In this work we demonstrate the effects of different Chinese transport infrastructure investment strategies on long run marginal costs of steam coal supply in Europe. Increasing Chinese demand for steam coal will lead to a growing need for additional domestic infrastructure in China as...

Economies of scale and scope are typically modelled and estimated using cost functions that are common to all firms in an industry irrespective of whether they specialize in a single output or produce multiple outputs. We suggest an alternative flexible technology model that does not make this...

In this paper we present a new approach to evaluate the environmental efficiency of decision making units. We propose a model that describes a two-stage process consisting of a production and an end-of-pipe abatement stage with the environmental efficiency being determined by the efficiency of...

The paper starts with a detailed technical overview of recent blackouts in the US, Sweden/Denmark and Italy in order to analyse common threads and lessons to be learnt. The blackouts have exposed a number of challenges facing utilities worldwide. Increased liberalisation of electricity supply...

The increasing share of renewables in the electricity system results in congestion on all network levels. To address this congestion, the EU Commission proposed that distribution network operators become responsible for local congestion management. Within this paper we analyze the institutional...

Energy efficiency provides a substantial opportunity to tackle increasing greenhouse gas emissions. However, in traditionally regulated energy markets, energy providers maximize their profits by selling electricity or heat as long as their marginal revenue exceeds their marginal costs of...

Levels of CO2 emissions from electricity generation in the U.S. have changed considerably in the last decade. This development can be attributed to two factors. First, the shale gas revolution has reduced gas prices significantly, leading to a crowding out of the more CO2-intensive coal for...

In this article we discuss welfare-optimal capacity allocation of different electricity generation technologies available for serving system demand. While the classical peak load pricing theory derives the efficient portfolio structure from a deterministic marginal production cost curve ("merit...

Distributed photo-voltaic (PV) generation is one of the pillars of energy transitions around the world, but its deployment in the distribution grid requires costly reinforcements and expansions. Prosumage - consisting of a household-level PV unit coupled with a battery storage system - has been...