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The Impact of Behavioral Science Experiments on Energy Policy
One of the most exciting areas of research today is the use of experiments informed by behavioral science to understand how to change energy consumption decisions of consumers. This article provides a survey and synthesis of experiments and focuses on general principles that can be gleaned from these experiments to date. We identify four general…
Development and Application of Greenhouse Gas Performance Benchmarks in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme
In the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme’s third trading period (2013-2020), the free allocation of emission allowances will be based on greenhouse gas performance benchmarks. This policy note describes how the revised rules were developed, how they will be applied in practice, and what they imply for operators of installations subject to the system. It…
Impacts of Biofuels Policies in the EU
Biofuels have the potential of playing an important role in the renewable energy sources panorama, ensuring the achievement of multiple goals such as security of supply, reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, creation of green jobs, and development of business opportunities in the agricultural and rural sectors. Subsidies to the sector were justified on this…
Cost-effectiveness and Economic Incidence of a Clean Energy Standard
A Clean Energy Standard (CES) is a flexible, market-based policy instrument that could be adopted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. electricity system over time. This paper uses several well-known energy system and electricity models to analyze a CES that reflects broad principles outlined in President Obama’s January 2011 State of the Union…
Support Schemes for Renewable Energy: An Economic Analysis
We consider leading approaches to the decarbonisation of electricity supply. Price supports through long term contracts, such as feed-in-tariffs have been very effective at eliciting rapid escalation of renewable supply, largely because risks have been transferred away from suppliers and tariffs have been generous. However, countries with the most ambitious programs of this type (Denmark,…
Linking Emission Trading Schemes: A Short Note
In principle, linking emission trading schemes would favour the depletion of low-cost abatement opportunities that are geographically spread over the globe. However, this would only be possible if the price of the emission permits in the different schemes converge to one price. Using a simple model-free structure, the paper first assesses how a unilateral link…
Market and Policy Barriers to Deployment of Energy Storage
There has recently been resurgent interest in energy storage, due to a number of developments in the electricity industry. Despite this interest, very little storage, beyond some small demonstration projects, has been deployed recently. While technical issues, such as cost, device efficiency, and other technical characteristics are often listed as barriers to storage, there are…
Solar Integration
Solar energy can enter our energy systems through many doors and windows, mostly as heat and electricity. As costs go down, especially for photovoltaic electricity, the variability of the resource becomes a dominant issue.Interconnections,load management, flexible fossil or hydro power plants and storage capacities of pumped hydro plants combine to make the daily variability manageable,…
Contracting for Wind Generation
The UK Government proposes offering long-term Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) to low-carbon generation to reduce risk and encourage new entrants. Their preference is for a Contract-for-Difference (CfD) for all generation regardless of type. I argue that a standard CfD is unsuitable for on-shore wind, where a fixed FiT appears less risky. The estimated extra trading and balancing…