In the European Emission Trading scheme the supply of allowances exceeds emissions - cumulating, according to our estimates, in a surplus of 2.7 billion tonnes by 2013/2014. We find that initially the surplus was acquired by power companies so as to hedge future carbon costs. As the surplus...

Nearly every carbon price regulates the production of carbon emissions, typically at midstream points of compliance, such as a power plant. Over the last six years, however, policymakers in Australia, California, China, Japan, and Korea implemented carbon prices that regulate the consumption of...

We examine under which conditions a cap-and-trade mechanism can deliver a dynamically efficient abatement pathway and contribute to a robust investment framework. For this we develop a numerical dynamic partial-equilibrium model that includes differentiated objective functions of different...

In Germany and beyond, various capacity mechanisms are currently being discussed with a view to improving the security of electricity supply. One of these mechanisms is a strategic reserve that retains generation capacity for use in times of critical supply shortage. We argue that strategic...

Abstract EU power market design has been focused on facilitating trading between countries and for this has defined interfaces for market participants and TSOs between countries. The operation of power systems and markets within countries was not the focus of these developments. This may have...

In the Copenhagen Accord of December 2009, developed countries agreed to provide start-up finance for adaptation in developing countries and expressed the ambition to scale this up to $100 billion per year by 2020. The financial mechanisms to deliver this support have to be tailored to country...

A fundamental question regarding the design of electricity markets is whether adding auctions to the continuous intraday trading is improving the performance of the market. To approach this question, we assess the experience with the implementation of the 3 pm local auction for quarters in...

After the Paris Climate Agreement, it is anticipated that carbon prices will differ across regions for some time. If countries use free allowance allocation as carbon leakage protection, only a fraction of carbon prices are passed through to consumers particularly by carbon intensive materials...

The increasing scale and dynamics of the global market for renewable energy technologies has often resulted in unexpected high deployment volumes in EU Member States. These deployment peaks were particularly strong for solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies in countries using feed-in tariff...

A world of unequal carbon prices requires measures aimed at preventing carbon leakage. Climate policy imperatives demand that such measures must be compatible with the goal of sending a carbon price signal down the value chain. For carbon intensive materials, the combination of dynamic free...