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Oil Price Shocks and Policy Uncertainty: New Evidence on the Effects of US and non-US Oil Production / Wensheng Kang, Ronald A. Ratti, Joaquin L. Vespignani. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ; Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, January 2017, 36 p. (Working Paper No. 295) http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/institute/wpapers/2017/0295.pdfImportant interaction has been established for US economic policy uncertainty with a number of economic and financial variables including oil prices. This paper examines the dynamic effects of US and non-US oil production shocks on economic policy uncertainty using a structural VAR model. Such an examination is motivated by the substantial increases in US oil production in recent years with implications for US political and economic security. Positive innovations in US oil production are associated with decreases in US economic policy uncertainty. The economic forecast interquartile ranges about the US CPI and about federal/state/local government expenditures are particularly sensitive to innovations in US oil supply shocks. Shocks to US oil supply disruption causes rises in the CPI forecast uncertainty and accounts for 21% of the overall variation of the CPI forecaster disagreement. Dis-aggregation of oil production shocks into US and non-US oil production yield novel results. Oil supply shocks identified by US and non-US origins explain as much of the variation in economic policy uncertainty as structural shocks on the demand side of the oil market.OPEC and Demand Response to Crude Oil Prices / Talat S. Genc. University of Guelph. Department of Economics and Finance, 2017, 26 p. (Discussion Paper 2017-1) http://www.uoguelph.ca/economics/repec/workingpapers/2017/2017-01.pdfThis paper investigates demand response to crude oil price movements before and during the recent global financial and economic crisis. It employs several market power indices to structurally estimate price elasticities. A newly developed market power index for crude oil markets is implemented. In this approach OPEC is the central player and acts as a dominant producer in the global oil market. Although our price elasticity predictions for pre-crisis period fall in a range reported in the literature, our estimates for post-crisis largely deviate from the ones reported before. In fact, we find that demand for crude oil surprisingly changes behavior and turns out to be elastic during the financial crisis. Furthermore, demand response to crude oil prices have almost doubled during the crisis. This severe change in price response can be associated with record price levels caused by supply shortages and surge in alternative energy resources. The key advantages of this methodology over the existing literature are that it estimates price elasticity using a competition framework without specifying demand/supply function(s), and utilizes commonly observable market variables that can be applied to any admissible data frequency.Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate / Duncan Brack. Chatham House, Feb. 2017, 72 p. (research paper) https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/impacts-demand-woody-biomass-power-and-heat-climate-and-forestsAlthough most renewable energy policy frameworks treat biomass as carbon-neutral at the point of combustion, biomass emits more carbon per unit of energy than most fossil fuels.Panorama du gaz renouvelable en 2016. GRDF ; GRTgaz ; SER ; SPEGNN ; TIGF, 2017, 28 p. http://www.grtgaz.com/fr/medias/communiques-de-presse/detail-actus/article/panorama-du-gaz-renouvelable-en-2016.htmlL’année 2016 a confirmé l’émergence de la filière biométhane notamment via la mise en service de 9 nouveaux sites en France. Avec une augmentation annuelle de 162 % en 2016, 215 GWh ont été injectés dans le réseau de gaz, soit l’équivalent de la consommation de près de 18 000 logements ou 1 000 bus.Dresser l’état des lieux et tracer les perspectives de la filière, telle est l’ambition du Panorama du Gaz Renouvelable 2016, fruit de la collaboration de GRDF, de GRTgaz, du Syndicat des Energies Renouvelables (SER), du SPEGNN et de TIGF.La transition énergétique allemande: l'Energiewende. Lettre Géopolitique de l’Electricité, n° 72, 20 février 2017, 9 p.  http://www.geopolitique-electricite.fr/documents/ene-214.pdfQu'arrive-t-il à la transition énergétique allemande? Elle se veut un modèle pour le monde contre le réchauffement climatique. Or les performances dans ce domaine de l'Allemagne s'effondrent. La presse Outre Rhin constate : "nous faisons moins bien que l'Inde". La facture s'envole et le pays subventionne son industrie à hauteur de 3,4 milliards d'euros par an pour la mettre à l'abri du coût des renouvelables. D'après l'Indice de Performance Climatique publié par Climate Action Network Europe (Greenpeace, WWF, etc), la France est le pays dont la politique climatique est la plus efficace. L'Allemagne est 29 éme derrière l'Inde, l'Indonésie, l'Egypte ou le Mexique. Notre pays a tout à perdre à imiter la transition énergétique allemande.