The main aim of this study is to evaluate the results achieved by implementation of different support policies in form of subsidies for energy efficiency improvements and transition to renewable energy sources. The article compares the energy efficiency measures in district heating systems with other support program. In order to assess the effectiveness of implementation of different renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency projects, the levelized costs of saved energy for different support programs were determined. Authors compared different co-financed projects related to replacement of fossil fuel energy sources in district heating (mainly to biomass) and the installation of new biomass boilers, heat pumps, solar collectors and other local technologies in municipal buildings. Results show that financial support for energy efficiency measures in industrial enterprises and district heating systems has been most cost-effective, mainly due to the low co-financing rate (30%) a... [more]

Thailand is one of the upcoming wood pellet exporters in the Southeast Asia region. Wood pellet production has been gradually increasing in Thailand; however, the recent trend is more rapid. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the feedstock security for wood pellet production in Thailand. The important issue of feedstock security analysis relates to availability and diversity of feedstock (Shannon index) to meet the increased demand for the wood pellets in the future. The results present that the feedstock supply (from waste wood and fast-growing tree wood) in Thailand is 5.32 million tonnes of wood pellets per year. However, increasing 25% of wood pellet export and 50% of wood pellet domestic use causes a deficit in fast-growing tree wood because para-rubber waste wood is not distributed uniformly in all regions of the country. The present diversity of feedstock supply is quite low (Shannon index 0.17). Increasing the fast-growing tree plantation area in the wasteland... [more]

We review the status of a 1.4 GW, 8 GWh underground pumped hydro storage (U-PHS) project in the southern Netherlands, which has been under development since the 1980s. Its history shows how the prospect of a large-scale U-PHS for The Netherlands (a country whose proverbial flatness prohibits PHS) has been attractive in every decade, based on proven technology in a subsurface location with validated properties, and solid analysis of its economics. Although the ongoing energy transition clearly requires massive electricity storage, (U-)PHS projects are challenging investment propositions, in The Netherlands, as elsewhere. This case study illustrates a point of general relevance, namely that although the project execution risk, related to uncertainty with respect to subsurface integrity, is very low, the transition risk, associated with the intrinsic uncertainties of an electricity system in transition, is significant. We point out mitigation strategies for both risk categories.

Low-carbon transitions are long-term complex processes that are driven by multiple factors. To provide a theoretical and practical framework of this process, we argue that the combination of the multi-level perspective (MLP) and agent-based modeling (ABM) enables us to reach a deeper and detailed analysis of low-carbon transitions. As an extensively applied theoretical form, MLP conceptualizes low-carbon transitions as a nonlinear process and allows a system to be analyzed and organized into multiple dimensions (landscape, regime, and niche). However, MLP cannot explain the many details of complex transitions, whereas ABM can estimate the influence of interacting behaviors in a complex system. Therefore, the main advantages of the combined approach for the analysis of low-carbon transition are verified: the MLP can contribute to the overall design of ABM, and ABM can provide a dynamic, continuous, and quantitative description of the MLP. To construct this combination framework, this pa... [more]

The European demand for natural gas imports may change through the energy transition, which may affect natural gas exporters’ strategic behavior and consequently the natural gas prices. Changes in natural gas prices in turn influence the European energy sector in terms of gas consumption in the short-term and investments in the long-term. The present paper develops a large-scale partial equilibrium market model formulated as a mixed complementarity model (MCP) with conjectural variations. This model considers the global natural gas market and the European markets of electricity, heating, and emission trading in one equilibrium. We apply this model to investigate the long-term impact of market power by gas exporters on the mentioned energy-related markets on the horizon of 2050. The results of the study show that a decrease in the market power by gas exporters decreases natural gas prices, leading to cheaper electricity and CO2 prices in the mid-term. However, a very tight emission cap... [more]

Balancing energy generation and consumption is essential for smoothing the power grids. The mismatch between energy supply and demand would not only increase the cost on both sides, but also has a great impact on the stability of the system. This paper proposes a novel energy sharing mechanism (ESM) to facilitate the consumption of local energy. With the help of the ESM, multiple prosumers have an opportunity to share surplus energy with neighboring prosumers. The problem is formulated as a leader−follower framework based on the Stackelberg game theory. To address the aforementioned problems, a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) is applied to solve the Nash equilibrium (NE). The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is more stable than the conventional reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. Moreover, the proposed method can converge to NE and find a relatively good energy sharing (ES) pricing strategy without knowing the specific system information. In short, it... [more]

