This book focuses on the diversity of electricity reforms in Western Europe, drawing evidence from ten European Union memberstates plus Norway and Switzerland as associate members. The contributors analyse the various ways of introducing competition in the European electricity industries, and...

Summary In countries with a significant amount of low variable cost generation capacity, the integration of electricity markets poses a real problem with respect to consumers' interests. In such cases, consumers face a significant price rise compared with consumers in countries where low-cost...

The recent EU Commission proposal for promoting the supply of power from renewable energy sources was originally based on a pan-European, harmonised tradable green certificate (TGC) scheme. We suggest, on the basis of a multi-disciplinary analysis, that a pan-EU TGC system is not the way forward...

None of the far-reaching experiments in electricity industry liberalisation was able to ensure the timely and optimal capacity mix development. The theoretical market model features market failures due to the specific volatility of prices, and the difficulty of creating complete markets for...