hitt 1996 paradox lost firm level evidence on the returns to information systems spending management sci 424 541 558 and lichtenberg lichtenberg f r 1995 the output contributions of computer equipment and personnel a firm level analysis econom innovations and new tech 3 201 217 a key result is that it capital is a net substitute for both ordinary capital and labor suggesting that the factor share of it in production will grow to more significant levels over time we confirm earlier findings of positive returns to it investment for this data set further we find excess returns on it investment relative to labor input and some evidence of excess returns relative to ordinary capital taken together these results shed new light on the productivity paradox of it and on the growth of information intensity across the economy as firms take advantage of the continuing improvements in it

renewable generation and electricity prices taking stock and new evidence for germany and austria abstract economic theory predicts that the increase of renewable electricity production should reduce the price of electricity in the short run which is also known as the merit order effect although the merit order effect is only one of several consequences of renewable production on the electricity system it is crucial to determine its size for the economic evaluation of renewable energies in this paper we present a comprehensive overview of relevant past research results on the price effect of renewables additionally we conduct a new empirical analysis of the price effect of renewable production for the austrian german region a market that clearly qualifies for a merit order effect analysis given its characteristics based on the review and our own analysis we show that the merit order effect varies depending on the region and the assessment method chosen we also find that the size of this effect is less dispersed throughout different markets than previously suggested by the literature

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

a principal agent approach to transmission expansion part i regulatory framework different regulatory frameworks have implemented competitive mechanisms to increase efficiency in transmission a natural monopoly conflicts of interest and hidden costs make necessary to define methods to obtain an appropriate valuation of new transmission assets this paper is the first one of a two paper series and presents the fundamentals of transmission project valuation and cost allocation we show the fundamentals of non cooperative game theory different concepts of game equilibria nash stackelberg and berge and solutions to the bilateral negotiation problem nash bargaining solution kalai smorodinsky and rubinstein in addition the design of mechanisms the information revelation principles and incentive compatibility issues are described we propose a model composed of three elements valuation of a transmission project based on a linear contract a principal agent model to determine the optimal effort of an agent developing the transmission project and the optimal bilateral negotiation of right of way costs we define a method to evaluate the offers to build a transmission line project as a function of the number of agents bidding for it the value of the project is a function of both the incentives and the valuation of the right of way costs in part two of this series we present two case studies the ieee 24 bus rts and the sistema interconectado central sic in chile where we apply the methodology to a real network

fiscal stress and the production of public safety a distance function approach abstract faced with increasing crime rates but nonincreasing budgets local governments are seeking cost saving means of providing public safety this paper investigates a bureaucracy s response to fiscal stress as well as its ability to efficiently substitute civilian for uniformed personnel exploiting duality theory a distance function is used to model technology retrieve information concerning substitutability and shadow prices of personnel and test for cost minimization morishima elasticities are adopted to allow for asymmetry in substitution between types of personnel it is found that the more adverse the public safety environment and budgetary condition the more efficiently resources are allocated

capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development an indicator of weak sustainability the measurement of sustainable development is not without considerable difficulties yet this should not detract from the positive advances that can be made in this direction in this paper we present one form that a weak sustainability indicator can take derived from a simple but intuitive savings rule it incorporates the idea that the level of overall capital stock should be non decreasing although subject to qualification at this stage some interesting results emerge from the application of the rule to 18 countries

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

the doping effect of italian feed in tariffs on the pv market abstract in less than six years italy has become one of the leading markets for pv power plants and one of the countries in the world with the largest number of installations and installed peak power such a quick and large growth is due to a series of feed in tariff schemes that have been uncapped until 2012 as a matter of fact any size or any number of pv power plants could be installed during a period of three years since the feed in tariffs are not paid by national taxes but are charged on the electricity bills italian energy users are now due to pay each year a surcharge of 9 billion euros on their energy bills this paper aims at discussing this development by highlighting the benefits but also some significant drawbacks that the application of uncontrolled feed in tariffs has produced

estimating the structure of industrial water demands the case of canadian manufacturing this study considers water use by canadian manufacturing firms the estimation of water demands is based on a detailed cross sectional survey of establishment level observations on water prices quantities and expenditures industrial water use is modeled as having four components intake treatment prior to use recirculation and discharge average values for the estimated own price elasticity for water intake range from 0 1534 to 0 5885 water recirculation is found to be a substitute for both water intake and water discharge this confirms that expanding the use of economic incentives e g effluent fees may be effective in encouraging firms to reduce their water use while increasing in plant recirculation

