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Not all oil shocks are alike either: Disentangling the supply determinant / Andreas Economou. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Aug. 2016, 6 p. (Oxford energy comment) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/not-oil-shocks-alike-either-disentangling-supply-determinant/Analysis of oil price shocks using fundamental measures has for years puzzled researchers. Recent theoretical and empirical work has made considerable improvements on how to model the global oil market. Yet, many studies document a decrease in the explanatory ability of the supply side of the market, as there appears little evidence that oil supply shocks have historically been a key determinant of the oil price. This comment focuses on the underlying specifications of the supply determinant and predicts that the most important channel by which oil supply affects the price of oil is through shocks to the available operable capacity in crude oil production, relative to demand, as a consequence of the normal functioning of the global oil market.Cost-effectiveness and Incidence of Renewable Energy Promotion in Germany / Christoph Böhringer, Florian Landis, Miguel Angel Tovar Reaños. University of Oldenburg, July 2016, 29 p. (Oldenburg Discussion Papers in Economics ; V – 390–16) https://www.uni-oldenburg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/wire/fachgebiete/vwl/V-390-16.pdfOver the last decade Germany has boosted renewable energy in power production by means of massive subsidies. The  flip side are very high electricity prices which raises concerns that the transition cost towards a renewable energy system will be mainly borne by poor households. In this paper, we combine computable general equilibrium and microsimulation analysis to investigate the cost-effectiveness and incidence of Germany's renewable energy promotion. We find that the regressive effects of renewable energy promotion could be attenuated by alternative subsidy financing mechanisms which achieve the same level of electricity generation from renewable energy sources.Bridging the Gap: Do Fast Reacting Fossil Technologies Facilitate Renewable Energy Diffusion? / Elena Verdolini, Francesco Vona, David Popp. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2016, 37 p. (nota di lavoro ; 2016.051) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/20167271022524NDL2016-051.pdfThe diffusion of renewable energy in the power system implies high supply variability. Lacking economically viable storage options, renewable energy integration has so far been possible thanks to the presence of fast-reacting mid-merit fossil-based technologies, which act as back-up capacity. This paper discusses the role of fossil-based power generation technologies in supporting renewable energy investments. We study the deployment of these two technologies conditional on all other drivers in 26 OECD countries between 1990 and 2013. We show that a 1% percent increase in the share of fast-reacting fossil generation capacity is associated with a 0.88% percent increase in renewable in the long run. These results are robust to various modifications in our empirical strategy, and most notably to the use of system-GMM techniques to account for the interdependence of renewable and fast-reacting fossil investment decisions. Our analysis points to the substantial indirect costs of renewable energy integration and highlights the complementarity of investments in different generation technologies for a successful decarbonization process.EU energy trends and macroeconomic performance : Deliverable D1 Study on the Macroeconomics of Energy and Climate Policies / Anthony Barker,  Sophie Billington, Mory Clark, Richard Lewney,  Leonidas Paroussos. European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy, July 2016, 69 p. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/ENER%20Macro-Energy_Trends-Macroeconomic-Performance_D1%20Final%20%28Ares%20registered%29.pdfThis report highlights the main historical trends in the EU’s energy demand and supply, setting them in the context of wider global trends, summarises views on the key drivers of those trends, and discusses the macroeconomic importance of energy.Policy-induced energy technological innovation and finance for low-carbon economic growth : Deliverable D2 Study on the Macroeconomics of Energy and Climate Policies / Jean-Francois Mercure, Florian Knobloch, Hector Pollitt,  Richard Lewney, Koen Rademakers, Lisa Eichler, Jeroen van der Laan, Leonidas Paroussos. European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy, July 2016, 78 p. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/ENER%20Macro-Energy_Innovation_D2%20Final%20%28Ares%20registered%29.pdfThis report provides a review and synthesis of current knowledge regarding policy induced energy innovation and technological change and its likely implications for the macro-economy and future low-carbon societies in the European Union.