Abstract – Efficient wholesale electricity markets should drive preference revealing bidding where generators offer the majority of their power at their short run marginal cost (SRMC). However, most renewables have very low SRMCs, which in a competitive market is likely to lead to an increasing proportion of low priced periods. Combined with concerns around the…
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Responding to electricity shortfalls: Electricity-saving activities of households and firms in Japan after Fukushima
Japan has experienced a severe electricity shortfall since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 and the subsequent shutdown of nuclear power plants. Disruption to the supply-demand balance was especially severe in Tokyo and Tohoku in summer 2011, forcing the government to introduce mandatory rationing for large customers. Following intensive efforts, a reduction in…
Book Reviews
A regulatory framework for an evolving electricity sector: Highlights of the MIT utility of the future study
The electric power sector is once again evolving. A variety of distributed energy resources and improving computation, communication, and control technologies create an unprecedented degree of choice for electricity consumers, choices that are poorly guided by electricity rates and other incentives designed for a comparatively simpler era. These technologies also create new tools for regulated…
“Prosumage” and the British Electricity Market
Domestic electricity consumers with PV panels have become known as “prosumers”; some of them also have energy storage and we have named the combination “prosumage”. The challenges of renewable intermittency could be offset by storing power, and many engineering studies consider the role and value of storage which is properly integrated into the ‘smart grid’….
The Economics of Sustainability: Causes and Consequences of Energy Market Transformation
The paper deals with the economics of sustainability associated with the transformation of energy markets. It emphasizes the interrelations between technical changes and energy markets and how in turn the resulting transformations alter the sustainability of economic systems that are dependent on these markets. It also explores how innovation (or the lack thereof) is intimately…
Guiding Action: A User-centric Approach to Define, Measure, and Manage Electricity Access
The role of electricity in human development is well established as being key to improved quality of life, safer environments, greater communication and connectivity, better educational services, and increased economic opportunities. Despite it having such a fundamental role, nearly one billion people across the world are deprived of electricity access, and many more suffer with…
Economic efficiency and CO2 impact of a clean cooking program in Ecuador
Clean cooking programs are implemented to replace polluting fuel technologies and fight climate change. In 2014, Ecuador launched a clean cooking program to improve environmental conditions for its population and reduce the large financial burden spent on liquid petroleum gas subsidies. In this paper, we analyze the economic and environmental impacts of this program. We…
Electricity Access, Gender Disparity, and Renewable Energy Adoption Dynamics: The Case of Mountain Areas of Bangladesh
This paper examines the relationship between grid-based electricity access, gender disparity, and renewable energy adoption in the mountain areas of Bangladesh by collecting a novel set of micro-level survey data. We develop unique weighted indices and apply the robust instrumental generalised method of moment estimation for investigating electricity access and women empowerment nexus. The findings…
Cheap Money, Geopolitics and Supernormal Backwardation of the WTI Forward Curve
Financial speculators frequently trade in the most liquid short-tenor contracts. We study repeating patterns of sharply steepening slopes in the WTI forward curve to investigate whether, after controlling for macroeconomic variables, physical market fundamentals, and basic arbitrage, calendar spread behavior is partly explained by speculation related to assessed geopolitical risk. We estimate WTI forward curve…