This paper compares the cost of electricity generation with a coal fired plant and a wind mill in Chile’s Central Interconnected System. To the standard costs of coal generation (capital investment and fuel) we add local and global environmental externalities. The environmental cost of...

While some countries have unbundled distribution and retailing, skeptics argue that the physical attributes of electricity make retailers redundant. Instead, it is claimed that passive pass through of wholesale prices plus regulated charges for transmission and distribution suffice for customers...

We compare the cost of generating electricity with coal and wind in Chile. On average, we estimate that the levelized cost of coal, including externalities, is $84/MWh. It is efficient to abate air pollutants (SOx, NOx and PM2.5) but not CO2. With abatement the cost wrought by environmental...

Energy policy makers usually ignore the response of the demand for electricity to changing prices because they believe that the price elasticity is nil. We show that a “small” price elasticity of demand generates “large” changes in energy shortage probabilities and generation costs when...

Studies that estimate deficit probabilities in hydrothermal systems have generally ignored the response of demand to changing prices, in the belief that such response is largely irrelevant. We show that ignoring the response of demand to prices can lead to substantial over or under estimation of...