Although various factors were blamed for the extended power outage on the ERCOT electricity grid in February 2021, no single problem fully explains the calamity. All forms of generation experienced capacity deratings, but failure to identify and address risks along fuel supply chains was a major contributor. Moreover, most proposed remedies do not fundamentally address…
Month: February 2026
Book Reviews
Do Investments in Clean Technologies Reduce Production Costs? Insights from the Literature
In response to growing environmental concerns, governments have encouraged innovation and adoption of green or clean technologies through various policy measures. At present more than half a trillion US$ is being invested annually in clean technologies. This study analyzes if investments in clean technologies increase productivity and reduce production costs based on the existing literature….
The (indirect) Effects of Windfall Funds on Sustainability Behavior: Insights for Carbon Fee Dividends
Motivated by proposed Carbon Dividend legislation in the U.S., we test the impacts of a monetary windfall on sustainability behavior under information conditions about the source of the funds. We find that windfall funds, particularly when presented as a refund, positively impact stated intent to engage in transportation-related sustainable behaviors. Evidence suggests that participants are…
Ownership Unbundling of Electricity Distribution Networks
Traditional restructuring of power markets has focused on legally separating monopolistic transmission and distribution infrastructure with sufficient regulatory oversight to ensure non-discriminatory access to networks, and transparent and cost-reflective tariffs. There is consensus that ownership separation for transmission assets is beneficial for competition and transparency. However, at the distribution level the benefits of going beyond…
OPEC’s Pursuit of Market Stability
We investigate attempts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to stabilize the price of oil during the past fifty years. We first develop a novel decomposition of shifts in global demand and non-OPEC supply. This decomposition provides a fresh perspective on the debate over the relative importance of demand versus supply factors as…
Clean Cooking: Why is Adoption Slow Despite Large Health and Environmental Benefits?
More than one-third of the world’s population, mainly the low-income group, still rely on traditional biomass fuels for household cooking. The indoor air pollution from household cooking is one of the main drivers of child mortality in developing countries. It also causes deforestation and emissions of black carbon. A large number of studies show that…
Resource Adequacy with Increasing Shares of Wind and Solar Power: A Comparison of European and U.S. Electricity Market Designs
We raise the question if improvements to current energy-only markets are sufficient to maintain resource adequacy in electricity markets or whether the rapid increase in wind and solar power gives stronger arguments for additional capacity mechanisms. A comparative analysis between Europe and the United States reveals some fundamental differences, but also many similarities in electricity…
Beyond the inverted U-shape: Challenging the long-term relationship of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis
This paper empirically tests the validity of the postulated Environmental Kuznets Curve for a panel of 69 countries from 1971 to 2014 which are clustered into all-, high-, middle-, and lower-income groupings. Since the quadratic EKC specification between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP produces highly biased results in favour of an inverted U-shaped pattern, we…
Shale Gas and Oil Development: A Review of the Local Environmental, Fiscal, and Social Impacts
In the early 2000s, advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies led to a veritable boom in the extraction of natural gas and oil from shale plays. In this review article, we discuss the local, state, and federal regulatory context in which this shale gas and oil production occurs and review how it affects…