The 2011 disaster and nuclear problems opened the door to a new energy policy, as they raised fundamental questions about the electricity system’s ability to prevent and respond to accidents. In particular, the system has had difficulty coping with the shortages caused by the accident and the...

Poland is on track to meet its international greenhouse-gas emissions commitments. However, it will need to cut emissions significantly in the future, if the European Commission’s proposal on the Low Carbon Roadmap is adopted. Policies should ensure that the country’s substantial reduction...

Following a sharp drop amidst the global economic crisis and a subsequent recovery, the spot price of crude oil has been broadly stable for the past couple of years. This paper discusses the factors that drive oil demand and supply and, hence, the price of the resource. A set of oil demand...

Since 1990, Belgium has managed to bring down greenhouse gas emissions in most domains of economic activity. Road transport, as in many other countries, is a notable exception to this pattern: emissions have steadily increased, driven by an ever higher consumption of petrol and diesel. Even...

The study assesses the role of feed-in tariffs (FITs) and renewable energy certificates (RECs) in creating incentives for cross-border investments and for investments in particular technological portfolios via M&A. The analysis explores the dataset on M&As in alternative energy sources worldwide...

The large need for investments in sustainable infrastructure will require investments from the private sector, including institutional investors. This working paper contributes to scaling up investments by analysing public project-level interventions for projects involving institutional...

This report investigates the effects of select climate policies, non-climate policies, as well as political economy factors on the decarbonisation of electricity in OECD countries from 2000 to 2015. Effects are analysed on the three phases of decarbonisation: (1) increasing the share of...

Mining activities are energy-intensive and rely largely on fossil fuels to meet their energy demands. This exposes the mining sector to potential policy and regulatory risks, stemming from government efforts to shift the global economy to a low-emission development pathway, as envisaged by the...

Energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies provide important opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, households fail to take up many clean energy investments that are cost-effective. This paper reviews different explanations for apparent underinvestment in energy...

The 2°C (or less) limit on global warming agreed at the UN Climate Change Conference of 2015 in Paris effectively implies that manufacturing industries in developed countries have to undertake significant investments, in particular in more energy efficient production technology. To implement...