assessing the performance of renewable electricity support instruments abstract the performance of feed in tariffs and tradable certificates is assessed on criteria of efficacy efficiency equity and institutional feasibility in the early stage of transition to an energy system based entirely on renewable energy supplies renewable electricity can only thrive if support takes into account the specific technical economic and political problems which result from embedding this electricity in conventional power systems whose technology organizational structure environmental responsibility and general mission differ profoundly from the emerging renewable based system support schemes need to capture the diversity of power supplies the variable nature of some renewable supplies and their different attributes for the purposes of public policy they must take into account the variety of generators including small decentralized generation emerging in a renewable based system and the new relationships between generators and customers renewable energy policies need a clear point of reference because the incumbent power systems are not sustainable they must adapt to the requirements of the renewable ones not the other way round incumbent systems carry the responsibility of paying the transition something that corresponds best with the polluter pays principle

uniqueness of market equilibrium on a network a peak load pricing approach abstract in this paper we establish conditions under which uniqueness of market equilibrium is obtained in a setup where prior to trading of electricity transmission capacities between different market regions are fixed in our setup firms facing fluctuating demand decide on the size and location of production facilities they make production decisions constrained by the invested capacities taking into account that market prices partially reflect scarce transmission capacities between the different market zones for this type of peak load pricing model on a network we state general conditions for existence and uniqueness of the market equilibrium and provide a characterization of equilibrium investment and production the presented analysis covers the cases of perfect competition and monopoly the case of strategic firms is approximated by a conjectural variations approach our result is a prerequisite for analyzing regulatory policy options with computational multilevel equilibrium models since uniqueness of the equilibrium at lower levels is of key importance when solving these models thus our paper contributes to an evolving strand of literature that analyzes regulatory policy based on computational multilevel equilibrium models and aims at taking into account individual objectives of various agents among them not only generators and customers but also e g the regulator deciding on network expansion

exploring investment potential in a context of nuclear phase out uncertainty perfect vs imperfect electricity markets abstract in view of the ongoing nuclear power debate in europe we analyze how uncertainty about a nuclear phase out affects investment capacity decisions by belgian electricity suppliers depending on the type of market structure considered to achieve this goal we build a structural model and solve it by using game theoretic and optimization approaches in order to consider the different types of market structure namely oligopoly simplified to a duopoly in this case and the two extremes of the competition spectrum i e monopoly and perfect competition we show that higher levels of investment in new electricity generation capacity are reached with decreasing probability of nuclear license extension and or with higher levels of competition in the market moreover investments in perfectly competitive markets are less influenced by changes in the probability of future nuclear license extension resulting in a more stable long term investment climate however the consideration of possible changes in market structure and gradual nuclear phase out is crucial in order to not overestimate investment potential in belgium

germany s solar cell promotion dark clouds on the horizon abstract this article demonstrates that the large feed in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in germany constitute a subsidization regime that threatens to reach a level comparable to that of german hard coal production a notoriously outstanding example of misguided political intervention yet as a consequence of the coexistence of the german renewable energy sources act eeg and the eu emissions trading scheme ets the increased use of renewable energy technologies does not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ets alone similarly disappointing is the net employment balance which is likely to be negative if one takes into account the opportunity cost of this form of solar photovoltaic pv support along the lines of the international energy agency iea 2007 energy policies of iea countries germany 2007 review international energy agency oecd paris p 77 we recommend the immediate and drastic reduction of the magnitude of the feed in tariffs granted for solar based electricity ultimately producing electricity on this basis is among the most expensive greenhouse gas abatement options

electricity curtailment behaviors in greek households different behaviors different predictors abstract this paper argues that electricity curtailment behaviors i e frequent and or low cost or free energy saving behaviors in households are distinct from one another and they thus should be analyzed and promoted we test this claim with data from telephone interviews with greek households in the capital city of athens n 285 analyzing the impact of a number of demographical structural psychological based on the theory of planned behavior and moral based on norms activation predictors though hierarchical binary logistic regression modeling we find that that each electricity curtailment behavior depends on a different mix of predictors with age gender and perceived behavioral control being statistically significant for most behaviors overall the psychological and the demographical structural clusters of variables substantially contribute to the explained variance of electricity curtailment behaviors the moral cluster s contribution is not statistically significant since moral concerns are largely interwoven in the psychological constructs

