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World energy outlook. Paris : International Energy Agency, Nov. 2018, 661 p.  https://doi.org/10.1787/weo-2018-en What do today’s energy policies, policy ambitions and technology trends tell us about the future? Is the world getting closer or is it moving away from meeting energy-related sustainable development goals? Drawing on the latest data on energy markets and technology trends, this year’s World Energy Outlook – the gold standard of long-term energy analysis – provides detailed analyses of these fundamental issues to 2040, covering all fuels, technologies and regions. Electricity is the special focus of the 2018 edition. The share of electricity in global energy use is growing while the rise of low carbon technologies is prompting a major transformation in the way electricity is generated. What might tomorrow’s power sector look like? How can it ensure reliable supply while reducing emissions? WEO-2018 also asks what can be done to reduce the environmental footprint of the world’s oil and gas supply.The Nuclear Power Dilemma: Declining Profits, Plant Closures, and the Threat of Rising Carbon Emissions / Steve Clemmer, Jeremy Richardson, Sandra Sattler and Dave Lochbaum. Union of Concerned Scientists, November 2018, 88 p. https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power/retirements#.W-VmDjGNyHsNuclear power is the single largest source of low-carbon electricity in the United States. In 2017, some 99 nuclear reactors operating at 60 plants provided 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. But the numbers are changing. Cheap natural gas and renewable energy, diminished demand, rising operational costs, and safety and performance problems are all threatening the profitability of nuclear power plants—and increasing the likelihood that reactors might close. If natural gas or coal replaces them, emissions will rise—and our ability to fight climate change will become that much weaker. To better understand these pressures, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) assessed the economic viability of the US nuclear fleet. We analyzed which reactors were most at risk of early retirement and analyzed the impact of their retirement through a range of scenarios. We also assessed each reactor’s safety and performance...Outlook for Producer Economies : Critical questions for the world’s largest oil and gas producers. Paris : International Energy Agency, 2018 https://www.iea.org/weo/producereconomies/The drive for energy efficiency and the long-term response to climate change, in addition to technology innovation and the shale revolution in the United States, are all pointing to sustained pressure on economies that rely heavily on revenue from oil and gas. Outlook for Producer Economies focuses on what these changes could mean across six key countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates &#38; Venezuela.Strategic behaviour in a capacity market? The new Irish electricity market design / Juha Teirilä and Robert A. Ritz. Energy Policy Research Group, 2018, 41 p. (EPRG Working Paper 1833) https://www.eprg.group.cam.ac.uk/eprg-working-paper-1833/The transition to a low-carbon power system requires growing the share of generation from (intermittent) renewables while ensuring security of supply. Policymakers and economists increasingly see a capacity mechanism as a way to deal with this challenge. Yet this raises new concerns about the exercise of market power by large players via the capacity auction. We present a new modelling approach that captures such strategic behaviour together with a set of ex ante empirical estimates for the new Irish electricity market design (I-SEM) – in which a single firm controls 44% of generation capacity (excluding wind). We find significant costs of strategic behaviour, even with new entry: In our baseline scenarios, procurement costs in the capacity auction are around 150-400 million EUR (or 40-100%) above the competitive least-cost solution. From a policy perspective, we also examine how market power can be measured and mitigated through auction design.L’énergie nucléaire dans le brouillard / Pierre Papon, Futuribles, note de veille, 23/10/2018 https://www.futuribles.com/fr/article/lenergie-nucleaire-dans-le-brouillard/La place de l’énergie nucléaire dans le mix énergétique est débattue, en France, depuis le vote de la loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte, en 2015. Celle-ci prévoyait de baisser la part du nucléaire dans la production d’électricité de 75 % (en 2015) à 50 % en 2025, mais EDF (Électricité de France) a estimé que cet objectif était difficile à atteindre, ce qui a amené le gouvernement à réviser, cette année, la Programmation pluriannuelle de l’énergie (PPE)...China’s Long March to Gas Price Freedom: Price Reform in the People’s Republic / Stephen O’Sullivan. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Nov. 2018, 82 p. (OIES Paper: NG138) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/chinas-long-march-gas-price-freedom-price-reform-peoples-republic/China is the world’s third-largest gas market – as well as its fastest-growing.  Government policy, economic growth and reform of its gas pricing system are driving growth in demand at double-digit rates.  The outlook for China’s gas market and its interaction with the wider world of global gas is both a major question for international gas players as well as for Chinese policymakers.  While it is primarily government policy driving gas demand today, through the coal-to-gas switching programme underway in northern China, once that ends gas pricing will be the key driver of demand.  The government faces a challenge of choosing between low domestic prices to stimulate demand and improve the environment or high prices to encourage domestic production and restrain the country’s rising dependence on expensive imports – particularly in a challenging international political environment.  The current pricing structure is a hybrid of regulation and market linkages – albeit moving in the right direction.  