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Natural Gas Information 2018 / International Energy Agency. Paris : OECD, September 2018,418 p. https://webstore.iea.org/natural-gas-information-2018Natural Gas Information is a detailed reference work on gas supply and demand covering OECD countries and the rest of the world. The publication contains essential information on LNG and pipeline trade, gas reserves, storage capacity and prices.The main part of the book concentrates on OECD countries, showing a detailed supply and demand balance for each country and for the three OECD regions: Americas, Asia-Oceania and Europe, as well as a breakdown of gas consumption by end user. Import and export data are reported by source and destination.Natural Gas Information is one of a series of annual IEA statistical publications on major energy sources; other reports are Coal Information, Electricity Information, Oil Information and Renewables Information.World Energy Balances 2018 / International Energy Agency. Paris : OECD, September 2018, 762 p. https://webstore.iea.org/world-energy-balances-2018World Energy Balances provides comprehensive energy balances for all the world’s largest energy producing and consuming countries. It contains detailed data on the supply and consumption of energy for 150 countries and regions, including all OECD countries, over 100 other key energy producing and consuming countries, as well as world totals and various regional aggregates. The book includes graphs and detailed data by country for all energy sources – coal, gas, oil, electricity, renewables and waste - expressed in balance format. Alongside this, there are summary time series on production, trade, final consumption by sector, as well as key energy and economic indicators and an overview of trends in global energy production and use.More detailed data in original units are published in the companion publication World Energy Statistics.Imperfect Competition in Electricity Markets with Renewable Generation: The Role of Renewable Compensation Policies / David P. Browny and Andrew Eckert. University of Alberta. Department of Economics, Institute for Public Economics, Aug. 2018, 44 p. (Working Paper No. 2018-12) https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/albaec/2018_012.htmlWe analyze the effects of commonly employed renewable compensation policies on firm behavior in an imperfectly competitive market. We consider a model where rms compete for renewable capacity in a procurement auction prior to choosing their forward contract positions and competing in wholesale electricity markets. We focus on fixed and premium-priced feed-in tariff (FIT) compensation policies. We demonstrate that the renewable compensation policy impacts both the types of resources that win the renewable auction and subsequent market competition. While firms have stronger incentives to exercise market power in wholesale markets under a premium-priced FIT, they also have increased incentives to sign pro-competitive forward contracts. Despite these countervailing incentives, in net firms have stronger incentives to exercise market power under the premium-priced policy. We find conditions under which renewable resources that are more correlated with market demand are procured under a premium-priced design, while the opposite occurs under a fixed-priced policy. If the cost efficiencies associated with the "more valuable" renewable resources are sufficiently large, then welfare is larger under the premium-priced policy despite the stronger market power incentives in the wholesale market. Finally, we consider incumbent behavior in the renewable auction when competing against entrants with more valuable resources.The Digital World Knocks at Electricity’s Door: Six Building Blocks to Understand Why /  Jean-Michel Glachant and Nicolò Rossetto. European University Institute.  Florence School of Regulation, September 2018, 8 p. (policy brief ; 18/16) http://fsr.eui.eu/publications/the-digital-world-knocks-at-electricitys-door-six-building-blocks-to-understand-why/Digitalisation is invading the electricity sector. How will it play out? Six building blocks, grouped into three categories, can provide the analytical framework required to navigate through the emerging digital world and the transformations that are taking place in the electricity sector. Digitalisation builds on changes in infrastructure. Billions of digital devices interconnected by the internet provide the facilities to access the digital world and the multitude of digital products (building block one). Digitalisation also transforms physical networks in other industries and make them smarter, either to perform existing activities or to offer new and more interactive services (building block two).  Digitalisation involves changes in markets too. A growing number of products are purely digital and the platforms providing them cannot be bypassed by consumers (building block three). Other digital platforms operate in two-sided markets: they do not create the product but act as intermediaries facilitating interactions between the sellers and the buyers of goods and services that are not necessarily digital (building block four).  Digitalisation is a transformative process whose frontier is constantly moving. New technologies like the blockchain can offer disintermediated peer-to-peer transactions to digital communities (building block five). On the contrary, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) can become unavoidable and automated intermediaries, replacing direct human involvement in thousands of decisions concerning the management of vast sets of assets (building block six). 2020 vision: why you should see peak fossil fuels coming / Kingsmill Bond. Carbon Tracker, September 2018, 44 p. https://www.carbontracker.org/fossil-fuels-will-peak-in-the-2020s-as-renewables-supply-all-growth-in-energy-demand/The peak in fossil fuel demand will have a dramatic impact on financial markets in the 2020s. The global energy system is transitioning from a system mainly based on fossil fuels to one mainly based on renewable energy sources. The shift will involve near-term peaking of fossil fuel demand, an S curve of renewable growth, and the endgame for fossil fuel demand...