Oil prices experienced record volatility in the spring of 2020 amid two separate, but simultaneous shocks—the largest singular, sudden drop in oil demand in history amid lockdowns across the world to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and a brief oil price war among the world’s largest oil producers. The gyration was the latest…
An Economic Perspective on Mexico’s Nascent Deregulation of Retail Petroleum Markets
Retail petroleum markets in Mexico are on the cusp of a historic deregulation. For decades, all 11,000 gasoline stations nationwide have carried the brand of the state-owned petroleum company Pemex and sold Pemex gasoline at federally regulated retail prices. This industry structure is changing, however, as part of Mexico’s broader energy reforms aimed at increasing…
Book Reviews
The Importance of Penalties and Pre-qualifications: A Model-based Assessment of the UK Renewables Auction Scheme
This paper assesses the multi-technology auctions for Contracts for Difference (CfDs) in the UK, with a special focus on how pre-qualifications and penalties affect bidders’ behaviour, risk aversion and bidding strategies and thus the auction outcomes in terms of prices and project implementation probability. The auctions are modelled to closely represent the auction design foreseen…
Green Opportunities for the Energy Sector
Regional Electricity Trade in Latin America Without Expanding Generation Capacities
The current cross-border electricity trade provision in Latic America is limited, only to about 4% of the total regional generation. This study estimates the potential savings on electricity supply costs if 20 Latin American countries trade electricity between the borders without expanding their current electricity generation capacity. We simulated two scenarios on electricity trade—an unconstrained…
The End of Neutrality? Fuel Standards, Technology Neutrality, and Stimulating the EV Market
Widespread electrification of the transportation sector is a key component of most strategies for deep decarbonization of the U.S. economy. While the acceptance of EVs has grown dramatically over the last decade, much of this growth has been spurred by substantial support from public funds and other related policies. Major electrification on the time scales…
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…
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…
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…