a general equilibrium impact study of the emissions reduction fund in australia by using a national environmental and economic model abstract several climate change policies such as emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes have been implemented in many countries and regions around the world however the current coalition government in australia does not prefer such methods and has argued that these policies would substantially increase the electricity price and weaken the australian competitiveness and the whole economy subsequently the government replaced the carbon tax policy in july 2014 with its emissions reduction fund which fundamentally uses the government budget of a 2 55 billion to buy emission abatements from polluters there are major arguments among the australian public about the efficiency and the effects of this approach but the economic effects are still unidentified this study aims to examine the economy wide effects of this policy on the australian economy by employing a national environmental and economic general equilibrium model so that australians and international audience would be aware of the impacts and how the reverse auction and carbon subsidy work as a policy to reduce emissions at large scales across all sectors in a country results show that australia only experiences relatively small impact on its economy real gdp only declines by 0 3 0 4 over all scenarios industrial and private sectors also experience relatively small unfavourable impacts but the output and export level of the agricultural commodity will decline substantially the renewable sectors are expanded to compensate output reductions in fossil fuel electricity generation sectors though the expansion is insufficient to compensate for the losses

the impact of renewable energies on eex day ahead electricity prices in this paper we analyze the impact of renewable energies wind and photovoltaic on the formation of day ahead electricity prices at eex we give an overview of the policy decisions concerning the promotion of renewable energy sources in germany and discuss their consequences on day ahead prices an analysis of electricity spot prices reveals that the introduction of renewable energies enhances extreme price changes in the frame of a dynamic fundamental model we show that there has been a continuous electricity price adaption process to market fundamentals furthermore the fundamental drivers of prices differ among hours with different load profiles our results imply that renewable energies decrease market spot prices and have implications on the traditional fuel mix for electricity production however the prices for the final consumers increased overall because they must pay in addition the feed in tariffs for the promotion of renewable energy

transmission expansion in an oligopoly considering generation investment equilibrium abstract transmission expansion planning tep is a sophisticated decision making problem especially in an oligopolistic electricity market in which a number of strategic price maker producers compete together a transmission system planner who is in charge of making tep decisions requires considering the future generation investment actions however in such an oligopolistic market each producer makes its own strategic generation investment decisions this motivates the transmission system planner to consider the generation investment decision making problem of all producers within its tep model the strategic generation investment problem of each producer can be represented by a complementarity bi level model the joint consideration of all bi level models one per producer characterizes the generation investment equilibrium that identifies the future evolution of generation investment in the market this paper proposes a tri level tep decision making model to be solved by the transmission system planner whose objective is to maximize the social welfare of the market minus the expansion costs and whose constraints are the transmission expansion limits as well as the generation investment equilibrium problem this model is then recast as a mixed integer linear programming problem and solved numerical results from an illustrative example and a case study based on the ieee 14 bus test system demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach

nuclear and intermittent renewables two compatible supply options the case of the french power mix abstract the complementary features of low carbon power sources are a central issue in designing energy transition policies the french current electricity mix is characterised by a high share of nuclear power which equalled 76 of the total electric production in 2015 with the increase in intermittent renewable sources nuclear flexibility is examined as part of the solution to balance electricity supply and demand our proposed methodology involves designing scenarios with nuclear and intermittent renewable penetration levels and developing residual load duration curves in each case the load modulation impact on the nuclear production cost is estimated this article shows to which extent the nuclear annual energy production will decrease with high shares of intermittent renewables down to load factors of 40 for proactive assumptions however the production cost increase could be compensated by progressively replacing the plants moreover incentives are necessary if nuclear is to compete with combined cycle gas turbines as its alternative back up option in order to reconcile the social planner with plant operator goals the solution could be to find new outlets rather than reducing nuclear load factors nuclear flexibility could then be considered in terms of using its power to produce heat or hydrogen

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

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

a transmission planning framework considering future generation expansions in electricity markets this paper proposes a transmission planning framework in a market environment in which only the generation sector is deregulated the proposed framework is based on modeling generation companies gencos strategic behavior and anticipating their expansion patterns from the viewpoint of a transmission system planner the transmission expansion planning problem in this paper is modeled as a four level optimization problem a solution method based on agent based systems and search based optimization techniques is proposed to determine the optimal transmission expansion plan

comparing drivers barriers and opportunities of business models for renewable energies a review abstract this article systematically reviews the emerging field of research on business models for renewable energies differentiating between developing and industrialized countries the key findings on developing countries are as follows first there is a lack of quantitative data second opportunities are driven primarily by unfulfilled basic needs and micro finance whereas corruption and weak electricity grids are the main barriers and third business models should be replicable the key findings on industrialized countries are as follows first opportunities are driven primarily by climate change mitigation and energy efficiency improvements second stuck thought patterns and high costs of energy storage are important barriers and third cooperation is a key in future business models to handle increasing complexity this review reveals implications for researchers and policy makers promising avenues for future research are the analysis of intermodal business models and opportunities concerning energy self supply and renewable district heating policy makers are advised to design legal frameworks that account for the global nature of the renewable energy challenge and are simultaneously adapted to regional disparities