communities matter institutional preconditions for community renewable energy abstract energy transitions are high on political agendas from a practical viewpoint community approaches are deemed essential in order to transition from a predominantly centralized energy supply to a decentralized one and to exploit the potential of renewable energies in this paper i discuss how the emergence of community based energy projects can be analyzed from an institutional perspective in this context a community is treated as an individual institutional order that shapes decisions i examine how community structures the implementation of biogas cooperatives in the autonomous province of south tyrol in northern italy my findings suggest that community spirit a cooperative tradition and the norms of locality and responsibility are central drivers behind the emergence and constitution of biogas cooperatives not only do these institutional features of community influence the decision concerning which farmers are in or out but also plant location and scale i argue that community is a necessary analytical category for understanding community energy

investment in electricity markets with asymmetric technologies abstract capacity investments in electricity markets is one of the main issues in the restructuring process to ensure competition and enhance system security of networks we study competition between hydro and thermal electricity generators under demand uncertainty producers compete in quantities and each is constrained the thermal generator by capacity and the hydro generator by water availability we analyze a two period game emphasizing the incentives for capacity investments by the thermal generator we characterize both markov perfect and open loop equilibria in the markov perfect equilibrium investment is discontinuous in initial capacity and higher than it is in the open loop equilibrium however since there are two distortions in the model equilibrium investment can be either higher or lower than the efficient investment

human capital and fdi inflow an assessment of the african case summary this study assesses the role of human capital hk on fdi inflows to sub saharan africa it uses panel data for the period 1980 2012 to asses if changing skill needs influence fdi inflows several measures of hk are used to assess whether the quality of labor explains fdi flows over the study period various versions of an fdi model were estimated and the results show that all measures of hk have a significant influence on fdi as are the traditional variables there is no evidence of the increasing importance of hk on fdi over time probably reflecting the type of fdi flowing into ssa

security justice and the energy crossroads assessing the implications of the nuclear phase out in germany abstract the nuclear melt down in fukushima resulted in diverging energy policy decisions across the world where germany decided to opt out of nuclear electricity production yet the government s decision making framework for energy policy decisions does not accurately reflect important drivers for the strategy change this paper presents the energy crossroads framework as a more comprehensive tool to analyse the drivers and impacts of the nuclear phase out 20 expert interviews were performed across business participants as well as policy makers in the national and international energy context results show that germany has adopted an environmental justice rather than energy security stance in their nuclear phase out policy with significant long term consequences

cultivating trust and harvesting value in virtual communities although previous scholars have examined the value of virtual communities to customers in this study we investigate the role of a firm s efforts in cultivating trust and harvesting value for themselves via the virtual communities that they sponsor we hypothesize that the perceptions of a firm s efforts to provide quality content to foster member embeddedness and to encourage interaction foster favorable customer beliefs about and trust in a virtual community sponsor further we hypothesize that trust motivates customers to behave relationally toward the sponsoring firm by sharing information with coproducing new products with and granting loyalty to the sponsoring firm data from 663 customers are analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques we find that efforts to provide quality content and foster member embeddedness have positive effects on customer beliefs about the sponsor in fact fostering member embeddedness has a stronger explanatory effect on customer beliefs than does providing quality content however despite the fact that previous studies show that customers value interaction in virtual communities our findings suggest that firms must do more than encourage interaction among their community members if they hope to create value from their virtual communities

nuclear renaissance public perception and design criteria an exploratory review abstract there is currently an international drive to build new nuclear power plants bringing about what is being termed a nuclear renaissance however the public perception of nuclear energy has historically been and continues to be a key issue particularly in light of the fukushima nuclear incident this paper discusses the disparity between perceived and calculated risks based on the last four decades of research into risk perception the leading psychological and sociological theories psychometric paradigm and cultural theory respectively are critically reviewed the authors then argue that a new nuclear build policy that promotes a broader approach to design incorporating a wider range of stakeholder inputs including that of the lay public may provide a means for reducing the perceived risk of a nuclear plant further research towards such a new approach to design is proposed based on integrating expert and lay stakeholder inputs and taking into account broader socio cultural factors whilst maintaining the necessary emphasis on safety technological development economics and environmental sustainability

