Canada’s energy sector, and the Canadian economy, would benefit from a renewed focus on pipeline review policy and regulation. Recent cases, including the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, the Keystone XL, and the Northern Gateway pipeline, highlight current challenges and the need for an improved...

We analyse the production of electricity from n power stations in a dynamic model. Each power station's production of electricity is constrained by the quantity of water available to it (supply constraint) as well as limitations on reservoir capacity (storage constraint). We show that hydro...

Les objectifs fixés par l'accord de Kyoto, s'ils seront respectés, imposent des changements fondamentaux dans la structure de l'économie nord-américaine. Ce texte met en évidence l'ampleur du défi de Kyoto en décrivant clairement l'inertie historique dans l'industrie électrique...

In Canada, settlements between oil and gas pipelines and users have largely superseded the litigation of major pipeline toll cases since 1995. Quantitatively, from the first half to the second half of the period 1985-2007 the average number of pipeline toll hearing days in Canada fell by...

The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 will have a major impact on U.S. coal markets. We argue that coal suppliers will be able to use the market in sulfur dioxide emissions allowances created by the CAAA to increase the range of their competitive strategies in their core business, coal....

Cet article présente trois mécanismes destinés à réduire les impacts environnementaux négatifs liés à la production et à la consommation d’énergie : le mécanisme des certificats noirs (permis échangeables d’émissions de CO2), celui des certificats verts (permis échangeables...

We present a simple, positive model in which regulatory enforcement is a 2-stage process. In the first stage firms are subject to random inspection. The inspection yields a noisy signal of the firm's true performance. Only if the signal exceeds some critical or "trigger" value is the firm...

This paper examines the impact of government policy on the risk profile of a small ethanol production facility. We derive four key results from a simulation model. First, we show that commodity price risk may discourage investment in a project, despite a positive expected rate of return. Second,...

Transmission economics remains a difficult area. Market forces alone are generally felt to be insufficient for signaling investment due to appropriability problems and the challenges of “parallel (loop) flow.” Further, there is no generally recognized method of estimating the value of...