Fiscal costs of climate mitigation programmes in the UK: A challenge for social policy?

This paper asks whether the policies and programmes enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the UK will compete with other goals of public policy, in particular social policy goals. The Climate Change Act 2008 has set the UK some of the most demanding targets in the world: to reduce GHG emissions (compared with 1990) by at least 80% by 2050 and by at least 34% by 2020 - just nine years away. A wide array of climate change mitigation policies (CCMPs) have been put in place to bring this about. Will these compete fiscally with the large public expenditures on the welfare state? We address this question by surveying and costing all UK government policies that have a climate change mitigation objective and which are expressed through taxation, government expenditures and government-mandated expenditures by energy suppliers and other businesses and which are directed toward the household sector. Our conclusion is that expenditures on CCMPs are tiny - around one quarter of one per cent of GDP - and will not rise significantly. Within this the share of direct spending by government will fall and that obligated on utility companies will rise. Green taxes are also planned to fall as a share of GDP. There is no evidence here of fiscal competition between the welfare state and the environmental state. However, the use of mandated electricity and gas markets will impose rising costs on the household sector, which will bear more heavily on lower income households and will increase 'fuel poverty'. Thus demands on traditional social policies are likely to rise. More radical policy reforms will be needed to integrate climate change and social policy goals.carbon mitigation policy, social policy, fiscal competition

Energy Poverty in Buffalo\u27s West Side: PUSH, National Fuel, and the Fight for Equitable Energy Access

Energy poverty, the condition of households that cannot adequately heat their homes, is a chronic problem resulting from low income, high fuel prices, and poorly insulated, energy inefficient houses. In addition to financial strain, energy poverty causes severe social and health problems for people living in under-heated homes (Boardman 1991; 2013). Despite its seriousness and pervasiveness, energy poverty has been ignored too often in the US. Those that suffer through energy poverty each year, trapped in bitterly cold homes and facing exorbitant fuel bills, have only rarely organized effectively to demand necessary changes, making the case of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) so significant. Through community organizing, advocacy, and protest, PUSH catalyzed unprecedented shifts in the distribution of energy conservation funding in Western New York, ensuring that a greater share went toward low-income households for weatherization

Greening Multi-Tenant Data Center Demand Response

Data centers have emerged as promising resources for demand response, particularly for emergency demand response (EDR), which saves the power grid from incurring blackouts during emergency situations. However, currently, data centers typically participate in EDR by turning on backup (diesel) generators, which is both expensive and environmentally unfriendly. In this paper, we focus on "greening" demand response in multi-tenant data centers, i.e., colocation data centers, by designing a pricing mechanism through which the data center operator can efficiently extract load reductions from tenants during emergency periods to fulfill energy reduction requirement for EDR. In particular, we propose a pricing mechanism for both mandatory and voluntary EDR programs, ColoEDR, that is based on parameterized supply function bidding and provides provably near-optimal efficiency guarantees, both when tenants are price-taking and when they are price-anticipating. In addition to analytic results, we extend the literature on supply function mechanism design, and evaluate ColoEDR using trace-based simulation studies. These validate the efficiency analysis and conclude that the pricing mechanism is both beneficial to the environment and to the data center operator (by decreasing the need for backup diesel generation), while also aiding tenants (by providing payments for load reductions).Comment: 34 pages, 6 figure

The single European electricity market: A long road to convergence

In the context of a first Working Paper the authors argued that electricity has a number of characteristics that set it apart from other commodities. It was demonstrated that some of these characteristics might complicate the deregulation process. This paper analyses the ongoing deregulation process in the European electricity sector and attempts to establish whether these difficulties can more readily be solved at European level. It would appear that some problems, e.g. economies of scale in electricity generation, have less of an impact at European level than within smaller national markets. However, a number of difficulties have to be overcome before a unified European electricity market can become a reality. These include the limited interconnection capacities between Member States. The European Commission has taken steps to improve the situation, for example by offering financial support for investments and promoting the development of regional markets as an interim measure ultimately leading to a fully integrated market. Apart from the difficulties related to electricity generation and transmission there are also exogenous factors that influence the ongoing deregulation process, e.g. the implementation of the Kyoto protocol and the dramatic increases in primary fuel prices. This paper argues that a consistent, stable and uniform European regulatory framework must be put in place if the impact of these difficulties is to be minimised.Electricity deregulation

