energy consumption and economic development in sub sahara africa sub saharan african countries economic development is dependent on energy consumption this paper assesses total energy demand which is composed of traditional energy wood fuel and commercial energy electricity and petroleum in the central east south and west regions of sub saharan africa cross sectional time series data for 20 countries in 25 years are analyzed and the results of the study show that wood fuel accounts for 70 of energy consumption followed by petroleum with most industrial activities utilizing some form of wood fuel regression results suggest that energy demand is inversely related to the price of petroleum and industrial development but positively related to gdp population growth rate and agricultural expansion and that price elasticity is less than one the model results also show that there are regional differences in energy demand in addition the interaction of population growth rates by regions generates mixed results and there are regional differences in the use of commercial energy consumption and gdp growth the findings of this study suggest that countries must diversify their energy sources and introduce energy efficient devices and equipment at all levels of the economy to improve gdp growth rate and gdp per capita

the impact of wind power generation on the electricity price in germany abstract this paper investigates the relationship between intermittent wind power generation and electricity price behaviour in germany using a garch model i evaluate the effect of wind electricity generation on the level and the volatility of the electricity price in an integrated approach the results show that variable wind power reduces the price level but increases its volatility this paper s results also indicate that regulatory change has stabilised the wholesale price the electricity price volatility has decreased in germany after a modification of the marketing mechanism of renewable electricity this gives confidence that further adjustments to regulation and policy may foster a better integration of renewables into the power system

international monetary and fiscal policy cooperation in the presence of wage inflexibilities abstract this paper studies the transmission mechanisms and welfare implications of strategic monetary and fiscal policy in a two country mundell fleming variable supply stochastic model the issue of the counterproductivity of policy cooperation raised by rogoff 1985 is examined and extended to fiscal policy it is established that systematic fiscal policy cooperation is productive for a wide range of parameter values that include those of the simple keynesian model cooperation is always productive for policy that is contingent on the realisation of shocks

structural breaks dynamic correlations asymmetric volatility transmission and hedging strategies for petroleum prices and usd exchange rate abstract this paper investigates the influence of structural changes on the asymmetry of volatility spillovers asset allocation and portfolio diversification between the usd euro exchange market and each of six major spot petroleum markets including wti europe brent kerosene gasoline and propane using the bivariate dcc egarch model with and without structural change dummies the results provide evidence of significant asymmetric volatility spillovers between the u s dollar exchange rate and the petroleum markets moreover the model with the structural breaks reduces the degree of volatility persistence and leads to more appropriate hedging and asset allocation strategies for all pairs considered thus the findings have important implications for financial risk management

satisfying the rural residential demand in liberia with decentralized renewable energy schemes abstract with the lowest access to electricity in the world the country of liberia west africa has efforts underway for electrification through a fossil based centralized scheme around its capital city and possible connections to the larger western africa power pool network these plans leave a large part of the rural population with no access to electricity this work analyzes the potential of decentralized generation to provide electricity to the rural liberian population the suppressed demand of the rural population is calculated at 235 gwh yr there is sufficient renewable energy potential to supply this demand the capital costs and electricity prices of decentralized generation with different fuels are calculated and compared to the ability and willingness to pay of rural liberians small diesel units have the lowest capital cost but photovoltaic small hydropower and small biomass projects provide lower electricity prices biomass and small hydro electricity are affordable for liberians at 0 08 kwh and 0 11 kwh respectively diesel and photovoltaic with levelized cost of electricity of 0 62 kwh and 0 33 kwh respectively exceed liberians willingness to pay centralized and decentralized electricity developments are not mutually exclusive both may be used within a comprehensive electrification plan decentralized generation with emphasis on rural areas can complement the existing plans to achieve the government of liberia s goal of universal access to electricity providing social equity and economic progress in order to become a reality rural decentralized electrification will need policy support and focused funding

electricity planning and implementation in sub saharan africa a systematic review abstract universal electricity access is an important development objective and the focus of a number of key global un initiatives while robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification to date no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub saharan africa the world region with the lowest access rates this paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research considering each of the 49 sub saharan african countries the four regional power pools and the sub continent as a whole applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region 306 relevant peer reviewed journal articles are included in this review a general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives the literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries the total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time addressing technology choice operation distribution and implementation analyses although including different high level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common the literature is only starting to use formalised multi criteria decision making mcdm tools the review indicates that 63 of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub saharan africa include adequate policy design sufficient finance and favourable political conditions while considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps

the composition of capital inflows when emerging market firms face financing constraints abstract the composition of capital inflows to emerging market economies tends to follow a predictable dynamic pattern across the business cycle in most emerging market economies total inflows are pro cyclical with debt and portfolio equity flowing in first followed later in the expansion by foreign direct investment fdi to understand the dynamic composition of these flows we use a small open economy soe framework to model the composition of capital inflows as the equilibrium outcome of emerging market firms financing decisions we show how costly external financing and fdi search costs generate a state contingent cost of financing such that the cheapest source of financing depends on the phase of the business cycle in this manner the financial frictions are able to explain the interaction between the types of flows and deliver a time varying composition of flows as well as other standard features of emerging market business cycles if as this work suggests flows are an equilibrium outcome of firms financing decisions then volatility of capital inflows is not necessarily bad for an economy furthermore using capital controls to shut down one type of flow and encourage another is certain to have both short and long run welfare implications