the impact of unionization on motor carrier costs i introduction the increasingly competitive markets fostered by the motor carrier act of 1980 have forced motor carriers to focus on cost saving strategies intended to reduce operating miles fuel consumption and capital and labor expenses there are two reasons unions firms may be at a competitive disadvantage in these efforts first although the union nonunion wage differential has decreased following regulatory reform rose 1987 and hirsch 1988 find that union firms still pay higher wages second managers of unionized firms may have less flexibility in the use of inputs since union work rules restrict the activities and substitutability of drivers terminal workers and terminal facilities indeed harrington 1987 reports that post 1980 trucking expenses are still 40 higher for unionized motor carriers than for nonunion firms unionization may affect carrier cost both by increasing the price of labor and by potentially affecting cost function parameters if union rules make labor less productive the entire cost function will shift upwards for a given set of factor input prices further freeman and medoff 1982 argue that work rules may be expected to result in reduced elasticities of substitution between labor and other inputs in the unionized setting indeed they find that substitution between production labor and other labor in manufacturing is generally lower in unionized settings the impact of unionization on production has been investigated in industries such as construction coal mining hospitals and the cement industry by allen 1984 1986a 1986b byrnes et al 1988 and clark 1980a 1980b the results have been inconclusive with unionized firms being more productive than nonunion firms in some instances and less productive in others studies such as allen 1986c and addison and hirsch 1989 have utilized production function methodologies that use restrictive functional forms which impose homogeneity and identical elasticities of substitution between pairs of inputs allen 1986c examines the relative efficiency of union and nonunion firms with a translog cost function allowing for union effects using intercept and slope parameters that vary by union status in his study of different types of construction projects he finds significant differences between the cost functions for union and nonunion firms but no evidence of the inelasticity of factor substitutions as hypothesized by medoff and freeman in fact his estimates of factor demand elasticities show no discernible pattern for union versus nonunion firms leading him to conclude that work rules do not have the anticipated impact on elasticity the purpose of this study is to test whether unionization impacts motor carrier costs and if so to determine the direction of the impact of particular interest is whether the work rules imposed by the teamster s union have had a significant impact on factor substitutability in unionized firms as argued by freeman and medoff 1982 friedlaender and spady 1981 daughety et al 1985 mcmullen and stanley 1988 grimm et al 1989 and ying s 1990 studies of motor carrier industry costs have used translog cost functions which implicitly assume that union and nonunion cost functions arise from the same production technology this is equivalent to accepting the hypothesis that unionization does not affect the production structure of motor carrier firms if unionization does affect a firm s production process the results from these studies could be biased accordingly this study uses a translog cost function to test for differences in the cost structure of union and nonunion carriers not only is the translog cost function standard in the motor carrier literature permitting comparison of these results with those of previous work it also allows the flexibility necessary to examine the differential impact of unions on cost function parameters and elasticities of substitution between factors

trade taxes and debt repayment in sri lanka the purpose of this article is to estimate the cost of taxing the export import or domestic sectors of sri lanka for the purpose of reducing the national debt a simple gnp model is used to estimate the elasticities that characterise the three aggregate sectors and are used to simulate the effects of taxing for debt servicing the results show that a tax on the import sector generates the largest net savings on trade balance and that the savings from not importing can be substantial however for the period 1977 87 a 10 0 per cent tax on the import sector caused a decline in the growth of the economy by 3 0 per cent the burden of the tax falls heavily on the domestic sector in terms of lost production and increased unemployment

profit function approximations and duality applications to agriculture monte carlo simulations of profit functions indicate that flexible functional forms may be ranked nearly the same with respect to allen uzawa partial substitution elasticities or price and fixed factor elasticities flexible functional form approximations of output price elasticities are generally worse than approximations of input price or fixed factor elasticities minflex laurent functional forms did not appear to approximate underlying elasticities any better than did their translog and generalized leontief counterparts

collateral effects of liberalisation metering losses load profiles and cost settlement in spain s electricity system european energy markets have undergone a major transformation as they have advanced towards market liberalisation and it is vital that the details of these developments be carefully examined the success of liberalisation is based on smart regulation which has been capable of providing solutions to unforeseen events in the process our paper seeks to contribute to existing understanding of the unexpected and collateral effects of the liberalisation process in the power system by examining a natural experiment that occurred in spain in 2009 in that year the electricity supply by distribution system operators disappeared this change in retail market competition as we demonstrate in this paper has had an unexpected effect in terms of the system s balancing requirements we undertake a rigorous assessment of the economic consequences of this policy change for the whole system in terms of its impact on final electricity prices

