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Three Essays On The Economics Of Climate Change And The Electricity Sector
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Book Synopsis Three Essays on the Economics of Climate Change and the Electricity Sector by : Hong Thi-Dieu To
Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Climate Change and the Electricity Sector written by Hong Thi-Dieu To and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This doctoral thesis contains three essays on the economics of climate change and the electricity sector. The first essay deals with the subject of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and economic growth. The second essay addresses the issues of climate change policies, especially the role of the emergent innovative technologies, and the restructuring of the electricity sector. The third essay presents a model of transmission investments in electric power networks. Chapter One studies the impacts of climate change on economic growth in the world economies. The paper contains explicit formalization of the depletion process of exhaustible fossil fuels and the phase of technology substitution. The impacts of climate change on capital flows and welfare across countries are also investigated. The restructuring of the electricity sector is studied in Chapter Two. It also analyzes how climate change policies can benefit from emergent innovative technologies and how emergent innovative technologies can lower GHG emissions. It is shown that the price of electricity is strictly rising before emergent innovative firms with zero GHG emissions enter the market, but strictly declining as the entry begins. In Chapter Three, a model of electricity transmission investments from the perspective of the regulatory approach is formulated. The Mid-West region of Western Australia, a sub-system of the South West Interconnected System is considered. In contrast with most models in the literature that deal only with network deepening, this model deals with both network deepening and network widening. Moreover, unlike the conventional investment models which are static and deal only with the long run, this model is dynamic and focuses on the timing of the infrastructure investments. The paper is a study of an optimal transmission investment program which is part of the optimal investment program for an integrated model in which investments in transmission and investments in generation are made at the same time.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on the Economics of Climate Change by : Brenda Tang
Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Climate Change written by Brenda Tang and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Environmental Economics by : Dale S. Rothman
Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental Economics written by Dale S. Rothman and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays in Economics of Climate Change by : Alena Miftakhova
Download or read book Three Essays in Economics of Climate Change written by Alena Miftakhova and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Energy Economics by : Louis Demetri Preonas
Download or read book Three Essays on Energy Economics written by Louis Demetri Preonas and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity powers the modern economy, and the electricity supply chain is notoriously complex. Power plants must develop stable relationships for fuel procurement, as their long-run profitability hinges on securing a cheap, reliable fuel supply. Electric utilities may also lack the incentive to provide a reliable power supply to all potential customers, which could hamper economic productivity. The physical properties of electricity transmission create inherent challenges in providing power to all regions of the grid, while simultaneously incentivizing economically efficient production decisions. In this dissertation, I study three potential market failures in electricity supply: (i) market power in U.S. coal transportation; (ii) under-electrification of India’s rural poor; and (iii) short-run allocative inefficiencies in Indian electricity dispatch. In each case, my findings are of substantial economic importance due the scale of the electric power industry, which is essential to virtually all economic activity. Climate change only raises the stakes, and alleviating electricity market failures has the potential to increase carbon dioxide emissions and further harm the planet. In the first chapter, I investigate how market power in the transportation of coal might impact U.S. climate policies. Economists have widely endorsed pricing CO2 emissions to internalize climate change-related externalities. Doing so would significantly affect coal, which is the most carbon-intensive major energy source. However, U.S. coal markets exhibit an additional distortion, as the railroads that transport coal to power plants can exert market power. This upstream distortion can mute the price signal of a corrective tax, due to changes in markups or incomplete tax pass-through. I provide the first empirical estimates of how coal-by-rail markups respond to changes in coal demand. I find that rail carriers reduce coal markups when downstream power plant demand changes, due to a decrease in the price of natural gas (a competing fuel). I estimate markup changes that vary substantially across coal plants, resulting from a combination of heterogeneous transportation market structure and plant-specific demand shocks. Since low natural