the finnish power market are imports from russia low cost electricity market integration of high and low price areas is expected to bring benefits to the consumers in a high price area however these potential benefits are highly dependent on the market characteristics and the policy interventions we use simulation to study the effects of different alternatives for the expansion and operation of the interconnector finland russia on the finnish market a high price area our results show that the current trading arrangement where a single trader owns the transmission rights and limits the trade during peak hours to avoid capacity charges in russia is beneficial for finland at the current interconnection capacity however if the interconnector is expanded the behaviour of the trader would create significant distortions in the finnish market we also analyse the pros and cons of maintaining a strategic reserve in finland in combination with the different scenarios of interconnection expansion and trading arrangements we conclude that in the absence of trust in imports the need for a strategic reserve is undeniable this will slightly reduce the economic benefits of integration for finnish consumers but it will significantly improve reliability

international financial intermediation and aggregate fluctuations under alternative exchange rate regimes this paper presents a two country overlapping generations model in which financial intermediation arises endogenously as an incentive compatible means of economizing on monitoring costs because of the existence of transactions costs money markets in the two countries are segmented and investors have differential access to international credit markets the model is used to generate predictions about the role of international intermediation in determining the nature of business cycle phenomena across alternative exchange rate regimes disturbances are propagated by a credit allocation mechanism which also lends a novel flavor to the model s long run properties

appliance ownership and aspirations among electric grid and home solar households in rural kenya in sub saharan africa there are active debates about whether increases in energy access should be driven by investments in electric grid infrastructure or small scale home solar systems e g solar lanterns and solar home systems we summarize the results of a household electrical appliance survey and describe how households in rural kenya differ in terms of appliance ownership and aspirations our data suggest that home solar is not a substitute for grid power furthermore the environmental advantages of home solar are likely to be relatively small in countries like kenya where grid power is primarily derived from non fossil fuel sources

the terms of trade and the international coordination of fiscal policy this paper develops an example of a noncooperative game between fiscal authorities in two countries the key strategic link between countries is the terms of trade an equilibrium without cooperation is characterized by excessive tax rates and public spending levels in each country the outcome is analogous to the nash equilibrium of the static optimal tarif game in trade theory but in this model there is also a dynamic distortion caused by noncooperative behaviour this dynamic distortion depresses capital accumulation and reduces the equilibrium capital stock in each country numerical examples suggest a significant welfare benefit of cooperation

a review of trends policies and plans for increasing energy access in ghana abstract the need to secure future energy in the forms of electricity and modern cooking fuels is recognized as critical to achieving the millennium development goals particularly poverty reduction ensuring improved education health water supply and environmental sustainability this paper presents a review of the trends policies plans and programmes for increasing energy access in ghana with primary focus on electricity cooking fuels and renewable energy the paper argues that even though governments over the years have had the provision of energy services high on the national development agenda past and existing policies and plans have not delivered effective results to accelerate energy access especially in the rural and peri urban areas where the services are badly needed the paper therefore calls for a coherent national energy policy with inputs from a wider section of the public that has precise targets and clearly laid down strategies including financing mechanisms to achieve the targets

international policy coordination in interdependent monetary economies abstract an optimising equilibrium model of two interdependent monetary economies with no other assets except cash perfect foresight flexible exchange rates and imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods is analysed both non cooperative and cooperative market oriented outcomes are time inconsistent since each government has an incentive to renege and levy a surprise inflation tax international policy coordination without pre commitment can be counterproductive even though there are no tax distortions and the provision of public goods is optimal since it exacerbates the credibility problems perceived by the private sectors and therefore leads to a too low level of real money balances and excessive inflation

understanding the role of energy consumption in human development through the use of saturation phenomena a correlation is presented between the un human development index and per capita energy consumption for 120 nations a strong relationship between index values and energy consumption is observed for the majority of the world additionally a distinct secondary trend emerges from the dataset representing heavy energy exporters such as the organization of the petroleum exporting countries and some former soviet union nations among others the preliminary observation is made that these two trends closely resemble saturation curves exhibited by a variety of natural phenomena for the primary trend three regions are isolated a steep rise in human development relative to energy consumption for energy poor nations a moderate rise for transitioning nations and essentially no rise in human development for energy advantaged nations consuming large amounts of modern energy these correlations suggest that tremendous gains in human development are possible for the world s poorest with small incremental access to energy

greening africa technologies endowments and the latecomer effect abstract africa is well endowed with potential for hydro and solar power but its other endowments shortages of capital skills and governance capacity make most of the green options relatively expensive while its abundance of hydro carbons makes fossil fuels relatively cheap current power shortages make expansion of power capacity a priority africa s endowments and the consequent scarcities and relative prices are not immutable and can be changed to bring opportunity costs in africa closer to those in the rest of the world the international community can support by increasing africa s supply of the scarce factors of capital skills and governance

