Until 1992, the electricity supply industry in Northern Ireland was controlled by a single state-owned enterprise. It was then restructured into three new generating companies and a transmission and distribution company, all of which were privatised. Since then, unit costs have fallen sharply...

This paper presents results of the 2010 Electricity Policy Research Group (EPRG) public opinion survey. The survey examines the energy policy preferences and attitudes of the British public, the potential for consumer engagement and consumer acceptance of various energy demand response...

This article explores how behavioural economics can be applied to energy and climate policy. We present an overview of main concepts of behavioural economics and discuss how they differ from the assumptions of neoclassical economics. Next, we discuss how behavioural economics applies to three...

Economic drivers, technologies and demand side management are keys in understanding the long-term trends of both energy and more specifically electricity consumption. This paper discusses some of the important economics foundations of energy demand in general, and electricity in particular....

The aim of this paper is to discuss the period of energy privatisation and liberalisation which began in the 1980s within its wider historical context. The key issues are: what has been learned from this recent period, and; how significant is it in the light of an energy transition to low carbon...

The UK has ambitious plans for exploiting offshore wind for electricity production in order to meet its challenging target under the EU Renewable Energy Directive. This could involve investing up to £20bn in transmission assets to bring electricity ashore. An investment of this magnitude calls...

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...

Quality of service is of major economic significance in natural monopoly infrastructure industries and is increasingly addressed in regulatory schemes. However, this important aspect is generally not reflected in efficiency analysis of these industries. In this paper we present an efficiency...

The world-wide electricity sector reforms have led to a search for alternative and innovative approaches to regulation to promote efficiency improvement in the natural monopoly electricity networks. A number of countries have used incentive regulation models based on efficiency benchmarking of...