This paper attempts to verify whether we are moving towards a new paradigm of the network energy industry (electricity and natural gas), based on a wide decentralisation of the energy supply. We do this by comparing the social benefits of decentralised and centralised models, simulating...

Electricity reform has coincided with a significant decline in energy R&D activities. Technical progress is crucial for tackling many energy and environmental issues as well as for long-term efficiency improvement. This paper reviews the industrial organisation literature on innovation to...

Domestic climate policies play an important part in shifting countries towards a low-carbon development trajectory. Six case studies explore the domestic drivers and barriers for policies with climate (co-)benefits in developing countries. International support can help to overcome these...

Drawing on the wider ‘catching up’ literature, we examine the rapid growth in Chinese spending on science and technology, which, in spite of its growing infrastructure, remains heavily reliant on foreign inputs. We examine both the economic and political drivers behind China’s scientific...

This paper shows that generators exercised increasing market power in the England and Wales wholesale electricity market in the second half of the 1990s despite declining market concentration. It examines whether this was consistent with static, non-cooperative oligopoly models, which are widely...

Deregulation of the electricity sector has resulted in conflict between the economic aims of creating competitive wholesale and retail markets, and an engineering focus on reliability of supply. The paper starts by deriving the optimal prices and investment program when there are...

Since the early 1980’s, many countries have implemented electricity sector reform, many of which have bundled generation, transmission, distribution and supply activities, and have introduced competition in generation and supply. An increasing number of countries are also adopting incentive...

The Dutch regulatory process for setting the first X-Factors in the electricity distribution sector has gone badly wrong. During two-and-a-half years four different X-Factors were published by the regulator. These X-Factors fluctuated wildly. We demonstrate that Dutch electricity consumers will...

The main Nordic residential electricity markets (Norway, Sweden and Finland) effectively opened to retail competition around 1998. They have not been subject to regulatory controls on prices or other contract terms. Between 11 and 29 per cent of residential customers have switched suppliers and...

This paper examines the history of the various actual and proposed interconnectors between New South Wales and Victoria into South Australia. It covers the period from the earliest proposal for a regulated interconnector to the recent Victoria Supreme Court review and the latest ministerial...