gas prices and a CO2 emissions tax similarly disadvantage coal, observed decreases in coal markups imply that pass-through of a federal carbon tax to coal power plants may be heterogeneous and incomplete. This could substantially erode the environmental benefits of a price-based climate policy. My results suggest that decreases in coal markups have increased recent climate damages by $2.3 billion, compared to a counterfactual where markups do not change. In the second chapter, coauthored with Fiona Burlig, we study the impacts of energy access in the developing world. Over 1 billion people still lack electricity access. Developing countries are investing billions of dollars in rural electrification, targeting economic growth and poverty reduction, despite limited empirical evidence. We estimate the effects of rural electrification on economic development in the context of India’s national electrification program, which reached over 400,000 villages. We use a regression discontinuity design and high-resolution geospatial data to identify medium-run economic impacts of electrification. We find a substantial increase in electricity use, but reject effects larger than 0.26 standard deviations across numerous measures of economic development, suggesting that rural electrification may be less beneficial than previously thought. In the third chapter, coauthored with Fiona Burlig and Akshaya Jha, we examine short-run allocative inefficiencies in Indian electricity supply. Electricity consumption is highly correlated with economic development. Understanding and resolving the drivers of economic inefficiencies in electricity markets is critical to supporting economic growth. We quantify the costs of short-run misallocation in Indian electricity supply. We assemble a novel dataset on daily production from each utility-scale power plant in the country and administrative measures of plant-specific marginal operating costs, and calculate the total variable costs of electricity generation in India to be approximately $29 billion per year. We next construct the “least-cost” counterfactual where we dispatch power plants in order of lowest-to-highest marginal cost. We find that this least-cost dispatch results in total annual operating costs that are roughly $4.7 billion lower than observed dispatch. Once we account for transmission constraints, we find a remaining misallocation wedge of $3.2 billion per year. We find evidence that this wedge results from market design and political economy considerations, but find little evidence of market power.
Book Synopsis Economics of Climate Change: Three Essays on Policy and Technology by : Christian Stoll
Download or read book Economics of Climate Change: Three Essays on Policy and Technology written by Christian Stoll and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Environmental and Development Economics by : Howard G. Chong
Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental and Development Economics written by Howard G. Chong and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation emcompasses three empirical studies in environmental and development economics. In Chapter 1, I study whether electricity use in newer or older residential buildings rises more in response to high temperature in a region of Southern California. Peak electricity demand occurs at the highest temperatures which are predicted to increase due to climate change. Understanding how newer buildings differ from older buildings improves forecasts of how peak electricity use will grow over time. Newer buildings are subject to stricter building energy codes, but are larger and more likely to have air conditioning; hence, the cumulative effect is ambiguous. This paper combines four large datasets of building and household characteristics, weather data, and utility data to estimate the electricity-temperature response of different building vintages. Estimation results show that new buildings (1970-2000) have a statistically significantly higher temperature response (i.e., use more electricity) than old buildings (pre-1970). Auxiliary regressions with controls for number of bedrooms, income, square footage, central air conditioning, ownership, and type of residential structure partially decompose the effect. Though California has had extensive energy efficiency building standards that by themselves would lower temperature response for new buildings, the cumulative effect of new buildings is an increase in temperature response. As new buildings are added, aggregate temperature response is predicted to increase. In Chapter 2, my co-authors and I investigate the effect of cap-and-trade regulation of CO2 on firm profits by performing an event study of a CO2 price crash in the EU market. We examine returns for 90 stocks from carbon intensive industries and 600 stocks in the broad EUROSTOXX index. Firms in carbon intensive, or electricity intensive industries, but not involved in international trade were most hurt by the event. This implies investors were focused on product price impacts, rather than compliance costs. We find evidence that firms' net allowance positions also strongly influenced the share price response to the decline in allowance prices. In Chapter 3, my co-authors and I measure and examine data error in health, education and income statistics used to construct the Human Development Index. We identify three sources of data error which are due to (i) data updating, (ii) formula revisions and (iii) thresholds to classify a country's development status. We propose a simple statistical framework to calculate country specific measures of data uncertainty and investigate how data error biases rank assignments. We find that up to 34% of countries are misclassified and, by replicating prior studies, we show that key estimated parameters vary by up to 100% due to data error.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on the Economics of the Environment, Energy and Externalities by : Ceen-Yenn Cynthia Lawell
Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of the Environment, Energy and Externalities written by Ceen-Yenn Cynthia Lawell and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Essays in Energy Economics and Climate Policy by : Daniel Cullenward
Download or read book Essays in Energy Economics and Climate Policy written by Daniel Cullenward and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As U.S. climate policy begins to emerge at the state and federal levels, new technological, economic, and legal challenges follow close behind. With the aim of contributing to effective, science-based climate policy, this dissertation portfolio draws on insights from energy economics and environmental law to address current policy debates. My research comprises two sets of projects. One category, which deals with national-level climate policy, focuses on front-end policy design choices and fundamental arguments over the merits of competing mitigation strategies. The other category addresses California's evolving climate policy regime, providing scientific and legal input into ongoing policy development processes. Both approaches demonstrate an expansion on conventional approaches to academic research, bridging the gap between applied and theoretical research in a way that graduate students from a range of backgrounds can adopt in their own work. PART I -- NATIONAL ENERGY DATA AND MODELING Projects in the first category integrate economic analysis and energy modeling to inform federal policy, which is just beginning to grapple with the climate challenge. Within this category, I explore two related problems: (1) the inadequacy of national energy data and (2) the challenges of using energy models to assess prospective climate policies. Data (Chapters 1-2): I identify significant conceptual mistakes that result from improperly extrapolating policy conclusions from semi-empirical energy consumption data. This issue is particularly important for research addressing the potential of energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because empirical energy data are so limited, many researchers rely on secondary data series to calibrate models or develop policy insights. My work shows how prominent criticisms of the potential for energy efficiency are based on major conceptual misunderstandings of the available data. Modeling (Chapters 3-4): My colleague Jordan Wilkerson and I set up a fully functioning copy of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) at Stanford. In one study, we show how the model's treatment of end-use energy efficiency economics in the residential and commercial buildings sectors is driven in large part by non-price parameters. This finding has important implications for the model's ability to project energy efficiency responses to price-based policies, such as a carbon tax. Working with faculty in law and engineering, we also use NEMS-Stanford to model the economic and environmental implications of a carbon fee-and-dividend bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in the spring of 2013. Our work breaks down the expected economic impacts across household income levels and census regions, offering the first distributional analysis of recent carbon tax proposals using the government's official energy model. PART II -- CLIMATE POLICY IN CALIFORNIA Projects in the second category focus on the climate policy regime in California, where regulators are in the process of implementing a comprehensive cap-and-trade system. I completed research on three related policy issues, working in close collaboration with Stanford's Environmental Law Clinic: (1) participation in a lawsuit, in which I defended the constitutionality of State regulators' use of lifecycle assessment methods, (2) the development of carbon offset protocols, and (3) the regulation of resource shuffling in the electricity sector, an issue that has important implications for the State's carbon market. Litigating science (Chapters 5-7): In December 2011, a federal court struck down part of California's climate policy as unconstitutional. The primary reason was that the judge found that the policy's use of lifecycle assessment methods impermissibly discriminated against interstate commerce, violating the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In response, my colleague David Weiskopf and I represented two groups of scientists on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, providing science-based arguments to address the legal questions in the case. Offset protocols (Chapters 8-9): California's climate law allows regulated entities to use carbon offsets to meet their emissions reduction targets, earning credit for actions taken to reduce emissions outside of the regulated system. Crucially, offset projects must be "additional" when compared against the counterfactual scenario that would have taken place in the absence of the offset project. This means that absent the financial incentive provided by the offset credit, the project activities would not otherwise have taken place. I wrote comment letters critiquing offset protocols