transforming the energy system why municipalities strive for energy self sufficiency abstract despite evidence that a rising number of municipalities in germany are striving for energy self sufficiency there is little understanding of the driving factors behind this development we investigate economic ecological social and energy system related factors that drive municipalities to strive for energy self sufficiency with a focus on electricity supply the empirical data for this study is based on insights generated through expert interviews n 19 with mayors energy experts and scientists as well as a quantitative study among mayors and energy officers n 109 of german municipalities results show that environmental awareness tax revenues and greater independence from private utilities are positively related to the mayors attitude towards the realization of energy self sufficiency furthermore citizens the political environment the mayor s political power and his her financial resources are relevant factors for a municipality striving for energy self sufficiency policymakers need to decide whether or not to support mayors in this development for suitable policy interventions the results suggest the importance of an integrated approach that considers a combination of identified factors finally we propose a morphological box to structure different aspects of energy self sufficiency and categorize the present study

the uniqueness of the energy security justice and governance problem this article argues that among all policy fields exhibiting externalities of a global scale energy stands out on four dimensions vertical complexity horizontal complexity higher entailed costs and stronger path dependency these structural attributes are at odds with contemporary key challenges of energy security energy justice and low carbon energy transition with regard to the latter energy governance challenges occur related to unclear levels of authority and weak resilience this has implications for energy scholarship specifically relating to the political economy of energy transitions discussions about common pool resources systems analysis and other neighboring disciplines

investment climate and fdi in developing countries firm level evidence this paper uses firm level data across 77 developing countries to show that constraints related to investment climate hamper foreign direct investment fdi the main results show that physical infrastructure problems financing constraints and institutional problems discourage fdi these results are robust to an alternative definition of fdi introduction of additional explanatory variables and some breakdown analyses different sectors of activity and comparison between sub saharan africa and other developing countries the results also highlight that exporter foreign firms are more constrained in their activity by physical infrastructure hurdles and the lack of skilled workers compared to firms supplying the domestic market

textile manufacturing in eight developing countries does business environment matter for firm technical efficiency abstract production frontiers with technical inefficiency determinants are estimated using stochastic models for textile manufacturing in eight developing countries encompassing about 800 firms inefficiency determinants are considered either on an individual basis or in the form of composite indicators reflecting in house or managerial factors and various dimensions of the external environment although each of these two categories of factors is statistically significant the former proves more influential in the explanation of the difference in efficiency between firms simulations are then proposed to assess the efficiency levels that would occur if firms had the opportunity to produce in the most favourable productive environments

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

technology selection and capacity investment under uncertainty abstract we analyze the problem of technology selection and capacity investment for electricity generation in a competitive environment under uncertainty adopting a nash cournot competition model we consider the marginal cost as the uncertain parameter although the results can be easily generalized to other sources of uncertainty such as a load curve in the model firms make three different decisions i the portfolio of technologies ii each technology s capacity and iii the technology s production level for every scenario the decisions related to the portfolio and capacity are ex ante and the production level is ex post to the realization of uncertainty we discuss open and closed loop models with the aim to understand the relationship between different technologies cost structures and the portfolio of generation technologies adopted by firms in equilibrium for a competitive setting to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first not only to explicitly discuss the relation between costs and generation portfolio but also to allow firms to choose a portfolio of technologies we show that portfolio diversification arises even with risk neutral firms and technologies with different cost expectations we also investigate conditions on the probability and cost under which different equilibria of the game arise

