As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, some patterns of energy consumption changed in the residential and non-residential sectors. This paper uses data from a local utility company in Florida to quantify the heterogeneous impacts of the pandemic on electricity and natural gas consumption across households from different income levels and across essential and non-essential…
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Mexico’s Energy Prospects: Gains from Renewable Sources Over A Fossil Fuel-Dominated Environment
Changing political conditions in Mexico threatens the future of clean energy in the country. A competitive electricity market and ambitious environmental goals were among the priorities of the previous administration, but the current administration aims to increase revenues from the national power company and acquire control of the electricity market at the expense of consumer…
How Do Low Gas Prices Affect Costs and Benefits of US New Vehicle Fuel Economy Standards?
In their initial benefit-cost analysis of the 2012-2016 passenger vehicle fuel economy standards, the U.S. regulatory agencies estimated that the benefits of the standards would be three times greater than the costs. However, their analysis was based on the high gasoline prices forecasted at the time; after their analysis, expected gasoline prices fell by 25…
The Impact of Renewable Energy Forecasts on Intraday Electricity Prices
In this paper we study the impact of errors in wind and solar power forecasts on intraday electricity prices. We develop a novel econometric model which is based on day-ahead wholesale auction curves data and errors in wind and solar power forecasts. The model shifts day-ahead supply curves to calculate intraday prices. We apply our…
Quality Matters: Power Reliability and Grid Connection in Rural Guatemala
Electrification rates have been increasing within low and middle income countries. However, the prevalence of outages is still a relevant issue for rural households when considering whether to connect to the grid. We test this by exploiting a shock in quality that unequally affected different municipalities in Guatemala during 2012–2014. Our main estimates, which are…
Marginal Emissions Pathways: Drivers and Implications
Governments frequently use policies that target the expansion of a clean technology to achieve greenhouse gas emissions mitigation goals, such as those submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement. As a result of direct and indirect market adjustments induced by a particular policy, marginal emissions from expanding a clean technology may vary in the amount…
Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the Green Paradox and the Fiscal Paradox
Fossil fuel subsidies amounted to about 0.4% of global GDP in 2015, and there is an active call worldwide for eliminating them. The main argument in favor of removing subsidies is that it will lead to a reduction in global carbon emissions and a decrease in fiscal deficits. This paper shows that there are also…
Household Environmental Kuznets Curves: Evidence from Passenger Transport Emissions
This paper uses detailed survey microdata to test whether a non-monotonic relationship exists between income and carbon dioxide emissions at the household level for passenger transport in the United States. Although the literature on economy-wide Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKCs) is vast, sector-specific analysis of household transport emissions is less common, is subject to considerable controversy,…
Winners and Losers of EU Emissions Trading: Insights from the EUTL Transfer Dataset
This paper analyses distributional effects between participants of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) during its first trading period. To this end, a selection model is formulated and applied to a dataset based on account information and transfer data from the EU Transaction Log (EUTL). Four different ways of adding carbon prices to the…