The electricity industry in most developed countries has been restructured over recent decades with the aim of improving both service quality and firms’ performance. Regulated segments (e.g. transmission) still provide the infrastructure for the competitive segments and represent a notable...

In this paper we advocate using the latent class model (LCM) approach to control for technological differences in traditional efficiency analysis of regulated electricity networks. Our proposal relies on the fact that latent class models are designed to cluster firms by uncovering differences in...

The residential demand for energy is growing steadily and the trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Household spending on energy services tends to increase with income. We explore household total spending on energy and on electricity and gas separately. We use an extensive...

The UK government has set the ambitious targets of 20 and 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2050 respectively. The transport sector accounts for 21% of total CO2 emissions in the UK and can, therefore, be important for achieving the emissions reduction targets. Within the...

The electricity systems have a central role to play in the transition towards a low carbon economy and integration of renewable energy sources in the European Union. However, the European electricity networks face a diverse set of existing and new risks that can hamper the energy security of...

Investment in electricity networks, as regulated natural monopolies, is among the highest regulatory and energy policy priorities. Given the large scale of required investments in the coming years, impelled by the need for decarbonising the electricity sector, identifying investment drivers of...

Liberalisation of generation and supply activities in the electricity sectors is often followed by regulatory reform of distribution networks. In order to improve the efficiency of distribution utilities, some regulators have adopted incentive regulation schemes that rely on performance...

The 1990s witnessed a worldwide trend toward electricity sector reforms in developed and developing economies. These reforms have generally been based on private participation, regulatory reform, and competition in the sector. This paper reviews and draws lessons from the reform experience in...

On both sides of the Atlantic the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990’s. Whereas in the US the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards...