Saudi Arabia has one of the highest levels of per capita oil consumption in the world, but attempts are now being made by Saudi policymakers to significantly reduce this. Thus, a relevant policy question is what is the value of saving a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia? The instinctive answer is that the value…
Interactions between Market Reform and a Carbon Price in China’s Power Sector
The electricity sector accounts for a large share of China’s carbon dioxide emissions and of the economy-wide abatement potential. China’s planned national emissions trading scheme would include electricity generation, as nearly all emissions trading schemes do. The critical difference is that in most existing carbon pricing systems the power sector operates with competitive markets and…
The Ephemeral Brent Geopolitical Risk Premium
We study the changing relationship between Brent oil prices and geopolitical risk, conditional on physical oil market conditions. We conduct the analysis at three frequencies, medium (1-3 years), high (2-3 months), and very high (daily), using three complementary techniques at the different levels (respectively, continuous wavelet partial coherence, VAR and GARCH-MIDAS) over the period April…
Carbon Pricing and Cross-Border Electricity Trading for Climate Change Mitigation in South Asia
South Asia’s electricity supply system is quite carbon-intensive, particularly due to extensive use of coal. Under “business as usual,” that situation is expected to continue for several decades. Using an electricity system planning model, this study investigates two complementary strategies to reduce CO2 emission intensity of the power sector in South Asia: carbon pricing, and…
The gravity of status quo: A review of IEA’s World Energy Outlook
This paper reviews the methodology and methods behind IEA’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) and offers a critical assessment of key assumptions and projections, focusing in particular on energy and the macro economy, technological change, and investment in new renewable energy. I argue that IEA’s World Energy Outlook suffers from a status quo bias in favor…
The Coupled Cycles of Geopolitics and Oil Prices
We analyze the coupled cycles of Middle-East geopolitical violence and oil prices. Building on earlier work that shows that low oil prices are regularly followed by geopolitical strife, and that the latter is usually followed by higher oil prices, due to actual or feared disruption in oil supply, we focus in this paper on one…
Time for Tough Love: Towards Gradual Risk Transfer to Renewables in Germany
After more than a decade of supporting renewable energies (RE) through feed-in tariffs, Germany has set out to integrate RE into the power market. This requires RE investors to carry market risks, in particular the power price risk. But under the current financial structure higher risks would negatively impact the bankability of new projects, which…
Leveraging the Inflation Reduction Act to Achieve 80×30 in the US Electricity Sector
The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promises to deliver important reductions in CO2 emissions from the electricity sector along with a host of other benefits to citizens and electricity consumers, but it falls short of achieving the 80 percent reduction (below 2005 levels) by 2030 (80×30) consistent with meeting the nation’s Paris goals. This paper…
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An Option Analysis of the European Union Renewable Energy Support Mechanisms
We examine the economic efficiency of incentive mechanisms used to promote Renewable Energy (RE) across the European Union (EU) by looking at returns to investors along with any negative externalities or social costs. Using electricity price data from 2009 to 2013, we evaluate the RE support mechanisms adopted by some of the largest EU economies….