introducing detailed land based mitigation measures into a computable general equilibrium model abstract we propose a new climate change mitigation assessment method focusing on agriculture forestry and land use change sectors by coupling the computable general equilibrium cge model with a bottom up type technology model the cge model covers the entire economic market but includes a rough description of mitigation measures whereas the bottom up type technology model takes into account abatement cost and mitigation effects of individual mitigation measures but only focuses on a few sectors the coupled framework enables us to connect relevant conditions and to complement the shortcomings of each model as a test we applied our method to indonesia which has set a national greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2020 a large proportion of indonesia s greenhouse gas emissions are from the land use sector we assessed the differences in modeling behaviors between the cge models with and without coupling the bottom up type model the two primary findings were 1 consumption loss estimated by the coupled cge 1 2 was larger than the loss estimated by the uncoupled model 0 5 because the emission reduction estimated by the bottom up model was less than the standalone cge s estimate and 2 consumption loss caused by achieving the reduction target by 2020 in indonesia strongly depends on the assumption of mitigation costs and available land area for the emission reduction measures

boulding s welfare approach of communicative deliberation abstract british institutional economist shaun hargreaves heap once wrote that orthodox welfare economics runs into problems generating public policy prescriptions because it works with a picture of individuals as solely a bunch of well behaved preferences which they are motivated in their actions to satisfy in an instrumental fashion 1989 206 most ecological economists will probably agree with this critique because it is certainly true when the welfare objective shifts from quantitative economic growth to preserving this planet as a life provisioning and enjoyable habitat for future generations so what constitutes and enhances ecologically sustainable welfare to answer this question a number of scholars have highlighted the need for an alternative model of behaviour be it as a micro foundation for a sustainability oriented welfare theory or as a normative guiding post to direct our concrete action and institutional change this article will show that kenneth e boulding developed such an alternative welfare approach based on a communicative behavioural conception over about forty years of his academic career founded on a communicative action his welfare theory is based on deliberative valuation

strategic investment in merchant transmission the impact of capacity utilization rules abstract in this paper we look at the relative merits of two capacity utilization regimes in the merchant electricity transmission network must offer mo where the entire capacity installed has to be made available for transmission and non must offer nmo where some capacity could be withheld we look at two specific cases i demand for transmission varies across time and ii vertical integration is allowed between investors in transmission network and electricity generators in the case of time varying demand under mo we find that a monopolist may underinvest in transmission when compared to nmo although nmo may lead to more capacity withholding in the case of vertical integration we find that when the market power is with the generators of the exporting node without vertical integration no welfare enhancing merchant investment would occur neither under mo nor nmo further if the generators in the importing node have market power in case vertical integration is allowed mo is better than nmo finally we also argue that the incentive to collude among various transmission network investors is mitigated with mo in place

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

revisiting long run relations in power markets with high res penetration abstract electricity generation from renewable energy resources res has become increasingly significant to reach eu and emissions reduction targets at the same time one of the main eu policy goals has been the creation of a common internal energy market for europe in this paper we focus on these two issues previously studied separately considering their possible interactions we first analyze the long run relationship between day ahead electricity prices and fuel prices natural gas and coal looking at two samples of years characterized by low and high res penetration then we explore the integration of eu markets we show that the electricity fuel nexus found over 2006 2008 changed dramatically over 2010 2014 for the majority of countries considered in particular the long run dependence of electricity from gas and coal prices is much lower in recent years furthermore our results confirm that the considered eu countries are becoming less integrated as res e increases our findings suggest that nationally implemented policies to support renewables are successful in increasing res penetration but they have lessened the linkage among eu markets then making integration more difficult to obtain

optimal transmission planning under the mexican new electricity market abstract this paper addresses electricity transmission planning under the new industry and institutional structure of the mexican electricity market which has engaged in a deep reform process after decades of a state owned vertically integrated non competitive closed industry under this new structure characterized by a nodal pricing system and an independent system operator iso we analyze welfare optimal network expansion with two modeling strategies in a first model we propose the use of an incentive price cap mechanism to promote the expansion of mexican networks in a second model we study centrally planned grid expansion in mexico by an iso within a power flow model we carry out comparisons of these models which provide us with hints to evaluate the actual transmission planning process proposed by mexican authorities prodesen we obtain that the prodesen plan appears to be a convergent welfare optimal planning process

