I make three points relating to the transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon energy. One is that the economic cost of moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy in electricity generation is very low, and probably lower than many estimates of the economic benefits from this change. The second...

We analyze optimal policy when consumers of energy-using durables undervalue energy costs relative to their private optima. First, there is an Internality Dividend from Externality Taxes: aside from reducing externalities, they also offset distortions from underinvestment in energy efficiency....

Squaring hourly demand and wind-solar production data for Germany and a number of neighbouring countries with the results of the EU's ESTORAGE project, this paper studies the limits of Germany's energy revolution in view of the volatility of wind and solar power. In addition to pumped storage,...

Blackouts impose substantial economic costs in developing countries. This paper advances a new explanation for their continued prevalence: unlike in high-income countries, where regulatory mandates require utilities to satisfy all electricity demand, utilities in developing countries respond to...

The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) fail to get off the ground politically because of unacceptable distributional consequences. This paper explores CO2 abatement policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal numerical...

Historically, innovation in the energy sector proceeded slowly and entrepreneurial start-up firms played a relatively minor role. We argue that this may be changing. Energy markets are going through a period of profound structural change. The rise of hydrofracturing lowered fossil fuel prices so...

This paper discusses contributions that industrial organization economists have made to our understanding of energy markets and environmental regulation. We emphasize the substantive contributions of recent papers while also highlighting how this literature has adopted and sometimes augmented...

Our histories depart somewhat from the bulk of the energy innovation policy literature in focusing attention on the role of vigorous competition - particularly entry - in stimulating innovation, suggesting that in several industries a mix of public policies - including procurement, antitrust and...

To reliably achieve deep decarbonization of the US power sector, a candidate policy must perform robustly across a range of possible future trajectories of demand, fossil fuel prices, and prices of new wind and solar capacity. Using a modified version of the NREL ReEDS model with scenarios that...

We use restricted-access, geocoded data on the near-universe of workers in 23 U.S. states in order to quantify the impact of wind energy development on local earnings and employment, by race, ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment. We find the largest relative impacts for workers without a...