forecasting the conditional volatility of oil spot and futures prices with structural breaks and long memory models this paper extends previous studies by investigating the relevance of structural breaks and long memory in modeling and forecasting the conditional volatility of oil spot and futures prices using a variety of garch type models our results can be summarized as follows first we provide evidence of parameter instability in five out of nine garch based conditional volatility processes for energy prices second long memory is effectively present in all the series considered and a figarch model seems to better fit the data but the degree of volatility persistence diminishes significantly after adjusting for structural breaks finally the out of sample analysis shows that volatility models accommodating instability and long memory characteristics of the data provide the best volatility forecasts for most cases

climate change hydro dependency and the african dam boom summary we examine africa s increasing reliance on hydropower in light of climate change induced variations in rainfall and the potential power outages that may result we use a continent wide riverflow model and ippc climate change scenarios and show that current plans for african dam building are fairly well matched with river flow predictions so that fears that international donors and national governments are making a series of expensive and environmentally damaging investments may be overstated however predictions of an increase in extreme events and reduced rainfall for certain countries mean there are still viability concerns for certain planned hydropower investments

overuse of wood based bioenergy in selected sub saharan africa countries review of unconstructive challenges and suggestions excessive wood consumption for energy and over dependence on fossil fuel based energy are fundamental issues of importance regarding the destruction of environmental sanity in this respect international communities are seeking to explore opportunities on how to encourage aggressive deployment of technologies for clean and sustainable development and possibly renewable the kyoto protocol on climate change meeting in 1997 with about 160 countries in attendance has been used as one of the platform of discourse on carbon emissions reduction strategies advocated strategies agreed include increase in renewable energy consumption via modern techniques massive deployment of renewable energy systems on a global scale will ensure a reasonable displacement of oil based energy production which is the main source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in sub saharan africa limited access to modern energy in the region has stepped up reliance on bioenergy consumption in form of wood fuel and charcoal resulting to attendant effects on human health environment and the biodiversity in general in view of the foregoing this study presents a review on the current situations of unconstructive effects in the overuse of fuel wood and its charcoal derivative for energy consumption in three selected sub saharan african countries nigeria ghana and uganda in conclusion suggestions on how to confront the challenges associated with the over exploitation conditions of fuel wood in the region are put forward the suggestions could be part of the pursuit to increase electricity availability reliability and security with lower level of emissions in the region

financing renewable energy in africa key challenge of the sustainable development goals abstract given the challenge of offering a development perspective to a rapidly growing population it might be tempting for africa to pursue a strategy of fueling growth with the cheapest source of energy available and take care of the environment later such an approach however would disregard the social cost of fossil fuels which the population would have to bear using the sustainable development goals as a benchmark for inclusive and sustainable growth we identify the synergy effects provided by renewable energy already substantial efforts of financing the additional cost of re are under way an analysis of possible leverage points available instruments and involved actors shows that there remains a large additional potential

policy commitment and the welfare gains from capital market liberalization this paper evaluates the quantitative impact of capital liberalization on the taxation structure and welfare of the liberalizing countries when governments conduct fiscal policy optimally but without commitment time consistent policies the transition from a regime of capital autarky to a regime of free mobility leads to a decrease in the long term tax rate on capital of 13 percent and an increase in the tax rate on labor of 2 percent as a consequence of this taxation shift welfare increases by about 1 percent the reduction in capital taxation induced by capital market liberalization is welfare improving because in the absence of capital mobility the time consistent policies over tax capital

low carbon energy scenarios for sub saharan africa an input output analysis on the effects of universal energy access and economic growth abstract meeting sub saharan african ssa human development goals will require economic development to be the priority over the coming decades but economic development at all cost may not be acceptable across these goals this paper aims to explore five development scenarios for the five largest economies in ssa to understand the implications to co 2 equivalent emissions co 2 e and off grid energy modernisation in 2030 within this scope gdp growth economic structure availability of energy resources international trade and the development of distributed generation for remote locations are considered regional co 2 emissions were studied using a multi regional input output model for africa under the scenarios analysed all five nations will be unable to reduce 2030 co 2 e emissions below 2012 levels whilst simultaneously achieving forecast gdp growth and universal access to modernised energy services 100 off grid modernisation is estimated to require a three fold increase in primary energy supply and a 26 1317 mt increase in 2030 co 2 e emissions total regional co 2 e emissions could be reduced from 45 to 35 by meeting a 50 renewable energy supply target by 2030 climate change policy would need to focus on multi sector reform to reduce regional emissions as the agricultural sector is the largest emitter in nigeria ethiopia and kenya

sustaining policy cooperation between economies of different size abstract i consider an example of a two country model featuring national heterogeneity and demonstrate that heterogeneity plays an important role for the countries gains from international policy cooperation and just as important for the incentives to break the cooperative agreement i find that national heterogeneity unambiguously reduces trigger strategies support for policy cooperation in other words the more countries differ the harder it is to sustain policy cooperation