Industrial processes are associated with high amounts of energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted, stressing the urgent need for low-carbon sectoral transitions. This research reviews the energy-intensive iron and steel, cement and chemicals industries of Germany and the United Kingdom, two major emitting countries with significant activity, yet with different recent orientation. Our socio-technical analysis, based on the Sectoral Innovation Systems and the Systems Failure framework, aims to capture existing and potential drivers of or barriers to diffusion of sustainable industrial technologies and extract implications for policy. Results indicate that actor structures and inconsistent policies have limited low-carbon innovation. A critical factor for the successful decarbonisation of German industry lies in overcoming lobbying and resistance to technological innovation caused by strong networks. By contrast, a key to UK industrial decarbonisation is to drive innovation and invest... [more]

The main objective of the paper is to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the level of energy poverty in Poland. In order to achieve such a goal, the first part of the article presents the definition of energy poverty and the nature of its measures, as well as the determinants and policies of the state addressing the issue of energy poverty mitigation. In the second part of the paper, the results of research into the level of energy poverty are analyzed and the variables affecting energy poverty in Poland during the pandemic are determined. It was established on the basis of these results that the present pandemic contributed to the aggravation of financial difficulties in Polish households with regard to financing expenditure on energy carriers. It was found that COVID-19 had a negative impact on the average disposable income of Polish households, which, with the increase in prices and expenditure on energy carriers, led to an increase in the proportion of disposable inco... [more]

The transformation of the energy system is a highly complex process involving many dimensions. Energy system models help to understand the process and to define either target systems or policy measures. Insights derived from the social sciences are not sufficiently represented in energy system models, but address crucial aspects of the transformation process. It is, therefore, necessary to develop approaches to integrate results from social science studies into energy system models. Hence, as a result of an interdisciplinary discourse among energy system modellers, social scientists, psychologists, economists and political scientists, this article explains which aspects should be considered in the models, how the respective results can be collected and which aspects of integration into energy system models are conceivable to provide an overview for other modellers. As a result of the discourse, five facets are examined: Investment behaviour (market acceptance), user behaviour, local ac... [more]

According to the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, Australia was ranked as the worst-performing country on climate change policy. The country has an ambivalent record of climate policy development as well as implementation, and has been criticized for its inaction. This paper considers why the country has been locked in climate policy “paralysis” through analyzing defining attributes of such a paralysis, and the tentative connections between domestic energy policies and international trade and development. We conducted a media content analysis of 222 articles and identified media narratives in three cases of energy projects in the country involving thermal coal exports, domestic renewable energy storage, and closure of a domestic coal power station. The analysis reveals that policy paralysis in Australian climate change policy can be traced back to the countervailing arguments that have been pervasive around domestic energy security, rural employment and international energy pover... [more]

UK Feed-in Tariffs created a vibrant business ecosystem for the deployment of decentralised renewable energy technologies while constituting a regressive tax and increasing inequality. Business model innovation spurred by their withdrawal is providing valuable lessons for progressive policy design. Using the case study of solar PV deployment on multi-occupancy social housing, this paper reveals policy, business and organisational challenges that need to be overcome to address fuel poverty and reduce inequality. Suitable ‘export’ and ‘local’ business models were identified through a workshop and subsequently evaluated through qualitative thematic interview analysis. The ‘local’ model compares favourably in terms of production costs and benefits for fuel poor tenants but unfavourably in terms of transaction costs. Both models are considered equally susceptible to changes in policy. Their success hinges upon third party intermediaries, peer-to-peer learning and a supportive policy environ... [more]

Concern for climate change is one of the drivers of new, transitional energy policies oriented towards economic growth and energy security, along with reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and preservation of biodiversity. Since 2010, the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has been publishing annual Global Landscape of Climate Finance reports. According to these reports, US$3660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects over the period 2011−2018. Fifty-five percent of this expenditure has gone to wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the contribution of wind and solar to world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% over this period. Meanwhile, coal, oil, and gas continue to supply 85% of the world’s energy consumption, with hydroelectricity and nuclear providing most of the remainder. With this in mind, we consider the potential engineering challenges and environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the main energy sources (old and new). We find... [more]