household work and energy consumption a degrowth perspective catalonia s case study the present work contributes to bringing visibility to the part of social work that is referred to as unpaid work this part of social work remains outside the market but it is necessary to structure and maintain households human relationships and communities and providing sustenance and care it represents a flow of hidden subsidies to the economy mostly shaped structured and experienced by women through an explorative case study in catalonia we relate the use of time in catalan society with the relative consumption of energy this research strategy allows us to see the dangers of substituting labour and skills from household based production to the commodity based economy in terms of an increase in energy demand in a context of the end of cheap oil on the contrary from a degrowth perspective we argue that the future adaptability might require policies reallocating resources towards the unpaid and the community

factor substitution in u s manufacturing does plant size matter we use micro data for 10 412 u s manufacturing plants to estimate the degrees of factor substitution by industry and by plant size we find that 1 capital labor energy and materials are substitutes in production and 2 the degrees of substitution among inputs are quite similar across plant sizes in a majority of industries two important implications of these findings are that 1 small plants are typically as flexible as large plants in factor substitution consequently economic policies such energy conservation policies that result in rising energy prices would not cause negative effects on either large or small u s manufacturing plants and 2 since energy and capital are found to be substitutes the 1973 energy crisis is unlikely to be a significant factor contributing to the post 1973 productivity slowdown

reliability and economic evaluation of power system with renewables a review abstract the share of renewable energy generation has been increasing as a result of the world wide concern on environmental deterioration and climate change associated with burning fossil fuel due to the stochastic and intermittent characteristics of renewable energy resources assessing the reliability of power systems with renewables has become challengeable and been widely studied for the past several decades this paper provides a review of the studies on the reliability and economic evaluation of power system with renewables it starts from a summary of the key indicators and models for assessing the reliability and economics of power systems different studies are then compared in terms of type of renewables evaluation method application area level of study and country involved through which the main features of past studies are identified we also discuss the relationship between economics and reliability that shows the necessity of evaluating reliability and economics of power system with renewables simultaneously a case study is finally proposed to illustrate the differences between alternative system settings in reliability and economic evaluation it is found that the types and scales of renewable energy generation have significant impacts on system reliability and economics which needs to be taken into account in the development of renewable energy power systems

effects of large scale penetration of renewables the italian case in the years 2008 2015 abstract italy has experienced a revolution in the electricity production mix in the years 2008 2015 when a large scale deployment of intermittent renewables caused a high volatility of electricity prices stopped the investments in both fossil and renewable power plants and caused a high degree of uncertainty in matching electricity demand and supply the current legislation gives renewable energy the priority of dispatchment producing a significant decrease of the operational hours of all kinds of power plants which caused economic problems to utilities that had started investments in new high efficiency combined cycles before 2008 and reduced the overall efficiency of fossil fired power generation in order to restore the opportunities for further investments in renewable energy systems it is very important to develop long term policies and interventions to improve the capacity to balance the electricity demand and supply

weak sustainability and viable technologies abstract the context of the concept of weak sustainability is examined using a three tier hierarchy of value we argue that weak sustainability is relevant only in the context of market exchange at a particular point in time it offers an inadequate guide to the sustainability of social institutions and of the natural world on the other hand georgescu roegen s concept of a viable technology recognizes that the integrity of the social and environmental systems surrounding market activity must be maintained if the human species is to persist through time the concept of viability recognizes that market activity depends not only upon the sustaining functions of the environment but also upon the social sustaining functions of human institutions

impact of network payment schemes on transmission expansion planning with variable renewable generation abstract a large number of studies have dealt with the transmission expansion planning tep problem however few investigations have focused on analyzing the impacts of network payment schemes on network configuration and the benefits losses distribution among the participants in electricity markets in this paper we propose a multi annual transmission expansion planning model considering four different network payment schemes to finance the construction of new transmission lines seeking to reduce the total system costs wind and solar power generation are included in the model taking into account their variability the proposed models are reformulated as mixed integer linear programming milp problems we use seven performance metrics related with congestion nodal prices and generator benefits among others to evaluate the effect of each payment scheme a realistic case study based on the main power system in chile is analyzed to illustrate the proposed models it is shown that integrating line cost recovering equations into the tep model may result into a more realistic and less congested power network also total system cost is highly related with transmission tariff discrimination in that way tariffs with high location dependence perform better in the case studied the chilean power system