policy cooperation among benevolent governments may be undesirable this paper presents a simple counterexample to the belief that policy cooperation among benevolent governments is desirable it also explains circumstances under which such counterexamples are possible and relates them to the literature on time inconsistency since the work of hamada 1976 investigating the effects of increasing policy cooperation among countries has been a major topic in international economics a standard conclusion of this work is that increasing policy cooperation among countries is desirable in a seminal paper rogoff 1985 has challenged this view using a simple monetary model rogoff shows that cooperation among policy makers can lead to a lower level of welfare than noncooperation does rogoff s result has caused much consternation among those who advocate policy cooperation and his work has been criticized along several dimensions for example some authors including canzoneri and henderson 1988 have noted that a key assumption in rogoff s model is that the objective function of each country s policy maker does not coincide with the objective function of its residents indeed if in his model policy makers maximize the welfare of their country s residents the counterexample is overturned and cooperation strictly dominates noncooperation this feature leads some to interpret rogoff s result as simply saying that if policy makers form a coalition against the private sector they may be worse off than if they do not others such as neck and dockner 1988 have claimed that rogoff s result depends on private agents acting strategically under this interpretation rogoff s result is relevant to say economies with a large trade union but not to economies with a large number of competitive private agents in a somewhat different vein persson 1988 and especially devereux 1986a b have questioned the significance of welfare comparisons across different institutional regimes in a model without a solid foundation for the behavioural relationships this paper presents a simple model in which governments are benevolent but cooperation is still undesirable the model is a two country version of fischer s 1980 optimal tax model in it private agents are competitive in that each agent takes both prices and government policies as uninfluenced by his actions and each government maximizes the welfare of its country s residents in the paper the two different regimes cooperative and noncooperative

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

the international ramifications of tax reforms supply side economics in a global economy this paper studies tax reforms in a dynamic model of a global economy calibrated to current u s and european tax policies world capital markets add consumption smoothing and income redistribution effects that alter closed economy predictions in the absence of taxes on foreign interest welfare gains of eliminating u s income taxes are enlarged by up to 34 percent at the expense of european losses caused by transitional declines in consumption and leisure and a permanent capital outflow in contrast if foreign interest is taxed the same tax reform reduces u s welfare 0 7 percent and increases european welfare 1 8 percent copyright 1998 by american economic association

insulation impossible monetary policy and regional debt spillovers in a federation this paper studies the effects of monetary policy in the presence of debt spillovers within a monetary union when capital markets are integrated the fiscal policy of any member country will generally influence equilibrium wages and interest rates across the whole union we ask whether there exists a monetary policy which can offset these spillovers within a general class of monetary policy rules there does not exist one that completely insulates agents in one region from fiscal policy in the other these debt spillovers will affect welfare through two channels intertemporal efficiency and redistribution

green growth in oil producing african countries a panel data analysis of renewable energy demand renewable energy has been considered as the solution to the hydra headed problems of energy security energy access and climate change especially in africa in addition renewable energy sources such as the sun wind wave and waste abound in africa are in need of investment in order to provide both policy and investment guide this study investigates the drivers of renewable energy demand in oil producing african countries three panel data models a random effect model a fixed effects model and a dynamic panel data model are used to estimate renewable energy demand with a comprehensive set of determinants the estimation results indicate that the main drivers of renewable energy in oil producing african countries are real income per capita energy resource depletion per capita carbon emissions per capita and energy prices the study recommends that policies should encourage the consumption of commercial sources of renewable energy to attract the needed investments

the cost of providing electricity to africa abstract sub saharan africa lacks electricity we estimate the cost of providing electricity to the region to do so we build an optimisation model that links the electricity demand to the supply and links the supply to the generation distribution and transmission of electricity between countries to the best of our knowledge such a model is novel in the literature we determine that the investment cost of providing electricity to sub saharan africa over a 10 year period is between 160 and 215 billion u s dollars depending on assumptions for electricity access and the cross country electricity trade although the electricity trade increases the investment cost estimate moderately it provides a high return to african countries and is cost efficient overall

is monthly us natural gas consumption stationary new evidence from a garch unit root test with structural breaks we apply a recently developed unit root test that simultaneously accounts for heteroskedasticity and structural breaks to united states monthly natural gas consumption we find that united states monthly natural gas consumption is stationary our results illustrate the importance of accounting for heteroskedasticity when testing for a unit root in energy consumption with higher frequency data

modelling price and volatility inter relationships in the australian wholesale spot electricity markets this paper examines the inter relationships of wholesale spot electricity prices among the four regional electricity markets in the australian national electricity market nem namely new south wales queensland south australia and victoria using the constant conditional correlation and tse and tsui s tse y k tsui a k c 2002 a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time varying correlations journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 351 362 and engle s engle r 2002 dynamic conditional correlation a sample class of multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 339 350 dynamic conditional correlation multivariate garch models tse and tsui s tse y k tsui a k c 2002 a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with time varying correlations journal of business and economic statistics 20 3 351 362 dynamic conditional correlation multivariate garch model which takes account of the student t specification produces the best results at the univariate garch 1 1 level the mean equations indicate the presence of positive own mean spillovers in all four markets and little evidence of mean spillovers from the other lagged markets in the dynamic conditional correlation equation the highest conditional correlations are evident between the well connected markets indicating the presence of strong interdependence between these markets with weaker interdependence between the not so well interconnected markets