solar feed in tariffs and the merit order effect a study of the german electricity market abstract this study investigates the merit order effect moe of the recent years implementation of solar power in germany market clearing electricity prices and production levels are compared for the years 2009 2011 and a model for the relationship between the electricity price and price sensitive electricity production is developed and applied to predict electricity prices in germany from july 2010 to july 2011 with and without solar electricity generation seg the results show that the seg has caused a 7 reduction in average electricity prices for this period the average daily maximum price and daily price variation are also found to decrease by 13 and 23 respectively when taking the moe into account the net consumer s cost of the solar feed in tariff fit system is found to be 23 less than the charge listed in the electricity bill the german fit policy for solar power has been subject to considerable public debate and a common argument brought up in disfavor of the system is the high cost for the consumers in this study we demonstrate the importance of including the moe when evaluating the total costs and benefits of the fit policy mechanism

beyond natural resources horizontal and vertical fdi diversification in sub saharan africa this article uses firm level data to analyse the drivers of foreign direct investment fdi to the manufacturing and services sectors of 30 sub saharan african countries it shows that improving the investment climate helps to attract aggregate fdi by analysing disaggregate fdi data the article establishes that there is considerable contrast in behaviour between vertical fdi foreign firms producing for export and horizontal fdi foreign firms producing for local markets in particular the latter firms are attracted to areas with higher trade regulations highlighting their interest in protected markets furthermore horizontal fdi is more affected by financing and human capital constraints and less affected by infrastructure and institutional constraints than vertical fdi is

bioenergy expansion in the eu cost effective climate change mitigation employment creation and reduced dependency on imported fuels presently the european union eu is promoting bioenergy the aim of this paper is to study the prospects for using domestic biomass resources in europe and specifically to investigate whether different policy objectives underlying the promotion of bioenergy cost effective climate change mitigation employment creation and reduced dependency on imported fuels agree on which bioenergy options that should be used we model bioenergy use from a cost effectiveness perspective with a linear regionalized energy and transport system model and perform supplementary analysis it is found that the different policy objectives do not agree on the order of priority among bioenergy options maximizing climate benefits cost effectively is in conflict with maximizing employment creation the former perspective proposes the use of lignocellulosic biomass in the stationary sector while the latter requires biofuels for transport based on traditional agricultural crops further from a security of supply perspective the appeal of a given bioenergy option depends on how oil and gas import dependencies are weighed relative to each other consequently there are tradeoffs that need to be addressed by policymakers promoting the use of bioenergy also the importance of bioenergy in relation to employment creation and fuel import dependency reduction needs to be further addressed

the german energy transition as a regime shift abstract in this paper i use the resilience framework to interpret the project of transforming the german energy system into a renewable energy sources res based system the so called energiewende as a regime shift this regime shift comprises several transformations which are currently altering the technological political and economic system structure to build my argument i first sketch how technological political and economic developments reduced the resilience of the conventional fossil nuclear energy regime and created a new res regime second i depict recent changes in german public discourse and energy policy as the shift to the res regime third i highlight the challenges involved with increasing the resilience of the res regime in particular sufficient resilience of the electricity transmission grid appears to be crucial for facilitating the transformation of the whole energy system

managing the energy trilemma the case of indonesia abstract this article argues that a central challenge for energy governance is how to manage a complex energy trilemma involving the sometimes competing demands of energy security climate change mitigation and particularly in developing countries energy poverty it suggests that tensions between the horns of the trilemma in large part explain indonesia s current profoundly suboptimal energy policy while these tensions are not inherently incapable of resolution such resolution would require good governance at both state and global levels the possibilities for and obstacles confronting such governance are explored and provisional solutions canvassed

the role of smart metering and decentralized electricity storage for smart grids the importance of positive externalities because of its fluctuating nature the feed in of renewable energy sources into low voltage distribution grids complicates the balancing of demand and supply this carries the risk of grid instabilities causing damage to electronic devices and power outages which eventually lead to deadweight losses in principle the problems arising from fluctuating feed in can be solved by increasing demand elasticity or decoupling generation and consumption for the first an advanced metering infrastructure and for the second decentralized electricity storage are considered core enablers however to date the diffusion of these future smart grids core components is low the present study provides new insights for understanding and overcoming diffusion barriers for this purpose a qualitative research approach was chosen the most important stakeholders as well as related private costs and benefits are identified the findings show that both of these smart grid components are widely considered beneficial to society by experts however because the numerous private benefits are widely distributed among distinct players socially desired investments are hampered by positive externalities the importance of well designed and consistent regulatory and legal frameworks that provide economic incentives to involved stakeholders is highlighted in the results