for forestry projects in Mexico and coalmine methane destruction in the U.S., providing technical and legal analysis to improve the protocols' treatment of additionality. Resource shuffling (Chapter 10): State law requires its climate regulations to minimize leakage, which is defined as a reduction of emissions within the state system that is linked to a corresponding increase in emissions outside of the system. Yet the electricity sector is owned and operated across state boundaries, and thus readily subject to a form of leakage called resource shuffling. Resource shuffling occurs when companies in the electricity sector swap their contracts for high-emitting resources with low-emitting replacements, without any change in the physical operation of the electricity system. Because this kind of exchange creates leakage, the California Air Resources Board banned resource shuffling. Recently, however, the Board introduced draft rules that exempt many activities from the prohibition. My colleague David Weiskopf and I critique the State's proposed regulatory structure, showing how a creative lawyer could exploit loopholes to permit leakage in almost any situation. We present the fullest accounting to date for leakage risks associated with early divestment from out-of-state coal, which provides a significant amount of California's electricity supply. We find that if California companies are permitted to offload the emissions liability associated with these plants to companies that do not face reporting requirements under California's climate law, this could result in significant amounts of leakage--potentially even more leakage than the cumulative mitigation requirements expected under the cap-and-trade market through 2020. We also offer a fully developed proposal for revised regulations that expand compliance options while reducing the leakage risks we identify.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Environmental Economics by : Wensu Li
Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental Economics written by Wensu Li and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation addresses three issues in environmental economics. The first chapter uses data from the United States to examine how extreme weather events, which are more frequent and severe because of climate change, affect people's work time and location. A key question in this chapter is the role of job flexibility, such as access to work-at-home arrangements or flexible schedules, in people's adaptation behavior. The empirical analysis shows that people with higher job flexibility can adapt more easily to extreme weather, implying that job flexibility might be an important tool for adapting to climate change. The second chapter considers the role of waste quality in the international waste trade for recycling. It presents a theoretical model of the vertical market structure in recycling and obtains the market equilibrium quality and quantity in the international recyclable market where the upstream waste collectors sell to the downstream recycling mills. Adding the quality dimension opens a new way to think about the pollution haven effect. The policy analysis shows that, when taking waste quality into account, changes in border policies may lead to counter-intuitive outcomes. The third chapter estimates the nonlinear relationship between household electricity consumption and household income. The purchase of new electrical appliances creates a discontinuous jump in electricity use which is partly why electricity consumption does not grow proportionally with income. Chapter 3 empirically verifies the positive jump with the purchase of common appliances and identifies air conditioners as a key driver behind the rapid growth of household energy consumption in China in the early 2010s.
Book Synopsis Three Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics by : Michael Redlinger
Download or read book Three Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics written by Michael Redlinger and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on the Economics of the Environment, Energy and Externalities by : Ceen-Yenn Cynthia Lin
Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of the Environment, Energy and Externalities written by Ceen-Yenn Cynthia Lin and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Global Climate Policy, Environmental R&D, Mergers, and Corporate Social Responsibility by : Chenyu Wang
Download or read book Three Essays on Global Climate Policy, Environmental R&D, Mergers, and Corporate Social Responsibility written by Chenyu Wang and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1: The Role of Technological Innovation in Global Climate Policy: In the first chapter, we build a dynamic model of the global economy and climate with three endogenous knowledge stocks. We confirm that the contribution of induced R&D in global climate change is shown to be very sensitive to the elasticity of substitution between energy and other factors of production. Since growth patterns of all types of research depend on whether inputs are gross complements or gross substitutes. Second, the duplication externality. Induced R&D generates a lower abatement cost reduction if we externalize duplication in the business as usual scenario. We exclude duplication in the business as usual scenario since a research institute is based on their contract to do their research. As long as they generate research outputs they would receive payments, they recognize the duplication but they think they will get paid for producing it whether their outputs have been duplicated or not. In reality, agents use too much R&D in the business as usual scenario because they do not take into account the duplication externality. Thus, when the social planner does the optimal scenario, the additional benefits of R&D may not be very much at all. Third, the initial level of research expenditure. Higher initial levels of energy related R&D shares would create a market size effect, leading to an increased contribution of induced R&D. Gerlagh (2008) uses much higher initial energy related shares whereas our research's estimates are much lower, we find this difference would affect the size of the effects of the induced R&D. Fourth, the inter-firm knowledge spillovers. Firms are not successful in capturing all the benefits they create, as many benefits flow out into other firms free of charge. These benefits are called inter-firm knowledge spillovers. Fifth, first-best and second-best policies. The first-best policy fully internalizes the inter-firm knowledge spillovers, which leads to increases in the levels of all types of research whereas the second-best policy does not internalize it, which leads to induced changes in research resulting from the carbon tax affecting pre-existing market distortions. Sixth, a research dividend effect and tax burden effect. The tax may induce an increase in research expenditure, which would increase the welfare and consumption levels. Finally, the results demonstrated that induced R&D has a limited role on the abatement cost reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, overall. Chapter 2: Environmental Policy, Mergers and Environmental R&D with Spillovers: Our research topic is "Environmental Policy, Mergers and Environmental R&D with Spillovers". This project lies at the frontier between environmental economics and industrial organization. We use a duopoly setting of a three-stage game; in the first stage, the government chooses an emission tax and aims for maximizing welfare; in the second stage, firms use R&D to reduce their emissions; in the last stage, firms compete a la Cournot with differentiated products. We focus on two policy regimes and three scenarios, namely regimes of competition and merger and scenarios of commitment, non-commitment, and exogenous tax. The study focuses on two major questions: (1) what is the effect of merger on R&D, and the effect of commitment on R&D? (2) what is the effect of merger and commitment on the economy? Results are obtained through numerical simulations of the model. We find that: (i) Merger has a positive effect on R&D under non-commitment and the exogenous tax scenarios. (ii) Under commitment, if goods are imperfect substitutes or homogenous, merger has a negative effect on R if goods are complements or independent, merger has a positive effect on R&D. (iii) For any types of goods under any regime, commitment has a negative effect on R&D. Chapter 3: Monopoly with Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental R&D: Our research topic is the effect of the monopolist with corporate social responsibility in the presence of environmental R&D. This project lies at the frontier between environmental economics and industrial organization. We model a monopolist with corporate social responsibility setting in a three-stage game; in the first stage, the regulator determines the emission tax to maximize welfare; in the second stage, the monopolist determines R&D to maximize its objective function; in the third stage, the monopolist determines outputs to maximize its objective function. The study focuses on one major question: under the structure of monopoly with corporate social responsibility, if we change the parameters of R&D technology parameter, the degree of social responsibility, and product differentiation, what are the effects on profit, R&D, environmental damage, consumer surplus, and welfare? We find that: (1) increasing R&D technology parameter enhances welfare in terms of higher consumer surplus and lower damage, while also leading to increases in R&D and decreases in profit; (2) increasing the degree of social responsibility increases R&D and welfare in terms of higher consumer surplus and profit, but also increases the damage; and (3) increasing product differentiation increases profit, R&D, and welfare; it also increases the damage but decreases consumer surplus.
Book Synopsis Essays in Environmental and Energy Economics by : Joshua Blonz
Download or read book Essays in Environmental and Energy Economics written by Joshua Blonz and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation combines research on three topics in applied Energy and Environmental Economics related to the electricity industry. In the first paper, I study the economic welfare impact of an electricity pricing program that increases the price of electricity for small commercial and industrial customers when the cost of generation is high. The second paper explores an energy efficiency retrofit program that provides free upgrades to low-income households in California. Both of these policy interventions were a result of orders from the California Public Utilities Commission, the energy regulator in California. The final paper examines the cost of air quality regulations on employment in the coal mining sector in Appalachia. These three papers study different important aspects of the electricity sector, from upstream regulation of generation to end use pricing and consumption efficiency. In the first chapter, I study how in electricity