This paper presents an evaluation of public policies for fare social tariffs of electricity in Brazil by using an economic model of the electricity market (TAROT-Optimized Tariff) that represents the regulated market of distribution of electrical energy. It was considered the scenario of an increasing number of prosumers (residential consumers who self-generate energy) in two of the five major regions of Brazil which have quite different socioeconomic characteristics. However, the current electricity regulation is the same for all concessionaires. In this work a new public policy is proposed, allowing the use of regulation in a different way aiming for a best result for Brazil and particularly for the poor population that today are not able to enjoy the benefits of electricity due to high tariff values. It is also discussed how this can contribute in a positive way to improve the income distribution in these regions, which is evaluated by using the GINI index.

The reduction of energy consumption in the building sector has promoted the spread of the NZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) model. A future target is represented by positive-energy buildings (PEB), which produce more energy than they consume. The study is centred on the examination of some peculiarities of NZEB through a case study and on the analysis of opportunities for further increase in energy performance, to trace the road that each designer should take, through an extensive evaluation of the potentials variations on the project that could lead to better results. The project assessments are developed through a dynamic simulation model and the data from the monitoring of the building’s performance are used to evaluate the actual energy saving conditions. The analyses demonstrate the importance of an accurate design of the envelope and technical building systems associated with a smart management of the control systems and the setting of the set points, for the optimal operation o... [more]

Power supply security tops the agenda of policies, and it is related to restructuring with the intention of improving efficiency. To investigate relationships between restructuring and reliability in the electricity industry of 15 OECD countries from 1987 to 2013, reliability is measured by the index of the sub-sectors (resources, generation, transmission and distribution, and electricity import), and the effects of the forms of liberalized restructuring—entry, privatization, and vertical divestiture—on sub-sectors are evaluated with the random-effect model. Results indicate that restructuring has a partially negative relationship with reliability, but the effect differs by the type of liberalization and supply sub-sectors.

This article describes the results of a study of Ecuador’s energy status, using the system dynamics methodology to model supply, demand and CO2 emissions scenarios for the year 2030. Primary energy production increased in the different projected scenarios, with oil as the most important source of energy. The increase observed in final energy consumption was mainly associated with the transport and industry sectors. A reduction in energy intensity was projected for the different scenarios, which could be associated with the projected economic growth. The results obtained were used to build a proposal for energy policies aimed at mitigating emissions. The proposed changes to the national energy matrix could be the factors that will contribute most to the achievement of carbon emission reductions projected by the different scenarios; changes in the energy matrix are mainly associated with the development of projects to replace fossil fuels with renewable energies, mainly hydropower.

With the continuous increase of China’s foreign-trade dependence on crude oil and the accelerating integration of the international crude oil market and the Chinese finance market, the spillover effect of international oil price fluctuation on China’s stock markets increasingly attracts the attention of the public. In order to explore the impact of international oil price fluctuation on China’s stock markets and the time-varying spillover differences of industry sectors, this study proposes three research hypotheses and constructs a multi-time scale analysis framework based on wavelet analysis and a time-varying t-Copula model. In this paper, we use the Shanghai Composite Index as the representative of a general trend of the stock market, and we use the stock index of the China Securities Industry as the counterpart of industrial sectors. Based on the data from 5 January 2005 to 31 May 2020, this paper measures and analyzes the spillover effect of international oil price fluctuation on... [more]

Gradual changes in energy and mobility systems in recent decades have triggered new and significant policy challenges [...]

This paper examines the effectiveness of implementing carbon taxes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from transport. Using the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator, we utilize cross-country analysis for the first time to study the impact of carbon taxes on the composition of petrol versus diesel passenger cars sold in 17 countries over the period 2013−2017. The results suggest that increasing carbon taxes affects consumer behavior, causing a significant shift from petrol to diesel fuel vehicles, controlling for factors such as the price of passenger cars, fuel price, interest rates, income level, population density, inflation, and vehicle stock.