regional energy autarky potentials costs and consequences for an austrian region local actors at community level often thrive for energy autarky to decrease the dependence on imported energy resources we assess the potentials and trade offs between benefits and costs of increasing levels of energy autarky for a small rural region of around 21 000 inhabitants in austria we use a novel modeling approach which couples a regional energy system model with a regional land use optimization model we have collected and processed data on the spatial distribution of energy demand and potentials of biomass photovoltaics and solar thermal resources the impacts of increasing biomass production on the agricultural sector are assessed with a land use optimization model that allows deriving regional biomass supply curves an energy system model is subsequently applied to find the least cost solution for supplying the region with energy resources model results indicate that fossil fuel use for heating can be replaced at low costs by increasing forestry and agricultural biomass production however autarky in the electricity and the heating sector would significantly increase biomass production and require a full use of the potentials of photovoltaics on roof tops attaining energy autarky implies high costs to consumers and a decline in the local production of food and feed

indicators for energy security the concept of energy security is widely used yet there is no consensus on its precise interpretation in this research we have provided an overview of available indicators for long term security of supply sos we distinguished four dimensions of energy security that relate to the availability accessibility affordability and acceptability of energy and classified indicators for energy security according to this taxonomy there is no one ideal indicator as the notion of energy security is highly context dependent rather applying multiple indicators leads to a broader understanding incorporating these indicators in model based scenario analysis showed accelerated depletion of currently known fossil resources due to increasing global demand coupled with increasing spatial discrepancy between consumption and production international trade in energy carriers is projected to have increased by 142 in 2050 compared to 2008 oil production is projected to become increasingly concentrated in a few countries up to 2030 after which production from other regions diversifies the market under stringent climate policies this diversification may not occur due to reduced demand for oil possible benefits of climate policy include increased fuel diversity and slower depletion of fossil resources

growth and competition in renewable energy industries insights from an integrated assessment model with strategic firms abstract this article describes the development implementation and application of an integrated assessment modeling framework featuring renewable technology markets with producers engaged in cournot competition scenario results reveal how climate policy and inter firm learning spillovers interact with market structure to affect wind and solar pv prices adoption producer profits and carbon emissions competitive markets yield consistently lower markups than concentrated markets leading to significantly more adoption and lower emissions widespread solar pv adoption is a key component of the largest emissions reductions but this requires substantial price reductions that only occur if the solar pv market is competitive and learning spills over across producers whether a leading firm has a profit incentive to facilitate or obstruct learning spillovers depends on the availability of cost competitive substitute technologies if such a substitute exists the firm prefers strong spillovers that help its industry compete against the substitute if not the firm prefers weak spillovers that prevent competitors in its industry from seizing market share the relationship between price and cumulative capacity is endogenous in the modeling framework regression analysis of scenario results yields price learning rates which are similar to unit production cost learning rates in competitive markets but substantially lower even negative in concentrated markets

pollution reduction preferences of u s environmental managers applying ajzen s theory of planned behavior we modified ajzen s theory of planned behavior to analyze the behavioral preferences of environmental managers we used structural equation analysis to link the source reduction preferences of 295

economics of ccs for coal plants impact of investment costs and efficiency on market diffusion in europe abstract in this paper we analyze how the development of the carbon capture and storage ccs technology used in coal fired power plants affects its market diffusion specifically we 1 show the significant variance in expectations about the economics of commercial grade ccs hard coal power plants observed in the literature 2 analyze the impact of ccs economics on electricity generation costs and 3 investigate the expected deployment of ccs in the european power sector depending on the variance of two main factors efficiency and investment cost using the bottom up electricity sector model hector simulation results show that investment costs strongly influence the market deployment of coal fired ccs power plants leading to a share of 16 in european generation capacity by 2025 with the lowest observed investment costs of 1400 kw but only 2 with the highest of 3000 kw a variation of conversion efficiency between 37 and 44 the minimum and maximum observed values only leads to a 13 15 share variation of ccs equipped power plants these findings are robust for the base case with a co 2 price of 43 t and also for sensitivities with 30 and 20 t co 2 but with a lower effect as the overall share of ccs is significantly reduced at these prices

