Energie : papiers de recherche moissonnés (13 février 2018)

An assessment of the potential for the development of the shale gas industry in countries outside of North America / M.-T. Le, Heliyon, vol. 4, Article No~e00516 https://doi.org//10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00516 – http://www.heliyon.com/article/e00516/

The revolution of shale gas in the United States (the US) has become a phenomenon at the beginning of the21st century. It has been significantly influencing the United States’ economy and the global gas market. Like America, other countries have also been searching for shale gas. However, the conditions for developing this resource are very different among regions and nations. On the other hand, there are also many doubts, debates and even strong oppositions to the development of shale gas because of the complicated issues that arise regarding its extraction, and also due to the fact that its impacts are not fully known.Therefore, at present, the development of shale gas is still a big question for regions, countries that have potential and desires to exploit such resources. Although it is difficult to identify all necessary or sufficient conditions to develop shale gas, the experiences of the United States could be instructive for other countries. In this article, the potential development of shale gas in China and Europe is analyzed, which relies on the fundamental conditions considered as important factors for the success of the shale gas industry in the US. Through these analyses and we demonstrate the difficulty of developing this resource outside North America.

Oil Price Paths in 2018: The Interplay between OPEC, US Shale and Supply Interruptions / Bassam Fattouh and Andreas Economou. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Feb. 2018, 20 p. (Energy insight ; 28) https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/oil-price-paths-2018-interplay-opec-us-shale-supply-interruptions/

In this Energy Insight, we analyse how the oil price path could evolve in 2018 by evaluating the aforementioned risks underlying the world oil market using a structural model of the oil market and considering various forecast scenarios. Forecast scenarios are not predictions of what will happen, but rather modelled projections of various oil price risks conditional on certain events that are known at the time of the forecast or some other hypothetical events. Our reference forecast scenario projects for Brent to trade within a narrow price range, with a price floor at above $60/b and a ceiling of below $75/b, with a 2018 average price of $67/b. The baseline forecast suggests that the momentum of stronger than expected oil demand and the OPEC/NOPEC output cuts have tightened the oil market in 2017 and even with no change in current market dynamics, the oil price will continue to be supported at around $65/b. Our results show that for 2018, US shale output growth will be the key factor putting a ceiling on the oil price, while supply disruptions could provide some support to the oil price, with a sharp fall in Venezuelan output constituting the biggest geopolitical risk that could push prices well above our baseline or reference forecasts. The results also show the paramount importance for the strong oil demand momentum experienced in 2017 to continue in 2018 for rebalancing the market and supporting the oil price. Finally, our results show that for OPEC/NOPEC to maintain the recent price gains, they have to extend their output cut until the end of 2018; releasing the withheld barrels under the current agreement would result in a sharp fall in oil prices, suggesting that OPEC/NOPEC should be very wary about unwinding the output cut agreement when they next meet in June 2018.

Mobilité, énergie et développement local : quelle mobilité pour des territoires à énergie positive ? Montreuil : Cler réseau pour la transition énergétique, février 2018, 43 p. https://cler.org/publication-mobilite-energie-et-developpement-local/

Il est désormais nécessaire d’aborder la mobilité comme thème majeur de la transition énergétique, et surtout de traduire cette approche du point de vue de l’action locale. Le CLER propose une nouvelle approche de la mobilité durable locale, illustrée de 9 exemples de terrain.

A Primer on Capacity Mechanisms / Natalia Fabra. Energy Policy Research Group, Feb. 2018, 30 p. (EPRG working paper 1806) https://www.eprg.group.cam.ac.uk/eprg-working-paper-1806/

A simple model is built up to capture the key drivers of investment and pricing incentives in electricity markets. The focus is put on the interaction between market power and investment incentives, and the trade-o it introduces when designing the optimal regulatory instruments. In contrast to the energy-only market paradigm that assumes perfect competition, our model demonstrates that in the presence of market power scarcity prices do not promote ecient investments, even among risk-neutral investors. Combining price caps and capacity payments allows to disentangle the two-fold objective of inducing the right investment incentives while mitigating market power. Bundling capacity payments with nancial obligations further mitigates market power as long as strike prices are set suciently close to marginal costs.

The Efficiency Consequences of Heterogeneous Behavioral Responses to Energy Fiscal Policies / Sébastien Houde and Joseph Aldy. Energy Institute at Haas at the University of California, Berkeley,  Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Energy Policy Institute at Chicago, University of Chicago, February 2018, 61 p. (E2e Working Paper 035) http://e2e.haas.berkeley.edu/working-papers.html

The behavioral responses to taxes and subsidies are often subject to various behavioral biases and transaction costs—what we define as “microfrictions.” We develop a theoretical framework to show how these microfrictions—and their heterogeneity across the population and policy instruments— affect the design of Pigouvian policies. Standard Pigouvian pricing still holds with transaction costs, but requires adjustment with behavioral biases. We use transaction-level data from the US appliance market to estimate the heterogeneous behavioral responses to an array of energy fiscal policies and to quantify microfrictions. We then assess optimal fiscal policies and find that it is rarely optimal to couple a Pigouvian tax on energy with an investment subsidy in this context. We also find that energy labels—intended to increase the salience of energy information—can interact in perverse ways with both taxes and subsidies.

Danièle Revel

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