Worldwide, the energy transition is underway. Whereas there is consensus regarding the need to reduce carbon emissions, promote renewables, and improve energy efficiency, there is still controversy regarding the optimal choice of policies to achieve those goals.
Policies differ in their efficiency impacts (i.e., whether they induce higher or lower costs), but also on their distributional implications (i.e., whether they create winners and losers). Furthermore, agents’ behavioral biases might impact the success or failure of the chosen policies.
With this triple focus on efficiency, equity and behavioral considerations, the Intensive Course on The Energy Transition: Economics and Policy, which will take place at the Barcelona GSE on June 11-12 2020, will provide participants (whether economists, engineers, or lawyers, working for firms or in regulatory agencies) with a thorough understanding of the most recent economic insights to analyze the performance of current and potential energy and climate policies. The course will mainly review policies affecting the transportation and power sectors, as well as the competition policy issues that are likely to arise during the energy transition. The program’s faculty includes leading international scholars and practitioners with extensive experience of the application of economic techniques to designing and assessing the performance of energy and climate policies. The Directors of the course are Massimo Motta (BGSE) and Natalia Fabra, head of EnergyEcoLab.
The XV Annual Conference of the Spanish Association for Energy Economics took place on January 29th-31st, 2020 at the University of Castilla-La Mancha.
The AEEE is the Spanish division of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). The AEEE Conference intends to promote links between the university, regulators, and companies in the areas of Energy Economics, Environment, and Climate Change. In this fifteenth edition, the main theme of the Conference was “Energy Decarbonisation. From words to action”.
The head of EnergyEcoLab, Natalia Fabra, was one of the two keynote speakers of the conference. Her presentation [link], entitled, “The Energy Transition: Markets and Policies” summarised some of the results of the ongoing research carried out at EnergyEcoLab.
The aim of the conference was to show the interdisciplinary work carried out by the ERC-funded researchers around the concept of “sustainability”. Among the topics that were discussed, the ERC highlighted the relevance of those research lines that help identify ways to achieve “Affordable and Clean Energy”. Demand for energy is increasing, and substantial investments are needed in innovative clean energy production and storage that can replace fossil fuels. There is a need for developing a broader portfolio of cost-effective renewable energy sources and technologies, including new solutions for energy storage, and innovative techniques for thermal insulation. At the same time, institutional and market design innovation is needed in order to create efficient carbon-free power markets.
Natalia Fabra, head of EnergyEcoLab, presented the main ongoing results of her ERC project ELECTRIC CHALLENGES. It was very inspiring to also listen to other researchers pushing in the same direction from very different angles. Prof. Giulia Grancini presented her project HY-NANO in which she aims to improve the efficiency of solar energy. Prof. Ballottari described his SOLENALGAE project on how microalgal cultures can be used as a source of renewable energy, via improving their photosynthetic solar energy conversion into chemical energy. Prof. Papakonstantinou presented his work in the project IntelGlazing which develops new technologies to reduce the level of heat-exchange through windows, thereby reducing the energy needed for regulating the temperature of buildings.
EnergyEcoLab will host a one-day workshop on energy economics on January 28, 2020, at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. We will have presentations and discussions about electricity markets and regulations on transport with a mix of applied theory and empirical papers.
Below is the list of presentations:
Estelle Cantillon (ULB): “What is price discovery achieving in the New Zealand electricity market?” (with Stefan Bergheimer and Mar Reguant)
François Salanié (TSE and INRA): “Tipping points, delays, and the control of catastrophes” (with Matti Liski)
Natalia Fabra (UC3M and CEPR): “Technology Neutral versus Technology Specific Regulation” (with Juan Pablo Montero)
Knut Einar Rosendahl (Norwegian University of Life Sciences): “Electricity versus hydrogen in the road transport market”
Stefan Lamp (TSE): “(Mis)allocation of Renewable Energy Sources” (with Mario Samano)
Imelda (UC3M): “Price Exposure and Market Power: Learning from Changes in Renewables´ Regulation” (with Natalia Fabra)
We are recruiting one PhD in Economics (or close to completing it) in the area of IO/Energy and Environmental Economics, to work in the project “Current Tools and Policy Challenges in Electricity Markets”, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The project will be located at EnergyEcoLab, within Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. The position can be filled for one to three years, starting September 2020. More info can be found here.
Our team member, Natalia Fabra, will participate as one of the plenary speakers in the 5th Annual Conference on the Economic Assessment of European Climate Policies, taking place at the European University Institute in Florence on 28-29 November 2019.
The conference will cover the main climate-related existing policies, at EU, national and sub-national levels and will include plenary sessions on Energy efficiency, Renewable policies, Environmental taxation, and Emission trading. Besides Natalia Fabra who will discuss about competition among renewables, there will be also Matthieu Glachant (MINES Paristech), Stephen Smith (University College London), and Luca Taschini (Grantham Research Institute LSE and University of Verona), discussing about the industrial organization of energy savings obligations, the potential and pitfalls of instrument combinations in climate policy, and the emissions trading systems, cap adjustments, and market stability reserve.
Lectures by Natalia Fabra on Competition and Market Design in Electricity Markets at DIW Berlin Summer School “Economic Foundations for Energy and Climate Policies”
This Summer School took place in the second week of September 2019. It gathered 25 PhD students working in the area of Energy and Environmental Economics. students attended a combination of lectures by academics and industry practitioners. The program (link) included topics on:
Natalia Fabra (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid): “Competition and market design issues in electricity markets”
Carmen Arguedas (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): “Monitoring and enforcement of energy and climate policies”
Simone Borghesi (EUI-Florence School of Regulation): “Economic Foundations and modeling of Emission Trading Systems”
Andreas Lange (University of Hamburg): “Behavioral economics of climate and energy policies”
Karsten Neuhoff (DIW Berlin, Technical University Berlin): “The theoretical foundation of a policy mix”
Given the success of this first edition, the organizers are committed to having a new edition next year.
