China's energy-service companies (ESCOs) have developed only modestly despite favorable political and market conditions. We argue that with sophisticated market institutions still evolving in China, trust-based relations between ESCOs and energy customers are essential for successful...

We analyze the current regulatory regime for electricity transmission in Germany, which combines network planning with both cost-plus and revenue-cap regulations. After reviewing international experiences on transmission investment, we first make a qualitative assessment of the overall German...

Concerns about global warming and growing scarcity of fossile fuels require substantial changes in energy consumption patterns and energy systems, as targeted by many countries around the world. One key element to achieve such transformation is to increase energy efficiency of the housing stock....

We study the strategic utilization of storage in imperfect electricity markets. We apply a game-theoretic Cournot model to the German power market and analyze different counterfactual and realistic cases of pumped hydro storage. Our main finding is that both storage utilization and...

We use a game-theoretic model to analyze the impacts of a hypothetical fleet of plug-in electric vehicles on the imperfectly competitive German electricity market. Electric vehicles bring both additional demand and additional storage capacity to the market. We determine the effects on prices,...

The future evolution of energy supply technologies strongly depends on (and affects) the economic and environmental systems, due to the high dependency of this sector on the availability and cost of fossil fuels, especially on the small regional scale. This paper aims at presenting the modeling...

This study seeks to provide a clear and comprehensive overview on the various aspects related to the current status and the future prospects of renewable energy (namely solar and wind) in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs). In order to do so, the study will first provide a...

In this paper we standardize, compare, and aggregate results from thirteen surveys of technology experts, performed over a period of five years using a range of different methodologies, but all aiming at eliciting expert judgment on the future cost of five key energy technologies and how future...

On December 1, 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised the energy world by announcing, during a state visit to Turkey, the demise of the long-planned South Stream pipeline project and the launch of a new project to evacuate Russian gas to Turkey and South-East Europe bypassing Ukraine:...

Human economies and ecosystems form a coupled system coevolving in time and space, since human economies use ecosystems services and at the same time affect ecosystems through their production and consumption activities. The study of the interactions between human economies and ecosystems is...