The passage of landmark government regulation is often the culmination of evolving social pressure and incremental policy change. During this process, firms may preemptively adjust behavior in anticipation of impending regulation, making it difficult to quantify the overall economic impact of...

Geothermal energy has a significant role to play in the global transition to renewable and low-carbon energy systems because of its ability to supply steady and flexible electricity particularly for baseload demand because of its cost competitiveness compared to fossil fuel energy options....

Real-time pricing (RTP) of electricity would improve allocative efficiency and limit wholesalers' market power. Conventional wisdom claims that RTP provides additional environmental benefits. This paper argues that RTP will reduce the variance, both within- and across-days, in the quantity of...

This paper examines the impact of individual human operators on the fuel efficiency of power plants. Although electricity generation is a fuel and capital intensive enterprise, anecdotal evidence, interviews, and empirical analysis support the hypothesis that labor, particularly power plant...

Reliable estimates of the value of electricity transmission are critical if these heavily-regulated investments are to be made cost-effectively. In this paper, we exploit the abrupt closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in February 2012. During the previous decade, SONGS...

The Cameroon electricity sector is currently plagued by inadequate generation capacity. The electricity supply deficit has had dire consequences on attaining the country's industrialization, socioeconomic and developmental objectives enshrined in her Vision 2035. However, there are sustainable...

Generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches, but reduces pollution externalities. Analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed, because the value of electricity is extremely dependent on the time and location at which it is...

We examine the impact of electricity sector restructuring on the operating efficiency of coal-fired power plants in India. Between 1995 and 2009, 85 percent of coal-based generation capacity owned by state governments was unbundled from vertically integrated State Electricity Boards into state...

The use of distributed energy resources (DER) programs, which include separate renewable energy (RE) programs, has expanded in residential as well as commercial structures as an outcome of recent technological developments. The virtual power plant (VPP) may improve the security and reliability...

China's overseas energy projects have expanded significantly in the last decade. While there is considerable literature on energy-related construction contracts and ownership of power generation projects, China's power grid investments have been underexamined. Power grid investments can arguably...