There is an ongoing discussion about whether the German electricity market offers sufficient incentives for investment in power plants and for keeping them connected to the grid, thus ensuring sufficient security of supply. Recommendations for further securing power supply include payments, some...

Coal-fired power stations are responsible for around a third of Germany's carbon emissions. Failure to reduce the persistently high level of coal-fired power generation threatens Germany's climate targets for 2020 and 2050 and undermines a sustainable energy transition. Calculations by DIW...

The aim of the European Emissions Trading Scheme is to reduce environmentally harmful greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize investment in low-emission technologies. However, in recent years, a large surplus of emission allowances has accumulated, primarily as a result of an unexpected...

Various capacity mechanisms are currently being discussed in Germany and beyond with a view to increasing supply security in the power sector. One of these mechanisms includes keeping a strategic reserve which means only using specific individual power plants in emergency situations when supply...

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the...

We model an economy that alternates randomly between abundance and scarcity episodes. We develop an original method to characterize in detail the structure of the Markovian competitive equilibrium. Accumulation and drainage of stocks are the main focuses. Economically appealing comparative...

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has imposed a price on the allowances for CO2 emissions of electricity companies. Integrating this allowance price into the price of electricity earns a rent for companies who have received these allowances for free. During Phase I,...