Highly volatile electricity prices are becoming a more frequent and unwanted characteristic of modern electricity wholesale markets. But low demand elasticity, mainly the result of a lack of incentives and consumers’ inability to control demand, means that consumer behaviour is not reflected...

Electric power in OECD countries is mostly produced by large central generating stations, then transmitted along high voltage lines to local distribution systems that carry it to final consumers. Distributed generation plants are different. They produce power on an electricity consumer’s own...

This report looks at how investors have responded to the need to internalise investment risk in power generation and how these responses have affected the organisation of the power sector and technology choices. This study looks at several cases of volatile prices in IEA countries’ electricity...

Most IEA countries are liberalising their electricity markets, shifting the responsibility for financing new investment in power generation to private investors. No longer able to automatically pass on costs to consumers, and with future prices of electricity uncertain, investors face a much...

This report argues for adjustments to regulatory governance traditions so that necessary changes can take place more quickly, at least cost to the economy and with the participation of all relevant stakeholders.