Electricity markets have typically been regulated all over the world. In Europe, UK and Norway have begun to deregulate their electricity markets. Several more countries will probably join them in the near future, for example Finland, Sweden and Spain. The objectives are twofold: to increase...

Welfare analyses of energy taxes typically show that systems with uniform rates perform better than differentiated systems, especially if revenue increases can be recycled via cuts in more distortionary taxes. However, in the practical policy debates, the scope for efficiency gains is traded...

In this paper, we describe the approach to, and experience of, the deregulation and liberalisation of the Norwegian electricity sector from 1991. The Norwegian electricity market was subsequently integrated with the Swedish, Finnish and Danish markets to become the Nordic electricity market: the...

Natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels. Using the World Gas Model, a large-scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation, this paper analyzes possible...

We analyze how different ways of allocating emission quotas may influence the electricity market. Using a large-scale numerical model of the Western European energy market, we show that different allocation mechanisms can have very different effects on the electricity market, even if the total...

Increased energy efficiency is often seen as the best way of reducing energy consumption. However, the cost reduction resulting from the efficiency increase can undermine the energy-saving potential of the efficiency measures. In this study, we develop a method for decomposing the behavioral...

In absence of joint global action, many jurisdictions take unilateral steps to reduce carbon emissions, and the usual strategy is to restrict domestic demand for fossil fuels. The impact on global emissions of such demand side policies is found by accounting for carbon leakage, i.e. changes in...

In a non-renewable resource market with imperfect competition, the resource owners’ supply is governed both by current demand and by the resource rent. New information regarding future market conditions will typically affect the resource rent and hence current supply. Bleaker prospects will...

The Arctic has a substantial share of global petroleum resources, but at higher costs than in most other petroleum provinces. Arctic states and petroleum companies are carefully considering the potential for future extraction in the Arctic. This paper studies the oil and gas supply from 6 arctic...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an offset mechanism designed to reduce the overall cost of implementing a given target for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in industrialized Annex B countries of the Kyoto Protocol, by shifting some of the emission reductions to Non-Annex B countries. This...