The harmonization and integration of separate national energy markets to an interconnected internal European market is a top priority of the European Commission. However, as energy policy largely remains subject to national sovereignty, a higher degree of integration can cause unilateral...

Long‐term energy contracts have featured prominently in many decisions of the European Commission to support the opening of the electricity markets. Contracts were seen to foreclose the market hence the Commission comprehensively unwound pre‐existing long‐term contracts and formulated...

Decarbonization goals of the European Commission foresee different future scenarios for the European power market of which all are exceeding 60% renewables in the power system.3 High shares of intermittent renewable sources require significant changes to the physical system and impact the...

Hohe und unsichere Stromkosten werden von der deutschen Wirtschaft als große Herausforderungen angesehen. Über einen Erneuerbare-Energien-Pool (EE-Pool) könnten derartige Preisrisiken mittelfristig abgesichert werden. Im Poolkonzept werden die günstigen Konditionen wettbewerblicher...

German companies view high and uncertain electricity prices a major challenge. A Renewable Energy Pool (RE-Pool), wherein the favorable conditions of competitive tenders for new wind and solar power projects are passed on to electricity consumers, could hedge such price risks. Consumers'...

New generators located far from consumption centers require transmission infrastructure and increase network losses. The primary objective of this paper is to study signals that affect the location of generation investment. Such signals result from the electricity market itself and from...

The German response to the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was possibly the most significant change of policy towards nuclear power outside Japan, leading to a sudden and very significant shift in the underlying power generation structure in Germany. This provides a very useful natural...

A capacity mechanism next to the energy-only market provides necessary investment incentives that spot markets lack. The adequate capacity mix can only be achieved by accounting for the current transition phase to electricity generation with a growing share of renewables. We show that an...

In Germany, substantial drops in wholesale power prices have become a regular phenomenon. While such price drops have far-reaching implications for the functioning of the power market, their underlying determinants remain poorly understood. To fill this gap, we propose a Markov regime-switching...

This paper investigates the economic impacts of two policy proposals: "Strom ohne Atom" (SOA) and "Moratorium Plus" (MOP), both of which contain a premature phase-out of nuclear power in Switzerland. While MOP restricts business-as-usual operation time of existing nuclear power plants to 40...