One way to perceive the electricity market is as a network of actors connected through transactions and monetary flows. By exploring the monetary flows in the electricity market, one adopts a holistic view which can provide insights on the interactions between different components of the benefits and costs, as well as on the possible conflicts or alliances between the involved actors of the system. The importance of such an analysis becomes even more evident when considering if the system’s state would change due to either the effectuation of a policy measure or a shift in the external drivers of the system. Additionally, by identifying conditions of conflicting interests between the involved actors, one can devise a roadmap of least-resistance for a policy measure to attain its goals. Our work is based on the premise that understanding and quantifying the monetary flows in the electricity market can contribute to the efficiency assessment of policy interventions in the market. We pres... [more]

The shift in consumer preferences for large-sized cars has increased the energy intensity (EI) of passenger cars, while growth in battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales has decreased EI in recent years in South Korea. In order to lower passenger cars’ EI, the South Korean government has implemented the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards with a credit system, in which the sale of one energy-efficient car (for example, a BEV) can get multiple credits. This study analyzes CAFE standards in terms of both the EI improvement sensitivity scenarios and the degree of credits for BEVs and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) by using the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). In this study, passenger cars include small, medium, and large sedans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), BEVs, and FCEVs. The findings of this study are as follows: First, from the policy design perspective, a proper setting of the credit system for BEVs and FCEVs is a v... [more]

In order to combat climate change, many countries have promised to bolster Renewable Energy (RE) production following the Paris Agreement with some countries even setting a goal of 100% by 2025. The reasons are twofold: capitalizing on carbon emissions whilst concomitantly benefiting from reduced fossil fuel dependence and the fluctuations associated with imported fuel prices. However, numerous countries have not yet made preparations to increase RE production and integration. In many instances, this reluctance seems to be predominant in energy-rich countries, which typically provide heavy subsidies on electricity prices. With such subsidies, there is no incentive to invest in RE since the time taken to recoup such investments would be significant. We develop a model using a Neural Network (NN) regression algorithm to quantitatively illustrate this conjecture and also use it to predict the reduction in electricity price subsidies required to achieve a specified RE production target. Th... [more]

The equipment energy efficiency improvement policy (EEEIP) is one of the important measures of energy conservation and emission reduction in various countries. However, due to the simultaneous implementation of variety policies, the effect of the single policy cannot be clearly reflected. In this paper, a method of identification and evaluation of EEEIP was proposed, and the application was verified by analyzing the example of EEEIP in Japan (Top Runner policy, TRP). Firstly, through the factor decomposition model, this paper studied the energy conservation and emission reduction potential of this policy area in Japan. Then, the TRP was identified by using moving windows and correlation analysis, and the impact of specific equipment in TRP was analyzed. Finally, through the calculation of the rebound effect of the carbon footprint (REC), this paper analyzed the energy consumption and emission reduction effects of TRP in the short-term and whole life cycle. It showed that the policy has... [more]

This study aims to find the relationship between energy resource dependence and economic growth in consideration of interprovincial heterogeneity. This paper first uses panel data from 14 provinces with rich energy resources in China between 2001 and 2016 as a whole to test the energy resource curse hypothesis. It finds that there is no obvious resource curse from a general perspective. It further makes time prediction and transmission channel analysis based on regressions of each province and classifies them into four groups according to the different degrees of the resource curse. It shows the different roles of resource dependencies in different groups. Twelve provinces are subject to different degrees of the resource curse, among which, six provinces would eventually experience negative economic growth if they increase the degree of resource dependence. Next, this study discusses the mechanism of one particular group, “invisible energy resource curse”, which is when energy resource... [more]

This study investigates the influence of oil prices on tourism income in countries that heavily relied on crude oil exports from 2000 to 2017. We found that oil prices and tourism receipts are cointegrated, revealing the existence of their long-run equilibrium relationship. Another significant finding to emerge from this study is the presence of a unidirectional Granger causality that runs from the oil prices to the tourism receipts. The results of the current study are of particular importance for policymakers who operate in oil-exporting countries. The implications provide a systematic understanding of the effect of oil price fluctuations on tourism income which can benefit investors greatly by enabling them to hedge against oil price fluctuations and plan for their tourism business and policymakers by enabling them to set policies to stabilize oil price fluctuations and plan for tourism development, correspondingly.