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

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 causality between fdi and sector specific production in turkey evidence from threshold cointegration with regime shifts abstractthis article considers bidirectional nonlinear cointegration relation between fdi and industrial output in turkey the data cover the monthly period 2005 1 2013 10 for the time series of total industrial production 36 sub industrial sectors production and fdi following nonlinear threshold cointegration and vecms the article yields that i total industrial production and nine sub industrial productions have positive long run impact on fdi with significant error corrections ii six sub industrial productions have short term influence on fdi iii fdi has long run positive impulse on total industrial production and nine sub industrial productions with some significant error corrections and iv fdi affects four sub industrial productions in the short run as well as in the long run the results of vecms from i also reveal that the all short term adjustment parameters are found significant and powerful in 10 typical regimes regime 1s and in 5 extreme regimes regime 2s finally the outcom

effects of carbon dioxide capture and storage in germany on european electricity exchange and welfare in the course of european efforts to mitigate global warming the application of carbon dioxide capture and storage ccs technologies is discussed as a potential option some political opposition was raised a inter alia a by uncertainties about the effective cost of such technologies because of the cost structure of ccs power plants with high a flata investment cost and a in case of high carbon allowance prices a comparable low variable cost the application of ccs will induce a merit order effect causing a decline in electricity prices on the spot market on the one hand the reduction of electricity supply cost raises suppliersa rents while the decline of electricity prices augments consumersa surpluses these positive welfare effects tend to mitigate political opposition against ccs on the other hand the merit order effect reduces electricity suppliersa revenues as the electricity prices decline this mitigates their scope for additional investments in ccs capacity in this study we focus on the influence of ccs in germany on electricity supplier and consumer surpluses and associated impacts on the scope for investments in additional ccs capacity by means of the applied model of electricity markets influences on european electricity exchange and welfare levels are investigated

does the use of nuclear power lead to lower electricity prices an analysis of the debate in germany with an international perspective abstract there is an ongoing discussion if it is reasonable to start using nuclear energy to extend its use or what effects its phase out could have in july 2011 four months after the nuclear accidents in japan germany decided to return to the policy of phasing out nuclear energy step by step until 2022 this policy was already decided upon in 2000 with this a decision made some nine months earlier was taken back in fall 2010 the government and parliament had approved the extension of the operating lives of its nuclear plants by at least 14 years one reason was the expected effect on the electricity price which was said to be lower with extended nuclear plant life spans however there is an ongoing debate on this argument not only in germany this article presents a critical survey of the core arguments brought forward in favour of expected future price cuts it is shown that the theoretical electricity market models used in these exercises are not adequate to reliably predict such effects furthermore evidence is presented suggesting that extending nuclear plant life spans or the commissioning of new reactors in other countries is unlikely to curb domestic electricity prices

utilities business models for renewable energy a review abstract the transformation of today s electric power sector to a more sustainable energy production based on renewable energies will change the structure of the industry consequently utilities as the major stakeholders in this transformation will face new challenges in their way of doing business they will have to adapt their business models to remain competitive in the new energy landscape the present review of business model literature shows that two basic choices exist utility side business models and customer side business models the two approaches follow a very different logic of value creation while the former is based on a small number of large projects the latter is based on a large number of small projects the article reveals that blueprints for utility side business models are available whereas customer side business models are in an early stage of development applying the business model framework as an analytical tool it is found that existing utility side business models comprise a series of advantages for utilities in terms of revenue potential and risk avoidance this study provides new insights about why utilities will favor utility side business models over customer side business models and why they also should engage in customer side business models in their quest for more sustainable future business models