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

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

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

decomposition of co2 emissions over 1980 2003 in turkey abstract there is a multi dimensional need for studying the energy situation in turkey and to obtain insight into the development of co2 emissions on the one hand recent projections of the oecd show that turkey has a yearly gdp growth potential of over 7 on the other hand recent projections of undp and world bank indicate that the level of co2 emission is going to rise six fold by 2025 with respect to the level of emissions in 1990 it is a great challenge to both meet the growth target and keep the co2 under control thereupon this paper tries to unfold factors that explain co2 emissions by undertaking a complete decomposition analysis for turkey over the period 1980 2003 the analysis shows as is common to relatively fast growing economies that the biggest contributor to the rise in co2 emissions is the expansion of the economy scale effect the carbon intensity and the change in composition of the economy which nearly move in tandem also contribute to the rise in co2 emissions albeit at a slower rate the energy intensity of the economy which is decreasing is responsible for a modest reduction in co2 emissions hence in congruence with the scale effect a decoupling of carbon emissions and economic growth is not found in turkey over the period 1980 2003

the impact of renewables on electricity prices in germany an estimation based on historic spot prices in the years 2011 2013 abstract germany s public opinion and media usually attribute increasing electricity prices to the high share of renewables in the german power system but average electricity prices at the european energy exchange dropped during the last years due to an excess of renewable energy this study uses historic market data in order to quantify the effect of renewables on prices historic demand and supply curves from 2011 to 2013 have been used to reconstruct electricity prices under the assumption that no wind and pv would be available the analysis reveals an astonishingly high increase of market prices up to 5 29 ct kwh due to a lack of non renewable power capacities in 2013 the available conventional capacity would not have been able to cover the demand during 269 hours the estimated maximum deficit of 5 6 gw is in good agreement to data published by the german grid operators the discussion of the origin of this deficit leads to the conclusion that the current situation has not been caused by renewables the liberalization of the european energy market established investment risks that hindered required investment a long time before the renewables boomed

assessing a disaggregated energy input using confidence intervals around translog elasticity estimates the role of energy in the production of manufacturing output has been debated extensively in the literature particularly its relationship with capital and labor in an attempt to provide some clarification in this debate a two step methodology was used first under the assumption of a five factor production function specification we distinguished between electric and non electric energy and assessed each component s relationship with capital and labor second we calculated both the allen and price elasticities and constructed 95 confidence intervals around these values our approach led to the following conclusions that the disaggregation of the energy input into electric and non electric energy is justified that capital and electric energy and capital and non electric energy are substitutes while labor and electric energy and labor and non electric energy are complements in production and that capital and energy are substitutes while labor and energy are complements

sustainable transmission planning in imperfectly competitive electricity industries balancing economic and environmental outcomes abstract we explore the role of a transmission system operator tso that builds a transmission line to accommodate renewable energy in order to lower emissions as required by government policy in contrast to central planning a tso in a deregulated electricity industry can only indirectly influence outcomes through its choice of the transmission line capacity via a bi level model we show that this results in less transmission capacity and with limited emissions control in a perfectly competitive industry vis a vis a benchmark centrally planned system a carbon charge on industry that fully accounts for the cost of pollution damage leads to a perfect alignment of incentives and maximised social welfare only under perfect competition by contrast a carbon charge may actually lower social welfare under a cournot oligopoly as the resulting reduction in consumption facilitates the further exercise of market power

economic information about ironmaking ironmaking is an important world wide industry iron produced in blast furnaces is a crucial inout for almost three quarters of the steel produced in the world according to the international iron and steel institute few industries have recieved as much attention as the steel industry yet very little is known about the cost structure of ironmaking one of its major inputs this paper attempts to fill that void by the first application of the restricted translog cost function on time series data for the ironmaking plant of one of the world s major steel producers all this information revealed is new for the first time estimates of the elasticities of inout demand for variables inputs and elasticities of substitution are presented major results include the findings that there is more substitution are presented major results include the findings that there is more substitution between variable inputs than was previously thought that disembodies technical change exists and is hicks neutral and that te

evaluating interconnector investments in the north european electricity system considering fluctuating wind power penetration with increasing amounts of power generation from intermittent sources like wind transmission planning has not only to account for the expected load curve but also for the stochasticity of volatile power infeeds moreover investments in power generation are no longer centrally planned in deregulated power markets but rather decided on competitive grounds by individual power companies this poses particular challenges when it comes to evaluating the benefits of increased interconnection capacities in large scale systems like the european transmission system within this article an approach is presented which allows assessing the benefits of interconnector investments in the presence of stochastic power infeed and endogenous power plant investments this model uses typical days and hours as well as recombining trees to represent both load and infeed fluctuations an application is presented covering 30 european countries and simultaneously optimizing generation investments and dispatch as well as utilization of transmission lines the model is used to evaluate the benefits of further line extensions between the european mainland and northern european countries we compute welfare gains and the distribution of these gains within a business as usual scenario up to 2030

competition and substitutability in the swedish pharmaceuticals market substitution possibilities between brand name pharmaceuticals are analysed the analysis is based on data from three different markets the prescription drug market for beta blocking agents the over the counter market for purgatives and the hospital market for two pharmaceutical treatments for gastric ulcers the results indicate that there exist some substitution possibilities among the brand name drugs included in the study