strategic interactions of fiscal policies in europe a global var perspective abstract the paper analyses the strategic interactions of fiscal policies in the european union context by modelling the interdependencies arising between public and private sectors saving investment balances in a global vector autoregressive framework we use two empirical specifications to reflect some important differences in the sequencing of the policy decision making process in this setting we draw policy implications with respect to fiscal policy coordination and fiscal policy discretion we highlight the importance of several factors such as global capital flows uncertainty with respect to policy actions and nature of the shocks as key elements defining the dimension of the prevailing policy tradeoffs

global policy of rural electrification energy poverty and lack of electricity in the rural area exacerbate the poverty of the developing countries the sustainable renewable technologies can be considered as efficient tools to reduce energy poverty whenever they are conducted based on an appropriate policy electricity can improve the human s lifestyle by increasing the level of health education welfare and technology currently sub sahara africa with only 14 2 of rural electrification has the first rank in the world with lowest access to electricity in that region around 585 million citizens has almost no access to electricity the present study focuses on the general global policies to electrify the rural areas in this regard variety of plans and programs conducted by governmental and private institutes are investigated in the year 2011 the international energy agency iea has developed three global strategies based on the world energy market that defines the overall world energy approach in the present work different technologies for rural electrification are taken into account in two major categories of grid connected and off grid systems furthermore based on sustainable development with emphasis on environmental consideration the feasibility of electrification by using different types of renewable energies such as solar biomass hydro wind and wave have been studied despite reliability of grid connection results indicate that renewable energy sources are the best choice especially in areas far from grid connections challenges between financial institutes and executive agencies result in resource management and technology development in order to overcome existing barriers and issues

international coordination of fiscal deficits abstract nearly all existing studies of international coordination of fiscal deficits focus on aggregate demand aspects of the problem in contrast this paper adopts a dynamic general equilibrium perspective and emphasizes the public finance side of fiscal deficits in a world with international capital mobility the fiscal deficit of any single government affects world interest rates and therefore influences intertemporal resource allocation in all countries the paper shows that these international externalities may result in inefficiently large fiscal deficits high interest rates and low levels of welfare if international policy coordination is absent

short term forecasting of electricity prices for miso hubs evidence from arima egarch models this study estimates three time series models arima arima egarch and arima egarch m for hourly real time electricity prices for each of the five hubs of the midwest independent system operator miso and examines the in and out of sample forecasting performance of the respective models the results from the arima models reveal the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity recognizing the possibility of asymmetric time varying volatility the egarch specification for the variance equation demonstrates the presence of an inverse leverage effect in electricity prices for each hub with respect to forecasts no one model clearly dominates the others in terms of in sample forecasting performance based on four forecast evaluation statistics however the arima egarch m model outperforms the other models michigan hub is the exception in terms of the out of sample forecasting performance

an economic analysis for the design of ipp contracts for grid connected renewable energy projects abstract in this paper we undertake an integrated financial economic stakeholder analysis of a grid connected onshore wind project that is owned and operated by an independent power producer ipp in santiago island cape verde this ipp project has received considerable positive publicity and has won many awards cape verde has a very good wind resource but it suffers from high transportation costs for petroleum fuels due to its location hence it would appear to be an ideal site for an ipp investment in a wind farm this analysis is conducted from the perspectives of the electric utility the country s economy the government and the private sector investor the key question is whether the design of the power purchase agreement ppa can simultaneously yield a high enough cash flow for the project to be bankable while at the same time yielding a positive net financial and economic present value to the electric utility and the country respectively the analysis shows that a negotiated ppa results in a negative outcome for the economy of cape verde in almost all circumstances in contrast the owners of the ipp are guaranteed under all circumstances a very substantial return on their investment

renewable based distributed generation in uganda resource potential and status of exploitation abstract uganda is gifted by nature with abundant energy resources mainly renewables which can potentially provide the country with sufficient capacity to meet future growth in energy demand surprisingly uganda has one of the lowest electricity penetration levels with only 9 12 of the total population having electricity access 2 3 of them living in rural communities there is multitude of challenges facing the energy sector of uganda forcing energy demand to always exceed the supply for decades hydropower has been and is still the base electricity supply of the country with a supplement of limited biomass diesel based thermal and solar electricity the objective of this paper is to review the potential and progress of renewable based distributed generation in uganda the potential of the country s natural renewable resources and existing distributed generation is described and existing government policies are assessed the challenges facing the energy sector and the suggested remedies are discussed various distributed generation systems that could be incorporated into the energy system of the country to improve renewable energy re utilization and possibly contribute to the electricity needs of the population are also proposed and discussed exploitation of abundant re resources through distributed energy generation around the region will not only improve the electricity needs of the country but also increase the economic welfare of the growing population