markets, the price paid by retail customers during periods of peak demand is far below the cost of supply. This leads to overconsumption during peak periods, requiring the construction of excess generation capacity compared to first-best prices that adjust at short time intervals to reflect changing marginal cost. In this paper, I investigate a second-best policy designed to address this distortion, and compare its effectiveness to the first-best. The policy allows the electricity provider to raise retail price by a set amount (usually 3 to 5 times) during the afternoon hours of a limited number of summer days (usually 9 to 15). Using a quasi-experimental research design and high-frequency electricity consumption data, I test the extent to which small commercial and industrial establishments respond to this temporary increase in retail electricity prices. I find that establishments reduce their peak usage by 13.4% during peak hours. Using a model of capacity investment decisions, these reductions yield $154 million in welfare benefits, driven largely by reduced expenditures on power plant construction. I find the current policy provides of the first-best benefits but that, with improvements in targeting just the days with the highest demand, a modified peak pricing program could achieve 80% welfare gains relative to the first-best pricing policy. In the second chapter, I study energy efficiency retrofits programs, which are increasingly being used to both save on energy bills and as a carbon mitigation strategy. This paper evaluates the California Energy Savings Assistance program, which provides no-cost upgrades to low-income households across the state. I use quasi-experimental variation in program uptake to measure energy savings for a large portion of the treated population in the San Diego Gas & Electric service territory between 2007 and 2012. The results suggest that the overall program is ineffective at delivering energy savings and is not cost-effective. One challenge in implementing efficiency retrofit programs is that each upgrade must be customized to the housing unit on which it is installed. As a consequence, there is a wide range in efficiency upgrade potential across the population of candidate households. To better understand this heterogeneity in measure installation and its potential to drive program outcomes, I use discontinuities in program rules to identify key measure specific savings. This analysis shows that larger upgrades such as refrigerator replacements do provide cost-effective savings when considering the full set of social benefits. Households that do not receive larger upgrades generally see little or no savings. These results suggest that heterogeneity in upgrade potential can drive overall program outcomes when only a small portion of the treated population is eligible for cost-effective efficiency upgrades. In the third chapter, I study the costs of Title IV of the Clean Air Act. This regulation put a cap on sulfur emissions from electric power plants, which reduced the demand for high-sulfur coal. Using a quasi-experimental research design, I estimate how coal mine employment and production in high-sulfur coal-producing counties were impacted by the regulation by comparing them to neighboring counties that produced low-sulfur coal. I find that coal production dropped by 20% and coal sector employment dropped by 14%. I find no evidence of spillovers to employment or wages in the non-coal sectors of the high-sulfur coal counties. The results suggest that the coal sector employment costs of Title IV of the Clean Air Act are highly concentrated in the coal industry, and that the decline does not detectably impact the overall regional economy.
Book Synopsis Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics by : Elmira Aliakbari
Download or read book Essays in Energy and Environmental Economics written by Elmira Aliakbari and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays in Energy and Environmental Economics. In the first chapter, an empirical analysis is employed to examine the relationship between energy consumption and economic output in Canada. Using provincial-level Canadian records, this chapter shows that there is a long run equilibrium relationship and a bi-directional Granger causality between energy consumption and economic growth in Canada. These finding have important implications for public policy because they show that constraints on energy consumption may impact future economic growth. In the second chapter, event study methodology and Canadian stock market data are used to assess the impact of seven recent event/announcements regarding the pipelines approval process on the equity returns of energy-related firms. This chapter shows that there is no market reaction (on average) to any of the news events, which implies two possible scenarios: either the market fully anticipated the events and they did not contain any significant new information or these events did not change investor's expectation regarding future profitability and cash flow of Canadian energy firms. In the third chapter, we use a prediction market mechanism to examine the possibility of using derivatives trading as a means of generating objective forecasts of future climate change and the value of marginal damages. This chapter shows that such a market can yield unbiased estimates of the true future climate state. Also, we find that the level of consensus about climate science strongly influences the efficiency with which market uses available information.
