Modeling Unit Commitment in Political Context
Electricity sector restructuring processes can undergo long, protracted transition periods that are not well-captured in typical power systems operation models. We create a tractable dispatch...
New Study Finds Expected Savings from School Energy Efficiency Upgrade Outpace Actual Returns
Innovative study finds energy efficiency investments made at California public schools may not provide as much benefit as officials expected.
Fuel-efficient Cars Often Paired with Gas Guzzlers, Study Finds
A study released Tuesday by economists at UC Davis, Yale, and MIT shows that families who own fuel-efficient cars tend to buy big, powerful gas guzzlers as their second vehicle, largely defeating the purpose of the little petrol sippers in their garages.
Replacing Coal by Gas: An Effective Strategy to Reduce CO2 Emissions?
Now more than ever, natural gas is hoped to effectively help shale gas producing regions reduce their CO2 emissions, by largely replacing their coal energy input. At the same time, the domestic replacement of coal by gas releases amounts of tradable coal, whose supply meets the foreign energy demand, contributing to increase emissions in the rest of the world.
Black Carbon Problems in Transportation
Black carbon particulates in “soot” emissions have significant detrimental impacts on public health, climate change and food production; and diesel engines in the transportation sector are a major source of such emissions. There are cost-effective technologies that can mitigate the emissions. However, a wide range of policies at all levels of government are needed to incentivize the uptake of emission-mitigating technologies.
The Behavioral Effect of Pigovian Regulation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Market-based regulation, and in particular Pigovian taxes/subsidies, have the potential to make consumers internalize socially harmful external effects associated with their choices. Recent behavioral literature, however, suggests that explicit financial penalties/rewards may undermine willingness to behave prosocially.
In The News
Apr 13, 2017
Early Nuclear Retirements in Deregulated U.S. Markets
U.S. nuclear reactors have been retiring at an unprecedented pace for the last few years. Tens of gigawatts of zero-emission nuclear capacity are now at risk of retiring prematurely, before the end...
Mar 17, 2017
Tropical Forests, Tipping Points, and the Social Cost of Deforestation
The existence of a forest-savanna tipping point implies that changes in forest resilience affect the marginal economic value of a standing forest. We propose a new framework for calculating the...
Mar 17, 2017
When Do States Disrupt Industries? Electric Cars in Germany and the United States
When do states drive green industrial change? We show that in mature industries with powerful incumbents the ability of the state to organize private interests in support of technological change is...
Jan 30, 2017
Limits to Arbitrage in Electricity Markets: A case study of MISO
Like in other deregulated markets, financial players were introduced to the Midwest electricity market to arbitrage price differences that distort planning decisions. Unlike other markets, this did...
Jan 23, 2017
Wind Capacity Investments: Inefficient Drivers and Long-Term Impacts
In a new CEEPR Working Paper, Ian Schneider and Mardavij Roozbehani explain how existing production-based subsidies for wind energy bias marginal investments to underweight the market value of...