The introduction of clean hydrogen as a future energy commodity has prompted significant interest in developing dedicated transportation and storage infrastructures as an enabler for cross-border hydrogen trade and cost-efficient supply. This paper addresses the complex challenges associated...

Environmental factors add complexity to the comparison between specific activities or entire entities. Decision making units with an inferior performance are tempted to invoke that their organization is different from the others in the data set. By reinterpreting and extending the metafrontier...

Quality is a dimension of water services that has been repeatedly omitted in the study of performance of water utilities. In this paper, we make use of Data Envelopment Analysis techniques (DEA) to compute both conventional quantity-based and quality-adjusted indicators of technical efficiency...

European gas markets are experiencing fundamental change due to decrease in domestic production, increase in demand and liberalisation efforts of the European Union. Germany represents the biggest single market in Continental Europe and is also a major transit country for gas. Gas market...

The regional natural gas markets are expected to gradually become more integrated. The major driving forces are lower LNG costs, more spot trade, and increased need for imports into the US and other key markets. In this paper we examine various scenarios for a future global gas market,...

Reduced transportation costs are usually associated with lower import prices, increased trade and price convergence. In this paper we show that the lower costs can actually lead to higher import prices in some regions, and price divergence between import regions. Using both a general theoretical...

Der An- und Verkauf von Erdgas an Grosshandelsmaerkten wird in einem zunehmend liberalisierten Gasmarkt auch in Kontinentaleuropa weiter an Bedeutung gewinnen. Die Preise an diesen Maerkten bilden sich aus Angebot und Nachfrage; wie in jeder netzgebundenen Industrie kommt der Infrastruktur und...

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis has revitalized the European concerns of supply disruptions of natural gas as experienced in 2006 and 2009. However, the European supply situation, regulation and infrastructure have changed since: imports aremore diversified, EU member states better connected and a...

The paper investigates the organization of the Italian water sector in the light of the reforms of public utilities. The aim is to examine the degree of implementation of the water sector reform (the so-called Galli Law of 1994) and assess the performance of operators through a study of their...

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis has revitalized the European concerns of supply disruptions of natural gas as experienced in 2006 and 2009. However, the European supply situation, regulation and infrastructure have changed since: imports aremore diversified, EU member states better connected and a...