Book Synopsis Three Essays Of Economics And Policy On Renewable Energy And Energy Efficiency by : Yuxi Meng
Download or read book Three Essays Of Economics And Policy On Renewable Energy And Energy Efficiency written by Yuxi Meng and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In face of the crisis in energy security, environmental contamination, and climate change, energy saving and carbon emission reduction have become the top concerns of the whole human world. To address those concerns, renewable energy and energy efficiency are the two fields that many countries are paying attention to, which are also my research focus. The dissertation consists of three papers, including the innovation behavior of renewable energy producers, the impact of renewable energy policy on renewable innovation, and the market feedback to energy efficient building benchmarking ordinance.Here are the main conclusions I have reached in this dissertation. First, through the study on foreign patenting intention with the case study of Chinese solar PV industry, I looked at the patenting behaviors of 15 non-Chinese solar PV producers in solar PV technologies in China, and pointed out that foreign firms may file patents in the home country or production base of their competitors in order to earn the competitive edge in the global market. The second study is about the "Innovation by Generating" process. I specifically focused on Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) in the United States and the innovation performance within each state, and found out that wind power generation in RPS states has developed rapidly after the adoption of RPS, while the "Innovating by Generating" effect is more significant in solar PV technologies. In general, the innovations of the two technology groups are not prominently encouraged by RPS. My last study is about the benchmarking law and market response in the scenario of Philadelphia Benchmarking Law. By comparing the rental rate of LEED/EnergyStar buildings and ordinary buildings in the city of Philadelphia before and after the adoption of the building energy efficiency benchmarking law, I believe that the passage of Philadelphia Benchmarking Law may be helpful in improving the public awareness and understanding of energy efficiency information of buildings.
Book Synopsis Essays in Electricity Economics by : Brittany L. Tarufelli
Download or read book Essays in Electricity Economics written by Brittany L. Tarufelli and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goods markets are designed and regulated at a sub-global level. Although it’s typical to assume one set of market clearing rules across regulated and unregulated regions, trade occurs across a patchwork of sub-global market designs. Not accounting for this heterogeneity in market design can lead to unanticipated outcomes from sub-global regulations, as correcting for one market failure–such as a negative externality from carbon emissions–can lead to another market failure from the market design itself when trade occurs across differing market designs. The anatomy of this second-best problem is considered in the context of U.S. electricity markets, as market clearing mechanisms vary by region, and they imperfectly overlap with state-level climate policies such as carbon prices and renewables subsidies. In Chapter I, I present a review of the theoretical and empirical literature on electricity market design and its interaction with regional climate policies. In the wholesale electricity sector, market design drives both the extent of the forward contract market and the competitiveness of the spot market, which can induce strategic behavior and affect both market and regional climate policy outcomes. Assessing climate policy outcomes under only the assumption of a centralized market design, as is customary in the literature, belies the complexity of electricity market design, which varies regionally. As there is currently an agenda to link regional electricity markets, there is also a need to study how strategic behavior across differing market designs affects emissions when regional climate policies are imposed. In Chapter II, I develop a two-stage model of oligopolistic electricity production to determine if strategic behavior in forward contract and spot markets across differing electricity market designs increases or decreases emissions leakage from regional climate policies. I find that under uncertainty from demand and renewable resource shocks, centralized market designs generally reduce market power through arbitraging away price risk between forward and spot markets. However, under an asymmetric carbon cap and trade program, resulting emissions leakage is decreased by bilateral markets, which act as a structural backstop to emissions leakage. Emissions leakage increases when bilateral markets trade with, or are integrated with centralized markets, potentially reducing the efficacy of regional climate policies. In Chapter III, I study the interaction between sub-global climate policy and sub-global design of goods markets using an example of market expansion from wholesale electricity markets–the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) in California. Using a difference-in-differences and triple-differences framework with matching to account for self-selection, I investigate how the EIM affects emissions leakage from California’s carbon cap and trade program. I find that the EIM caused a modest increase in emissions leakage into participating regions outside California, despite the relatively small trading volumes. The results have implications for ongoing efforts to expand competitive wholesale electricity markets across regions with differing climate policies. The results of this dissertation are informative for sub-global climate policy when trade in goods markets occurs across regions with different market clearing rules. Specifically, reduced transactions costs in trade between regulated and unregulated regions may tend to exacerbate emissions leakage. These results are informative in the context of continuing changes in wholesale electricity markets, including potential market expansions and continued integration of regional electricity markets across the U.S. and the European Union.
