Energie : papiers de recherche moissonnés (mercredi 10 mai 2017)

China and Global Energy Governance: Integration or Confrontation? / Shuqin Gao, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, April-June 2017, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 307-325. http://journals.rienner.com/doi/abs/10.5555/1075-2846.23.2.307

China has been pursuing a risk averse counterweight energy strategy, cultivating strategic energy allies and diversifying its energy sources, generating a power shift of energy distribution from international oil companies to national oil companies. China’s neomercantilism and NOCs suggest neither integration into the US-led international energy regime nor confrontation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–centered global energy governance. Instead, China is working toward creating a China-led alternative competitive regime. The prospect is therefore the emergence of a more fragmented and multilayered global energy governance.

Staying Connected: Key Elements for UK–EU27 Energy Cooperation After Brexit / Antony Froggatt, Georgina Wright and Matthew Lockwood. Chatham House, May 2017, 60 p. (research paper) https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/staying-connected-key-elements-uk-eu27-energy-cooperation-after-brexit

Energy policy negotiations post-Brexit offer the UK and the EU an important opportunity to find common ground and develop new models of partnership which are imperative to the UK’s future…

The Dutch Gas Markets: trials, tribulations, and trends / Anouk Honoré. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, May 2017, 63 p. (OIES paper ; NG 118) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/dutch-gas-market-trials-tribulations-trends/

This paper forms part of an OIES Gas Programme research theme focusing on the most important national gas markets in Europe (and elsewhere). The rationale behind these papers is that individual markets have specific characteristics and complexities which are essential to understand in order to look at future trends. This paper follows the previous publications on the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil and Iran.

The Dutch gas market, one of Europe’s key exporters, is at a significant turning point. A much stronger than usual earth tremor in 2012 caused by the extraction of gas from Groningen prompted the government to take action and restrain production from the field to help minimize the seismicity. In 2016, gas production from the giant field was less than half the volumes produced just three years previously, with almost no flexibility to cope with seasonality of demand. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to it maybe because there have been no signs of any major threat to security of gas supply nationally and in North West Europe. However, the complete change in the Dutch gas outlook means a major fall in regional production from a European perspective and a big increase in imports from elsewhere with potential security of supply implications (volumes, capacity, prices, and/or dependence). Consideration on the safety and health of the people of Groningen has also changed public opinion about gas dramatically. The use of renewables in power generation and an increased focus on energy efficiency have become the key policy drivers but the transition towards a sustainable economy is also overwhelmed by an anti-gas sentiment. This dramatic evolution casts an important doubt over the future of gas in the country but equally importantly in Europe as a whole, particularly for those countries in the North-West of the region whose imports of Dutch L-gas and H-gas have historically been crucial elements of their supply. It is no longer ‘business as usual’ and this paper offers some food for thought on the challenges but also the prospects and expectations for the Dutch gas industry looking ahead to a 2030 horizon.

Measuring the Welfare Effects of Residential Energy Efficiency Programs / Hunt Allcott, Michael Greenstone, NBER Working Paper No. 23386, May 2017, 55 p. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23386 ; http://e2e.haas.berkeley.edu/pdf/workingpapers/WP028.pdf

This paper sets out a framework to evaluate the welfare impacts of residential energy efficiency programs in the presence of imperfect information, behavioral biases, and externalities, then estimates key parameters using a 100,000-household field experiment. Several results run counter to conventional wisdom: we find no evidence of informational or behavioral failures thought to reduce program participation, there are large unobserved benefits and costs that traditional evaluations miss, and realized energy savings are only 58 percent of predictions. In the context of the model, the two programs we study reduce social welfare by $0.18 per subsidy dollar spent, both because subsidies are not well-calibrated to estimated externality damages and because of self-selection induced by subsidies that attract households whose participation generates low social value. However, the model predicts that perfectly calibrated subsidies would increase welfare by $2.53 per subsidy dollar, revealing the potential of energy efficiency programs.

Danièle Revel

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