an empirical analysis of scale and scope economies and technical change in an irish multiproduct banking firm abstract in contrast to most empirical investigations of the efficiency of multiproduct financial institutions which either estimate scale and scope economies with a given state of technology or only analyse technical change in the presence of overall scale economies this study estimates overall scale economies product specific scale economies and scope economies in the presence of both neutral and non neutral technical change also in contrast to most other empirical studies in this area standard errors are computed for all relevant statistics the findings indicate diseconomies of scope overall diseconomies of scale product specific economies are decreasing for investments and increasing for loans in addition to substantial neutral technical change biased technical change is labour and capital saving and deposits using in character

sequential coordination of transmission expansion planning with strategic generation investments this paper proposes mathematical models for sequential coordination of transmission expansion planning with strategic generation investments the proactive and reactive coordinations are modeled and studied the interaction between transmission company transco and strategic generation companies gencos is modeled using the sequential move game this is while the interaction between the strategic gencos is modeled as a simultaneous move game in the proactive coordination the transco expands its future transmission capacities taking into account the strategic investments by gencos in the reactive coordination strategic gencos move first and expand their future generation capacities and then transco expands the transmission capacity the proactive coordination is modeled as a mixed integer bilevel linear program miblp and the reactive coordination is modeled as a mixed integer linear program milp the miblp has binary variables in both upper and lower levels the moore bard algorithm is parallelized and used to solve the miblp the mathematical models and the parallelized moore bard algorithm are tested on 3 bus and 6 bus example systems and the modified ieee rts96 also the ieee 118 bus test system is studied using a heuristic version of the moore bard algorithm

dialogues on nature class and gender revisiting socio ecological reproduction in past organic advanced agriculture sentmenat catalonia 1850 abstract the concept of socio ecological reproduction allows linking some fundamental approaches and methods of ecological feminist and sraffian economics by accounting reproductive flows we highlight the material and time efforts required to maintain ecological funds i e soil fertility and livestock and social funds i e labour force of farm systems as well as the role of social appropriation of the surplus that went beyond them in preindustrial class structures through the methodology proposed to estimate time energy nutrients and cash balances at household level we can infer relevant insights in terms of social organisation of labour and social distribution of produce in past organic advanced agricultures results show that the productive capacity of farmland and labour were quite similar across farms while the farmland hoarding exerted by a wealthier ruling class defined the unequal distribution of produce the match between subsistence needs and wages shows that nearly the whole potential surplus per labour unit was extracted dependence on reproducible funds implied the reinvestment of large amounts of renewable flows that constrained the amount of surplus appropriable finally we deem that technical change and increase of total produce along socio ecological transitions might have been affected by the social class structure of preindustrial societies

toward a sustaining production theory abstract production is commonly described as the root of wealth creation growth and progress mainline production theory ascribes this wealth generating ability to a limited number of inputs transformed into equally narrowly defined goods and services output which is not part of the official economy s market exchange or inputs not employed in their production process remain external and unaccounted for many of these unaccounted for goods and inputs are provided in households gardens subsistence production or ecological and biophysical systems through the free services of women or nature thus an alternative view of production is suggested one which views production itself as linked to the social and bio physical contexts within which it takes place this context first makes the generation of input streams the receiving of output streams and the processing of inputs by means of fund factors georgescu roegen possible as production is contextualized it becomes evident that processes which sustain input generation waste absorption and material transformation are critical to the production process these are referred to as sustaining services a sustaining production process is one which maintains sustaining services instead of destroying them it is further argued that steps toward the implementation of a sustaining production concept require a move from abstraction to material concreteness three areas of concreteness are discussed as moving from solely monetary to physical valuation criteria moving from methodological homogeneity to diversity and moving from a mystified and distanced decision making process about quantity and quality of production to one of informed participatory discourse

assessing market structures in resource markets an empirical analysis of the market for metallurgical coal using various equilibrium models abstract the prevalent market structures found in many resource markets consist of high concentration on the supply side and low demand elasticity market results are therefore frequently assumed to be an outcome of strategic interaction between producers common models to investigate the market outcomes and underlying market structures are games representing competitive markets strategic cournot competition and stackelberg structures that take into account a dominant player acting first followed by one or more players we add to the literature by expanding the application of mathematical models and applying an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints epec which is used to model multi leader follower games to a spatial market using our model we investigate the prevalent market setting in the international market for metallurgical coal between 2008 and 2010 whose market characteristics provide arguments for a wide variety of market structures using different statistical measures to compare model results with actual market outcomes we find that two previously neglected settings perform best first a setting in which the four largest metallurgical coal exporting firms compete against each other as stackelberg leaders while the remainders act as cournot followers second a setting with bhpb acting as sole stackelberg leader