financing off grid sustainable energy access for the poor this paper examines the role of public instruments in promoting private finance to achieve off grid sustainable energy access renewable energy technologies are increasingly becoming the cheapest solutions for off grid energy access the dramatic uptake of mobile phones in developing countries shows how quickly decentralized services can develop on a commercial basis under the right conditions and raises the prospect that private finance could also drive decentralized energy access for the poor indeed there are already a number of instances of clean energy solutions such as solar portable lights household biogas units or solar home systems that have managed to scale up through leveraging private finance however the experience gained from first generation market development projects show that in almost all cases significant public resources have been necessary to increase the affordability of clean energy technologies provide access to financing for the poor and remove non economic barriers such public interventions may be funded by international public finance domestic budgets and carbon finance despite mounting fiscal constraints facing governments worldwide the emergence of new sources of climate finance and the political momentum in support of energy subsidy reforms as well as new programming modalities offer opportunities to leverage additional resources to achieve universal energy access by 2030

access to electricity in small island developing states of the pacific issues and challenges abstract energy poverty is widespread in small island developing states sids of the pacific it is estimated that 70 percent of pacific islander households do not have access to electricity which is equivalent to access rates in sub saharan africa and slightly below the average for low income countries pacific sids face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity given that their populations are spread across tens of thousands of islands governments and development partners in pacific sids continue to prioritise development of electricity grids as is evident in ongoing subsidisation of grid based power consumption and the establishment of ambitious grid based renewable energy targets this paper argues that traditional approaches to rural electrification which prioritise grid extension are not suited to the pacific islands region increased funding should be directed by both governments and development partners towards rural electrification especially in off grid areas where isolated systems are more appropriate institutional reform is also important regulatory reform is needed for power utilities to extend electricity grids into rural areas institutional arrangements that facilitate the sustainable operation and maintenance of off grid systems also need to be established past donor and government funded off grid rural electrification projects have rarely been sustainable alternative approaches involving payment of output based subsidies to energy service companies are worth exploring although will only succeed where sound regulatory arrangements are in place

financing energy access and off grid electrification a review of status options and challenges abstract this paper provides a review of funding needs and financing mechanisms for energy access in general and off grid electrification in particular to find whether the funding for these activities has been adequate whether sufficient funding is likely to be available to meet the needs of universal energy access whether innovative approaches can be used in funding it finds that in all successful cases the state has played an important role in funding infrastructure investments but many developing countries have neglected the energy access issue for a long time international donor agencies have provided selective and limited support while the innovative mechanisms are also unfriendly towards small scale projects weak governance limited organisational capacity and unfavourable policy environment militate against large scale mobilisation of financial resources in the poorest countries of the world where energy access is a chronic problem the challenge of mobilising finance and ensuring its appropriate delivery and use remains a major issue and would require a co ordinated effort of all relevant stakeholders

coordination of fiscal policies in a world economy abstract this paper provides a simple counterexample to the standard belief that in a world economy in which all countries are small strategic interactions between policymarkers are trivial and thus cooperative and non cooperative government policies coincide it is well known that this holds for tariff policies however this paper demonstrates the result does not apply to fiscal policy in addition the paper analyzes how optimally coordinated fiscal policies differ from non cooperative policies it finds that relative to optimally coordinated levels non cooperative government spending can be too high or too low depending on the sign of a transmission effect which captures the overall effect countries actions have on each other

the gains from fiscal cooperation in the two commodity real trade model abstract this paper analyzes the gains from fiscal cooperation within the context of the standard two commodity real trade model it shows how the adjustment in the terms of trade is the critical factor in determining the effects of moving from a noncooperative equilibrium in general a noncooperative equilibrium leads to an overexpansion of government expenditure on the import good relative to a cooperative equilibrium the specific example of a logarithmic economy is also considered the paper discusses further the welfare effects resulting from the formation of a coalition of two countries among three

strategic aspects of public finance in a world with high capital mobility abstract in a world with high capital mobility an increase in equity taxes is likely to induce a capital out flow it is commonly believed that in consequence there may be an under provision of public goods when governments have only equity taxes at their disposal this paper compares the provision of public goods under cooperative and non cooperative tax policies suprisingly the non cooperative regime may result in either an over or an under provision of public goods it is also shown that the gains from coordination increase as countries become atomistic

insights into biofuel development in burkina faso potential and strategies for sustainable energy policies abstract in many african countries the upswing in oil prices is one factor that favours the adoption and implementation of a national biofuel policy this trend has a major impact on state budgets and domestic trade balances while also limiting the access of rural inhabitants to modern energy services contribution of biofuels in stabilizing the energy sector influences ongoing negotiations on the global dynamics of climate change the reduction in greenhouse gas ghg emissions and sustainable development the question of biofuels as an alternative energy thus depends on international national and local considerations biofuels represent opportunities e g energy independence and security new national income and employment sources as well as potential food security problems african policy makers therefore need to make the right choices to guide the development of biofuel production and use this article aims to support the development of a biofuel policy by reviewing the latest technical economic environmental and social knowledge so as to be able to evaluate the potential and limits of biofuels in burkina faso

