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Financing renewable electricity in the resource-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa: A review / Joel Krupa and Rahmatallah Poudineh. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Feb. 2017, 34 p. (OIES paper : EL 22) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/financing-renewable-electricity-middle-east-north-africa-review/Renewables in the resource-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are inconsequential contributors to regional total primary energy supply, but recent project developments and overt support from a range of influential regional actors suggest a general trend towards a more environmentally sustainable electricity supply. This trend is driven just as much by economics as other factors, as rapidly falling renewable energy capital costs are complementing favourable policy environments, technical suitability, and concerns around the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Finance is an especially important consideration in this transition, yet it receives insufficient coverage. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency of academic inquiry. At the root of our inquiry lies a simple pair of questions: what makes a project financeable, and what can the resource-rich nations of the region do to create vibrant clean electricity financing markets for renewables? We outline the factors that affect the financeability of projects, review the latest developments in renewable energy finance in the region, and present policy recommendations going forward.The Social Contract in the MENA Region and the Energy Sector Reforms / S. Brzuszkiewicz. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2017, 51 p. (Nota di Lavoro 4.2017) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/20171271040344NDL2017-004.pdfDuring the last few years and because of the low oil prices in particular, the increasing awareness of the unsustainability of subsidized systems led several MENA countries to take steps to lower subsidies, which have been part of the social contract for decades, especially as far as the energy sector is concerned. Nowadays, the need for reforms is compelling for more than one reason. Namely, the subsidized system distorts market trends, fosters inefficient use of resources, depresses foreign direct investment and fuels overconsumption, which is no longer sustainable, particularly as far as the population growth in most of the MENA countries is concerned. In this paper both the resource-abundant countries and the energy importing nations will be analyzed, in order to investigate similarities and differences between the two and to carry out an initial assessment of the reforms in two representative countries, namely Saudi Arabia, exporting country par excellence, and Egypt, which imports energy.Sustainable Urban Development: Necessity of Integrating Water-Energy-Food Dimensions in Developmental Policies. New Delhi : TERI, Oct. 2016, 8 p. (policy brief) http://www.teriin.org/policybrief/index.php?a=39India is in a state of transition from traditional rural economy to a modern  industrial economy. However, with increasing urbanization it faces challenges in terms of population rise, unplanned urbanization, climate change and degraded ecosystem which pose major impediments towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals. As on 2015, 400 million people reside in urban India and by the year 2050, the number of people living in Indian cities is expected to be about 840 million, which will further aggravate the issues of water, energy and food security. Hence, there is a need for smarter and sustainable ways of resource use efficiency which will not only address the resource scarcity concerns but also improve the quality of life. This policy brief is an attempt to highlight the importance of integrated management of water, energy and food for urban India considering the intricate relationship between these elements. It examines their interrelationship from their consumption perspective, and evaluates policies and programmes dealing with the development of urban areas...A Capacity expansion model dealing with balancing requirements, short-term operations and long-run dynamics / Manuel Villavicencio. Chaire European electricity markets, Feb. 2017, 35 p. (CEEM WP 25) http://www.ceem-dauphine.org/assets/wp/pdf/CEEM_Working_Paper_25_Manuel_VILLAVICENCIO.pdfOne of the challenges of current power systems is presented by the need to adequately integrate increasing shares of variable renewable energies (VRE) such as wind and photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The study of capacity investments under this context raises refreshed interrogations about the optimal power generation mix when considering system adequacy, operability and reliability issues. This paper analyses the influence of such considerations and adopts a resource-adequacy approach to propose a stylized capacity expansion model (CEM) that endogenously optimize investments in both generation capacity and new flexibility options such as electric energy storage (EES) and demand side management (DSM) capabilities.Three formulations are tested in order to seize the relevance of system dynamics representation over the valuation of capacity and flexibility investments. In each formulation the complexity of the representation of operating constraints increases. The resource-adequacy approach is then enlarged with a multiservice representation of the power system introducing non-contingency reserve considerations. Therefore, investments decisions are enhanced by information from system operations requirements given by the hourly economic dispatch and also by a reliability criterion given by reserve needs.The formulations are tested on a case study in order to capture the trade-offs of adding more details on the system representation while exogenously imposing supplementary VRE penetration. The results obtained show the importance of adopting a sufficiently detailed representation of system requirements to accurately capture the value of capacity and flexibility when important VRE penetration levels are to be studied, but also to appropriately estimate resulting system cost and CO2 emissions.Determining optimal interconnection capacity on the basis of hourly demand and supply functions of electricity / Jan-Horst Keppler, William Meunier and Alexandre Coquentin. Chaire European electricity markets, Jan. 2017, 23 p. (CEEM WP 24) http://www.ceem-dauphine.org/assets/wp/pdf/CEEM_Working_Paper_24_Jan-Horst_Keppler,_William_Meunier_et_Alexandre_Coquentin.pdfInterconnections for cross-border electricity flows are at the heart of the project to create a common European electricity market. At the time, increase in production from variable renewables clustered during a limited numbers of hours reduces the availability of existing transport infrastructures. This calls for higher levels of optimal interconnection capacity than in the past. In complement to existing scenario-building exercises such as the TYNDP that respond to the challenge of determining optimal levels of infrastructure provision, the present paper proposes a new empirically-based methodology to perform Cost-Benefit analysis for the determination of optimal interconnection capacity, using as an example the French-German cross-border trade. Using a very fine dataset of hourly supply and demand curves (aggregated auction curves) for the year 2014 from the EPEX Spot market, it constructs linearized net export (NEC) and net import demand curves (NIDC) for both countries. This allows assessing hour by hour the welfare impacts for incremental increases in interconnection capacity. Summing these welfare increases over the 8 760 hours of the year, this provides the annual total for each step increase of interconnection capacity. Confronting welfare benefits with the annual cost of augmenting interconnection capacity indicated the socially optimal increase in interconnection capacity between France and Germany on the basis of empirical market micro-data.Hybrid electricity markets with long-term risk-sharing arrangements : adapting market design to security / Fabien Roques and Dominique Finon. Chaire European electricity markets, Jan. 2017, 28 p. (CEEM WP 23) http://www.ceem-dauphine.org/assets/wp/pdf/CEEM_Working_Paper_23_Fabien_Roques_and_Dominique_Finon2.pdfThe re-emergence of policy interventionism in electricity markets raises questions as to how market design can best be adapted to meeting the investment challenge associated with security of supply (SoS) and decarbonisation objectives. This paper takes an institutionalist approach in terms of modularity of the market design, and reviews the standard historical approach towards competitive markets, in order to analyse the roles and interactions of the initial and additional market “modules”. We argue that a number of additional modules is required to achieve long-term policy objectives, such as decarbonisation and security of supply (SoS). But, in turn, they destabilise the initial modules of the market design, in particular by the entries of renewables. We review the international experience with hybrid market design and draw a number of policy recommendations at to best practices, as well as suggesting ways in which the initial market modules can be improved to prevent inconsistencies with the new modules. The move towards a hybrid market regime, which relies on a combination of planning, long-term risk sharing arrangements and improved markets entrenched in a function of short-term coordination, appears to be unavoidable where decarbonisation policies are adopted.