transmission switching in expansion planning transmission switching ts is introduced to add flexibility to the transmission and generation capacity expansion planning problem ts could improve the performance of the capacity expansion planning model and reduce the total planning cost the capacity expansion planning problem is decomposed into a master problem and two subproblems the master problem utilizes the candidate set for additional generating unit and transmission capacity investments to find the optimal plan throughout the planning horizon the subproblems use the optimal plan apply transmission switching to relieve any transmission flow violations and calculate the optimal dispatch of generating units the transmission network contingencies are also considered in the subproblems the case studies exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed expansion planning approach

network expansion by a proactive transmission system operator a case study abstract complex planning procedures often amplify the difference in investment time between generation and transmission in this work we consider a transmission project in italy and relying on a recently proposed methodology we compare costs and benefits of anticipating the planning process before the connection of new power plants becomes certain whereas the system faces lower congestion costs if the network is reinforced immediately anticipation constitutes a sunk cost in case generation is not built for realistic load and generation scenarios anticipation costs as well as differences in investment times our results indicate that anticipation is the most efficient choice for a relatively low connection probability analyses of this sort are particularly relevant in light of the increasing complexity of public engagement processes and of the remarkable growth in renewable generation

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

impact of the regulatory framework for transmission investments on the cost of renewable energy in the eu abstract under the current regulatory frame in the eu transmission planning is done at the national level to maximize national welfare rather than european welfare in this paper we develop a competitive equilibrium model that calculates the impact of this imperfect regulatory framework on the cost of renewable energy we apply the model to a power system with two interconnected zones and find that the impact is case specific but significant we also find that the negative impact of national transmission planning on the cost of renewable energy is more significant in a state of the world in which member states trade renewable energy but that this negative effect is much smaller than the positive effect of renewable energy trade between member states we conclude that the imperfect regulatory framework for transmission investment is a significant cost for renewable energy in the eu but that it should not stop member states from trading renewable energy

a welfare analysis of electricity transmission planning in germany we analyze the electricity transmission planning process in germany netzentwicklungsplan which separates transmission expansion decisions from generation dispatch we employ an economic modeling approach to analyze two different network planning settings in the first setting there is no trade off between transmission network development and generation dispatch as is currently the case in germany a second setting alternatively allows for such a trade off and thus represents a welfare superior way of transmission network planning applications with the two model variants are carried out for the german electricity system in 2035 the results illustrate overinvestment in transmission capacity and decreased welfare associated with the netzentwicklungsplan

constructing confidence intervals using the bootstrap an application to a multi product cost function a multi product cost function system is estimated for 387 banks in states that allow branch banking the bootstrap resampling method is used to construct confidence intervals for marginal costs output cost elasticities economies of scale and scope and allen elasticities of substitution confidence intervals for these measures are usually constructed using a first order variance approximation under a normality assumption but such confidence intervals are inexact if the measures are not normally distributed or the variance approximations are imprecise we find that the bootstrap standard error estimates can differ significantly from the usual estimates furthermore we use the bootstrap to expand the analysis of cost function regularity properties copyright 1990 by mit press

economic criteria for planning transmission investment in restructured electricity markets from an economic perspective a common criterion for assessing the merits of a transmission investment is its impacts on social welfare the underlying assumption in using this criterion is that side payments may be used to distribute the social gains among all market players in reality however since the impacts of an electricity transmission project on different players may vary such side payments are rather difficult to implement this paper focuses on different economic criteria that should be considered when planning electricity transmission investments we propose an electricity transmission investment assessment methodology that is capable of evaluating the economic impacts on the various effected stakeholders and account for strategic responses that could enhance or impede the investment s objectives we formulate transmission planning as an optimization problem under alternative conflicting objectives and investigate the policy implications of divergent expansion plans resulting from the planner s level of anticipation of strategic responses we find that optimal transmission expansion plans may be very sensitive to supply and demand parameters we also show that the transmission investments have significant distributional impact creating acute conflicts of interests among market participants we use a 32 bus representation of the main chilean grid to illustrate our results

coordination of generation and transmission development through generation transmission charges a game theoretical approach transmission charges aim to recover the cost of transmission network investments and provide efficient locational signals to new generators in this paper we investigate the effect of these charges on the development of new generation capacities in the system generation expansion planning is decided by strategic generation planners sgps trying to maximize their profits while transmission line investments are planned by a central planner and regulatory body aimed at minimizing the overall operation and network investment costs of the system regulatory transmission charges rtcs are calculated according to the marginal responsibility of generation investment on transmission network investment costs an iterative algorithm is proposed to model the interaction taking place between the central planner and sgps the developed methodology is applied to a 2 node illustrative example and the ieee rts96 and effects of rtcs on investment decisions of sgps are analyzed