{"word_count": 736, "character_count": 5277}
Economic costs and benefits of renewables deployment in the EU / Gabriel Bachner, Andreas Tuerk, Keith Williges, Karl Steininger. UNI Graz ; European Commission Carisma Project, Jan. 2017, 48 p. http://carisma-project.eu/Portals/0/Documents/CARISMA%20D4.2.pdfThis report, part of the EU CARISMA project (http://carisma-project.eu), includes system costs in the macroeconomic assessment of wind and PV moving beyond classical LCOE assessments of renewable energy expansion and shows the critical importance of incorporating macroeconomic effects and feedbacks for policy evaluation and design. The report analyzes the possible economy-wide implications (e.g.wages and capital rents, welfare) of a large-scale expansion of wind and photovoltaics in the European Union.The Effect of Increased Transmission and Storage in an Interconnected Europe: an Application to France and Ireland / V. Di Cosmo, S. Collins, P. Deane. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2017, 34 p. (Nota di Lavoro 37.2017) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/2017718124574NDL2017-037.pdfA longstanding goal of the European Union (EU) is to promote efficient trading between price zones via electricity interconnection to achieve a single electricity market between the EU countries. This paper uses a power system model (PLEXOS-EU) to simulate one vision of the 2030 EU electricity market based on European Commission studies to determine the effects of a new interconnector between France and the Single Electricity Market of Ireland and Northern Ireland (SEM). We use the same tool to understand the effects of investment in storage, and the effects of the interaction between storage and additional interconnection. Our results show that both investments in interconnection and storage reduce wholesale electricity prices in France and Ireland as well as reduce net revenues of thermal generators in most scenarios in both countries. However, France is only marginally affected by the new interconnector. Renewable generators see a modest increase in net revenues. The project has the potential for a positive impact on welfare in Ireland if costs are shared between countries and remain below 45 million €/year for the scenarios examined. The owners of the new interconnector between France and SEM see increased net revenues in the scenarios without storage. When storage is included in the system, the new interconnector becomes less profitable.Analysis of Public Subsidies to the Solar Energy Sector: Corruption and the Role of Institutions /  F. Moliterni. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2017, 27 p. (Nota di Lavoro 33.2017) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/20176291216454NDL2017-033.pdfThis study investigates the connection between rent-seeking behaviour, corruption activity and quality of institutions to empirically evaluate the unexpected implications of an energy policy for criminal activity. The object of this research is a program of public subsidies introduced in Italy in 2005, which successfully boosted the solar energy sector but seems to have generated a growth of corruption activity, arisen from the opportunity of rent extraction. In particular, according to the main hypothesis of this research, bribery is expected to rise significantly where big photovoltaic plants are concentrated and administrative procedures are more complicated. To determine the causal effect of the subsidies on corruption, the study employs a Difference-in-Difference methodology on a sample of 76 Italian provinces and exploits solar radiation as exogenous variable to discriminate the profitability of investments and bribing. Results confirm that, in poor-institutions areas, the growth of the solar sector in sunniest provinces has gone hand in hand with increasing corruption. Results suggest that policy makers should pay additional attention to the potential distortions of public policies implying large rent opportunities, in areas where the weakness of institutional settings and the bureaucratic complexities encourage illegal behaviour.Accelerating Energy Efficiency Improvements in Room Air Conditioners in India: Potential, Costs-Benefits, and Policies / Abhyankar, Nikit, Nihar Shah, Won Young Park, and Amol A. Phadke. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Energy Technology Area, April 2017, 40 p. (LBNL-1005798) https://eta.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/india_ac_national_impact_of_accelerated_ee_lbnl_1005798_0.pdfRising incomes, increasing urbanization, and large cooling demand prompted by India’s hot, humid climate are driving increasing uptake of room air conditioners (ACs). Air conditioning already accounts for 40-60% of summer peak load in large Indian cities such as Delhi and is on track to contribute 140 gigawatts (GW) (~30%) to peak demand in 2030. India’s standards and labeling policies improved the market average efficiency of room ACs by about 35% between 2006 and 2016 (3% per year) even as inflation-adjusted room AC prices continued to decline. In this report, we assess the technical feasibility and costs and benefits of accelerating the efficiency improvement in room ACs in India and discuss policy enhancements needed to achieve this goal.We also describe examples of rapid AC efficiency improvement from Japan and Korea... read more