Energie : papiers de recherche moissonnés (23/10/2019)

Financement des énergies renouvelables à l’horizon 2040 : Évaluation prospective du besoin de soutien public pour la transition du système électrique français / Murielle Gagnebin, Agora Energiewende, Dimitri Pescia, Agora Energiewende, Nicolas Berghmans, Iddri. Paris : IDDRI, octobre 2019, 22 p. lien

Agora Energiewende et l’Iddri ont développé un outil de calcul des coûts et du besoin de financement public des énergies électriques renouvelables en France à l’horizon 2040. Sur la base de cet outil, plusieurs trajectoires possibles d’évolution du système électrique français ont été analysées, et leur impact sur le besoin de soutien public en faveur des énergies renouvelables a été mesuré.

Energy Efficiency and Directed Technical Change: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation / Gregory Casey, MPRA Paper 76416, University Library of Munich, Germany September 2019, 69 p. lien

I build a quantitative model of economic growth that can be used to evaluate the impact of environmental policy interventions on final-use energy consumption, an important driver of carbon emissions. In the model, energy demand is driven by endogenous and directed technical change (DTC). Energy supply is subject to increasing extraction costs. Unlike existing DTC models, I consider the case where multiple technological characteristics are embodied in each capital good, a formulation conducive to studying final-use energy. The model is consistent with aggregate evidence on energy use, efficiency, and prices in the United States. I examine the impact of new energy taxes and compare the results to the standard Cobb-Douglas approach used in the environmental macroeconomics literature, which is not consistent with data. When examining a realistic and identical path of energy taxes in both models, the DTC model predicts 22% greater cumulative energy us over the next century. I also use the model to study the macroeconomic consequences of R&D subsidies for new energy ecient technologies. I find large rebound eects that undo short-term reductions in energy use.

Mission (im)possible? Mobilizing innovation – and policies supporting it – in the transition to sustainability / Jan Fagerberg. Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo & UNU-MERIT, 2018, 21 p. lien

Research has shown that transitions easily may take several decades if not more to unfold. However, it has also been suggested that change may occur faster when advantages for end-users are sufficiently large and/or there are proactive policies in place. This paper aims at providing new insights on these matters through a discussion of three specific cases, all from Europe, in which change has been very quick indeed: Wind energy in Denmark, the German Energiewende and electrical cars in Norway. The focus is particularly on the actors that took part, how policy schemes supporting these developments were shaped and what their impacts were. It is concluded that by embracing the opportunities offered by the renewable energy revolution and actively involving users (and attracting new ones) it is possible for policy-makers to encourage (green) innovation, create new jobs and significantly speed up the transition.

Optimal Contracts for Renewable Electricity / Sarah Parlane and Lisa Ryan, University College Dublin, September 2019, 39 p. WP19/20 lien

Companies are increasingly choosing to procure their power from renewable energy sources, with their own set of potential challenges. In this paper we focus on contracts to procure electricity from renewable sources that are inherently unreliable (such as wind and solar). We determine the contracts that minimize the cost of procuring a given amount of renewable energy from two risk-averse generators. We contrast outcomes arising when investments are set in centralised and decentralised settings, with the absence of reliability addressed by either issuing orders in excess of what is needed or by investing in improved reliability. Our results suggest that future contracts may be geared towards a greater reliance on order inflation and lower investments in reliability as the cost of renewable energy keeps falling. The implications of these results for grid congestion and electricity spot market prices should be of interest to regulators and transmission system operators.

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