Fossil fuels are non-renewable carbon resources, and the extraction path of these resources depends both on present and future demand. When this “Hotelling feature”is taken into consideration, the whole price path of carbon fuel will shift downwards as a response to the reduced cost of the...

We use a two-period model to investigate intertemporal eects of cost reductions in climate change mitigation technologies for the power sector. With imperfect climate policies, cost reductions related to carbon capture and storage (CCS) may be more desirable than comparable cost reductions...

Several recent articles have analyzed climate policy giving explicit attention to the nonrenewable character of carbon resources. In most of this literature the economy is treated as a single unit, which in the context of climate policy seems reasonable to interpret as the whole world. However,...

The European Commission is introducing new regulations on submission and publication of data in electricity markets (SPDEM) and on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT). I discuss issues relevant for undertaking an evaluation such regulations. I argue that, for market...

An important conclusion from the literature on hydropower is that if there are no other constraints than the available water reservoirs for a year, and operating costs are ignored, the competitive (and socially optimal) outcome is characterized by the (present value) price being constant through...

When a monopolistic hydro producer interacts with a competitive thermal fringe, the short-run revenue function of the hydro monopolist is non-concave. This implies that even if the demand function is stationary, equilibrium prices may fluctuate through the year. For given capacities, both hydro...

Benchmarking by means of applying the DEA model is appearing as an interesting alternative for regulators under the new regimes for electricity distributors. A sample of large electricity distribution utilities from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands for the year 1997 is...

We investigate how moral concerns about permit trading affect an endogenous pollution permit trading equilibrium, where governments choose non-cooperatively the amount of permits they allocate to domestic industries. Politicians may feel reluctant to allow permit trading and/or may prefer that...

I explore possible impacts of reciprocal preferences on participation in international environmental agreements. Reciprocal countries condition their willingness to abate on others' abatement. No participation is always stable. A full or majority coalition can be stable, provided that...

In 2007, the Norwegian government reformed the vehicle registration tax in order to reduce the CO2 emissions intensity of the new car fleet by incentivizing the purchase of more fuel efficient cars. This paper identifies the impact of the new tax structure on four dimensions: 1) the average CO2...