The class material given by our team member, Natalia Fabra, can be found here. It includes material on: (1) the role of renewables during the energy transition, (2) the extent and nature of competition among conventional technologies and renewables in wholesale electricity markets, (3) the design of the auctions for renewable investments, and (4) the need and effects of capacity mechanisms.
CEPR Conference on Applied Industrial Organisation Madrid, 13-15 June 2019
Venue: CaixaForum Madrid, Paseo del Prado 36
Organisers: Natalia Fabra (UC3M), Volker Nocke (Mannheim), and Ali Yurukoglu (Stanford)
Conference Details:
The Applied IO conference series seeks to contribute to the understanding of the breadth of topics analysed within the field of Industrial Organisation, including demand, productivity, competition in the short- and long-run, innovation, investment, and auctions, to develop empirical protocols and tests of economic models, to promote the exchange and the dissemination of results at the forefront of research, and finally, to evaluate current competition and regulation policies. It will cover the state of the art in both theoretical and empirical Industrial Organisation.
Thursday 13 June
13:30-14:30 On the Effect of Parallel Trade on Manufacturers’ and Retailers’ Profits in the Pharmaceutical Sector by Pierre Dubois, Toulouse School of Economics and CEPR (with Morten Sæthre)
14:30-15:30 Agency Pricing and Bargaining: Evidence from the E-Book Market by Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, Indiana University (with Babur De los Santos and Daniel P. O’Brien)
17:00-18:00 All-Pay Oligopolies: Price Competition with Unobservable Inventory Choices by Joao Montez, University of Lausanne and CEPR (with Nicolas Schutz)
18:00-19:00 Regulation with Experimentation: Ex Ante Approval, Ex Post Withdrawal, and Liability by Emeric Henry, Sciences Po and CEPR (with Marco Loseto and Marco Ottaviani)
Friday 14 June
9:00-10:00 A Theory of Foreclosure and Wholesale Bundling by Juan-Pablo Montero, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (with Enrique Ide)
10:00-11:00 Input Price Discrimination by Resale Market by Jeanine Miklos-Thal, University of Rochester (with Greg Shaffer)
11:30-12:30 Segmentation versus Agglomeration: Competition Between Platforms with Competitive Sellers by Martin Peitz, University of Mannheim and CEPR (with Heiko Karle and Markus Reisinger)
12:30-13:30 Pricing and Fees in Auction Platforms with Two-sided Entry by Marleen Marra, University College London
15:00-16:00 Royalties and Deadlines in Oil and Gas Leasing: Theory and Evidence by Ryan Kellogg, University of Chicago (with Evan Herrnstadt and Eric Lewis)
16:00-17:00 Winners and Losers: the Distributional Effects of the French Feebate on the Automobile Market by Isis Durrmeyer, Toulouse School of Economics
17:30-18:30 Efficiency in Decentralized Transport Markets by Giulia Brancaccio, Cornell University (with Myrto Kalouptsidi, Theodore Papageorgiou and Nicola Rosaia)
Saturday 15 June
9:00-10:00 Informative Advertising and the Media: Evidence from a Price Transparency Regulation in Supermarkets by Itai Ater, Tel Aviv University and CEPR (with Oren Rigbi)
10:00-11:00 Competition and Incentives in Mortgage Markets: The Role of Brokers by Claudia Robles-Garcia (London School of Economics)
11:30-12:05 Data-driven Mergers by Alexandre de Corniere, Toulouse School of Economics and CEPR (with Greg Taylor)
12:05-12:40 Attention Oligopoly by Andrea Prat, Columbia University and CEPR (with Tommaso Valletti)
12:40-13:15 Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Pricing and Collusion by Giacomo Calzolari, European University Institute, Toulouse School of Economics and CEPR (with Emilio Calvano, Vincenzo Denicolò, Sergio Pastorello)
Financial support for the conference is generously provided by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Obra Social La Caixa, Journal of Industrial Economics (JIE), University of Zurich, European Research Council (ERC), and CEPR.
Our team member, Natalia Fabra, organized together with (Andy Philpott, Benn Hobbs, and Chris Dent) the workshop “Electricity systems of the future: incentives, regulation and analysis for efficient investment” at the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Cambridge.
To download the papers and watch the web seminars, visit http://www.newton.ac.uk/webseminars
EnergyEcoLab collaborates with the PhD Summer School on “Economic Foundations for Energy and Climate Policies”. The Summer School will be held from 9th to 13th September 2019 at DIW Berlin. Application deadline is 30th April 2019.
Objectives
The main objective of the School is to provide Economics PhD students with high-level academic training on the microeconomic foundations of energy and climate policy instruments. The School is also aimed at supporting the development of a PhD-student network for students interested in the topic, and connect them with top academics in the field.
Instructors and topics
– Carmen Arguedas (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): “Monitoring and enforcement of energy and climate policies”
– Simone Borghesi (EUI-Florence School of Regulation): “Economic Foundations and modeling of Emission Trading Systems”
– Natalia Fabra (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid): “Competition and market design issues in electricity markets”
– Andreas Lange (University of Hamburg): “Behavioral economics of climate and energy policies”
– Karsten Neuhoff (DIW Berlin, Technical University Berlin): “The theoretical foundation of a policy mix”
Information and application instructions can be found here.
The Organizers: Carmen Arguedas, Simone Borghesi, Estelle Cantillon, Olga Chiappinelli, Michael Grubb, Karsten Neuhoff