We identify and analyse the success stories of price reform in China and the challenges that government and industry still face – not all of them pricing-related, since they include midstream reform, infrastructure construction and access, the development of gas hubs and the inevitably serious challenge from renewables.Exploitation durable des ressources énergétiques et minérales marines : aspects juridiques / Alix Willemez. Doctorat de Droit. Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, 2018. Français. https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01905059 L'exploitation des ressources énergétiques et minérales terrestres rencontre des limites face à l'augmentation rapide de la population mondiale. Ce n'est qu'après la seconde guerre mondiale que les États ont compris qu'ils devaient maîtriser l'océan pour pouvoir en extraire ses ressources. 1982 marque l'adoption de la Convention des Nations-Unies sur le droit de la mer. L'espace maritime fut alors découpé en zones, sur lesquelles les États côtiers avaient le plus souvent des droits. Ce découpage permettait une meilleure exploitation des ressources maritimes. Ainsi, en mer territoriale, les États pouvaient mettre en place des systèmes de production d'électricité à partir de sources renouvelables. Plus loin, dans la zone économique exclusive, les États peuvent autoriser l'exploration et l'exploitation des hydrocarbures. Enfin, sur le plateau continental, l'évolution de la technologie nous permettra bientôt d'aller exploiter les ressources minérales marines. La[...]Global Gas Security Review 2018: Meeting Challenges in a Fast Changing Market. Paris : International Energy Agency, 2018, 102 p. https://webstore.iea.org/global-gas-security-review-2018Today’s natural gas markets are being reshaped by major emerging liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers, led by the People’s Republic of China and the rising production and exports from the United States. This transformation, driven by growing markets and supplied by fast-changing LNG trade, brings its share of security-related challenges as was highlighted by China’s supply shortfall overthe last winter.Supply flexibility remains a key prerequisite to ensuring continued global gas trade development and security. Yet priorities in terms of flexibility differ between long-term traditional buyers, who seek the removal of destination clauses, and new emerging buyers more focused on procuring short-term supply, usually for prompt delivery.The International Energy Agency’s third edition of the Global Gas Security Review provides an in-depth analysis of recent security-related issues and lessons learned.The report shows the most recent trends in LNG flexibility, based on a detailed assessment of contractual data. It examines the impact of the growing role of emerging LNG buyers and of the development of market liquidity on trade and new contracts. And, this year, it includes a special focus on short-term LNG deliverability as well as shipping fleet availability, two important factors in assessing gas security of supply around the world.What is the role for renewable methane in European decarbonization? / Stephanie Searle, Chelsea Baldino, Nikita Pavlenko. International Council for Clean Transportation, October 2018, 10 p. https://www.theicct.org/publications/role-renewable-methane-euRenewable methane blended in the fossil gas supply is seen as a potential long-term decarbonization solution in the transport, power, and heat sectors in the European Union. It can be produced from anaerobic digestion of livestock manure and sewage sludge, gasification and methanation of sustainable biomass, and using power-to-gas technology with renewable electricity. This briefing paper summarizes two working papers: The potential for low carbon renewable methane in heat, power, and transport in the European Union and The potential for low-carbon renewable methane as a transport fuel in France, Italy, and Spain... lire la suiteDecarbonized Market Design: An Insurance Overlay on Energy-Only Electricity Markets / Farhad Billimoria and Rahmatallah Poudineh. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, October 2018, 30 p. (OIES Paper: EL 30) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/decarbonized-market-design-insurance-overlay-energy-electricity-markets/In the face of challenges to energy-only market design under the electricity sector transition, an option considered by many jurisdictions is to incorporate some form of centralized capacity mechanism to respond to shortfalls in the market provision. For example, the UK government has already introduced a formal capacity market. In Germany and Belgium, strategic reserve mechanisms have already been approved and will be introduced shortly. Other markets, such as the National Electricity Market of Australia, are also considering enhancing their existing strategic reserve mechanisms, which would see more standardized and continual procurement of capacity by a noncommercial central agency. Under a market transition where generation is increasingly stochastic and decentralized, two key issues emerge with the above approaches. First, centralized mechanisms put increased focus on the efficiency of central authority decision making and the alignment between performance outcomes for reliability and agency incentives. Second, existing capacity mechanisms require the central agency to infer consumer preferences for reliability, something that is very challenging in practice. This is especially relevant in markets where the value of lost load is increasingly differentiated among different consumers. In this paper, we propose a new model for electricity market design—the insurer-of-last-resort model—that works as a risk overlay on an existing energy-only market. This model unbundles energy and reliability and incorporates insurance-based risk management concepts with the aims of (1) aligning incentives for centralized decision making and (2) allowing revealed consumer preferences to guide new capacity deployment.