the economics of renewable energy expansion in rural sub saharan africa accelerating development in sub saharan africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity currently reaching only about one third of households this paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check the authors develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply the results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access but it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in africa even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside these findings underscore the need to de carbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in africa

optimal monetary policies and policy interdependence in the world economy the literature on strategic policy interactions has focused on the implications of alternative strategic policy interactions cooperative versus noncooperative for equilibrium macroeconomic policies given the state of the world economy this paper asks how changes in world economic conditions alter equilibrium policies given the nature of policy interdependence among nations the paper considers a world economy comprised of two countries operating under a system of flexible exchange rates both governments act noncooperatively and choose the rate of growth of their money supply so as to maximize the utility of their country s residents given the rate of growth of the other country s money supply the resulting nash equilibrium rates of growth of the home and foreign money supplies are determined and the dependence of international differences in money growth and inflation rates on international differences in technology jel e52 e60 f41 f42 the international transmission of monetary and fiscal policies has been studied a great deal by economists however policy interdependence how one country s policies depend on the policies enacted by other countries has only recently begun to be explored hamada s 1976 paper was one of the first major contributions in this regard hamada considered a world economy comprised of n countries operating under a fixed exchange rate system in which policymakers set domestic credit growth so as to maximize an objective function depending on inflation and the rate of accumulation of international reserves using this framework hamada demonstrated that in equilibrium optimal domestic credit policies are generally not pareto efficient when they are chosen noncooperatively but are pareto efficient when they are set cooperatively in subsequent work hamada 1979 1985 has elaborated on this and various other aspects of cooperative and noncooperative monetary policies under both fixed and flexible exchange rates many others have followed hamada s lead by comparing the properties of cooperative and noncooperative monetary policies eichengreen 1985 for instance considers discount rates as the instrument of monetary policy and examines issues of leadership and cooperation during the interwar years under the gold standard oudiz and sachs 1985 have used simulation methods to

the role of regulatory uncertainty in certificate markets a case study of the swedish norwegian market abstract price volatility in green certificate markets reflects uncertainty over future prices representing a major source of risk for renewable energy generators price risk is considered the principal deficiency of this market based policy since it causes investors to require higher returns moreover investors are exposed to regulatory risk namely the risk that a change in the regulation will materially impact the certificate price regulatory uncertainty is reflected in market volatility exacerbating certificate price risk using an econometric approach we investigate the role of regulatory changes on price volatility in the swedish certificate market the results of our analysis indicate that regulatory changes strongly affect certificate markets resulting in periods of higher volatility moreover we analyze whether certificate price volatility has changed after creating a joint swedish norwegian market results indicate that the ambivalence surrounding the creation of this bigger market led to a period of increased price volatility between 2010 and 2011 overall this article brings a better understanding of the role of regulatory uncertainty on certificate markets and gives evidence for its negative impact in terms of increased price volatility

the politico economics of electricity planning in developing countries a case study of ghana abstract off grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries however many un electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off grid technologies electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off grid technologies using a case study of un electrified communities in ghana we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to 1 cost efficiency and 2 political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations and therefore votes are given priority in terms of grid electrification the results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade offs shift from considering the grid versus off grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access

an integrated framework for rural electrification adopting a user centric approach to business model development rural electrification re has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions this growth has largely been driven by socio economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles the literature is categorized into four focal lenses technology institutional viability and user centric we find that the first two dominate the re debate the viability lens has been used less frequently whilst the user centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007 we provide an overview of the technological institutional and viability lenses and elaborate upon the user centric lens in greater detail for energy policy and practice we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers practitioners and investors could use to assess re projects or to design future rural electrification strategies

is green energy expensive empirical evidence from the spanish electricity market abstract renewable energy promotion and its cost are at the heart of the energy policy debate in many countries the question from an economic perspective is how expensive the promotion of renewable sources through price based incentive schemes is this paper addresses this issue empirically we analyze the spanish electricity market during the period 2008 2012 where renewable energy production rose by 57 to determine how expensive it was we first measure the savings due to the spot price reduction driven by the merit order effect and second we compute the amount paid as incentives to green energy by the electricity system the difference between the two is the net cost of green energy to the electricity markets we present aggregate results for renewable sources as a whole as well as individual results for each technology we show that at the initial stages when renewable capacity was low green energy promotion paid for itself 2008 2009 however from 2010 on when renewable production reached a relatively high level it started to impose a positive net cost on the system finally we found substantial differences among technologies wind energy implied the lowest net cost while solar photovoltaic was the most expensive

least cost network evaluation of centralized and decentralized contributions to global electrification abstract the choice between centralized and decentralized electricity generation is examined for 150 countries as a function of population distribution electricity consumption transmission cost and the cost difference between decentralized and centralized electricity generation a network algorithm is developed to find the shortest centralized transmission network that spans a given fraction of the population in a country the least cost combination of centralized and decentralized electricity that serves the country is determined case studies of botswana uganda and bangladesh illustrate situations that are more and less suited for decentralized electrification specific maps for centralized and decentralized generation are presented to show how the least cost option varies with the relative costs of centralized and decentralized generation and transmission cost centralized and decentralized fractions are calculated for 150 countries for most of the world s population centralized electricity is the least cost option for a number of countries particularly in africa substantial populations and regions may be most cost effectively served by decentralized electricity