Framing the collaborative economy - Voices of contestation

Within the context of multiple crises and change, a range of practices discussed under the umbrella term of collaborative (or sharing) economy have been gaining considerable attention. Supporters build an idealistic vision of collaborative societies. Critics have been stripping the concept of its visionary potential, questioning its revolutionary nature. In the study, these debates are brought down to the local level in search for common perceptions among the co-creators of the concept in Vienna, Austria. Towards this aim a Q study is conducted, i.e. a mixed method enabling analyses of subjective perceptions on socially contested topics. Four framings are identified: Visionary Supporters, Market Optimists, Visionary Critics, and Skeptics, each bringing their values, visions, and practical goals characteristic of different understanding of the collaborative economy. The study questions the need for building a globally-applicable definition of the concept, calls for more context-sensitivity, exploratory studies, and city-level multi-stakeholder dialogues

Electricity transmission: an overview of the current debate

Electricity transmission has emerged as critical for successfully liberalising powermarkets. This paper surveys the issues currently under discussion and provides a framework for the remaining papers in this issue. We conclude that signalling the efficient location of generation investment might require even a competitive LMP system to be complemented with deep connection charges. Although a Europe-wide LMP system is desirable, it appears politically problematic, so an integrated system of market coupling, possibly evolving by voluntary participation, should have high priority. Merchant investors may be able to increase interconnector capacity, although this is not unproblematic and raises new regulatory issues. A key issue that needs further research is how to better incentivize TSOs, especially with respect to cross-border issues

Lessons and consequences of the evolving 2007-? Credit Crunch

We are neither economists nor academic scholars; however we are students of the markets having experienced the credit crunch on the front lines as institutional investors from a country that is neither in Europe nor is the United States (i.e. Canada). The credit crunch and related “Great Recession” have instilled havoc on the global economy. The crisis has led to a large contraction of the real economy of approximately 1% of real GDP in 2009, which could have been considerably larger without massive government sponsored stimulus plans. In the aftermath of every crisis there are always lessons to be learned. The main takeaways from the most recent credit crunch centre on risk distortion, the flawed counterparty risk offset model, excessive leverage, inherent conflicts of interest and the legacy of creating “too big to fail” financial institutions. As financial markets appear to have stepped back from the brink of destruction, we believe that there are three major consequences that we are currently facing. First the global financial system will likely be irrevocably changed by new regulations. Second, on the economic front, we are facing a post-recession period of relatively low global growth. Third, developing countries’ governments are facing massive budget deficits and their debt/GDP levels are likely unsustainable and therefore requiring severe fiscal austerity programs.Credit Crisis, Solutions, Securitization, CDS

On international compensations for environmental stocks

This paper sheds some light on the possible implications of compensations which are paid for the maintenance of an environmental stock. It shows that serious complications can arise if the resource-owner can vary the compensation price. In that case, extraction-driven stock preservation policies can conflict with compensation-driven ones and imply instability. Whether compensation policies can neglect this aspect depends crucially on the credibility of sticky compensation prices.

Electricity Network Scenarios for Great Britain in 2050

The next fifty years are likely to see great developments in the technologies deployed in electricity systems, with consequent changes in the structure and operation of power networks. This paper, which forms a chapter in the forthcoming book Future Electricity Technologies and Systems, develops and presents six possible future electricity industry scenarios for Great Britain, focussed on the year 2050. The paper draws upon discussions of important technologies presented by expert authors in other chapters of the book to consider the impact of different combinations of key influences on the nature of the power system in 2050. For each scenario there is a discussion of the effects of the key parameters, with a description and pictorial illustration. Summary tables identify the role of the technologies presented in other chapters of the book, and list important figures of interest, such as the capacity and energy production of renewable generation technologies