renewable energy regulation and structural breaks an empirical analysis of spanish electricity price volatility abstract international experience proves that electricity prices have undergone major changes in volatility since the entry of green technologies the intermittency of renewable sources is one of the reasons for these changes as it leads to higher volatility in periods of higher participation by renewables we argue that the development of the regulatory system promoting renewable electricity also plays a crucial role we raise a question that deserves attention could an incentive scheme induce higher share of renewables and lower volatility simultaneously in this paper we conduct an empirical analysis with spanish data we analyze possible ensuing structural changes in spanish electricity spot price volatility from january 2002 to december 2017 we identify two structural breaks linked to important measures related to renewable electricity i the abolishment of the feed in tariff scheme and ii the establishment of a more market oriented regulation based on investment and operating costs we conclude that stable regulatory policies reduce volatility even though the presence of renewable sources is greater furthermore market based policy measures achieve lower volatility encouraging good integration of intermittent renewable electricity

does size matter simulating electricity market coupling between colombia and ecuador since the beginning of the liberalization era the integration of electricity markets has been promoted in many regions arguing that this will bring benefits in terms of security of supply and efficiency however little progress has been made in the last decades in most regions with some successful exceptions such as the nordpool and more research is needed to determine under which circumstances those benefits are achievable we develop a system dynamics model to analyze the potential benefits and risks of market coupling and to improve the understanding of its implications on policy design this model allows us to simulate the long term behavior of two interconnected countries under different interconnection scenarios and different policies regarding capacity payments the analysis is focused on colombia and ecuador which have been trading electricity for more than 10 years and offer an interesting case study given their complementarity in terms of hydropower supply however the results of the simulations show that this complementarity is not necessarily exploited while the relative size of the countries determines the magnitude of the potential benefits of integration the interconnector capacity plays a key role in achieving those benefits additionally both factors significantly affect the outcome of policies such as the implementation of capacity payments we conclude that capacity policies and integration policies need to be coordinated

effects of renewables on the stylized facts of electricity prices abstract many countries around the world have increased their renewable installed capacity due to a greater awareness of climate concerns under this new framework with renewables being among the main generation sources the literature warns of a dramatic change in price behaviour some of the most commonly claimed effects of having a significant proportion of renewable generating sources in the total electricity production mix include i a systematic decrease in overall wholesale market prices ii a higher occurrence of price jumps and iii a significant increase in price volatility the goal of the present study is to test whether these changes in price behaviour have actually come about to do so we focus on the spanish day ahead electricity market as a paradigmatic example in line with the literature it is found a statistically negative relationship between the renewable generation share and the day ahead market marginal prices as well we have obtained statistical confirmation of the fact that renewables generation share volatility is transferred to price volatility though similarly to other generation technologies finally in contrast to the general belief that the introduction of renewable generation would give rise to extreme positive prices according to our results increases in renewables generation share reduce the probability of upward jumps in prices the results obtained are of interest for portfolio managers practitioners and regulators

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

applying arma garch approaches to forecasting short term electricity prices abstract accurately modeling and predicting the mean and volatility of electricity prices can be of great importance to value electricity bid or hedge against the volatility of electricity prices and manage risk the paper applies various autoregressive moving average arma models with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch processes namely arma garch models along with their modified forms arma garch in mean arma garch m to model and forecast hourly ahead electricity prices in total 10 different model structures are adopted and this paper thus conducts a comprehensive investigation on the arma garch based time series forecasting of electricity prices multiple statistical measures are employed to evaluate the modeling sufficiency and predication accuracy of the arma garch m methods the results show that the arma garch m models are in general an effective tool for modeling and forecasting the mean and volatility of electricity prices while arma sgarch m models are simple and robust and the arma gjrgarch m model is very competitive in addition we observe that hourly electricity prices exhibit apparent daily weekly and monthly periodicities and have the nonlinear and asymmetric time varying volatility together with an inverse leverage effect

structural breaks and electricity prices further evidence on the role of climate policy uncertainties in the australian electricity market the primary objectives and the strategies of a national electricity market are the efficient delivery of network services and the electricity infrastructure to meet the long term consumer s interests therefore the objective of this study is to explore whether electricity prices across the six australian states display instability such instability is closely associated with the presence of structural breaks in relevance to policy events on australian carbon policies the study makes use of weekly australian wholesale electricity prices spanning the period from june 8th 2008 to march 30th 2014 along with linear and non linear unit root testing methodologies the results provide supportive evidence that the australian electricity market can be described as a less stable electricity market which implies that a high degree of market power is exercised by generators across regional markets these findings are expected to have substantial consequences for the effectiveness of carbon dioxide mitigating policies especially when there is uncertainty as to whether the planned environmental policy is put in place for the lifespan of undertaken investments