The Price Isn't Right: The Need for Reform in Consumer Electricity Pricing

Electricity prices should fully link the consumer price to peak-period generation costs, environmental costs and the high cost of new generation, according to an expert analysis released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. The author says such pricing reform is required to reduce both financial and electrical stress on the system and help prepare Ontario – and other provinces – for the rising costs of new generation.Economic Growth and Innovation, electricity pricing, Province of Ontario, conservation, environmental cost, real-time pricing

Emissions Trading: ERCs or Allowances

There are two principal choices of the baseline from which emissions trading may take place: 1) emission reduction credits (ERCs) in which the baseline is existing regulations which are often activity-based; and 2) cap-and-trade which specified the total allowable emissions. This paper examines the effects of these two tradable permit systems on marginal and average costs for the firm, using electricity generation as an example. The ERC system subsidises the activity level to which it is tied, failing to incorporate the full cost of external harm into the product price. The cap-and-trade system is more efficient.air pollution, emissions trading, allowances, emission reduction credits, cap and trade, electricity generation, externality

The Future of Nuclear Power in A Restructured Electricity Market

Restructuring is causing fundamental changes in the market for electricity across North America including changes in the framework for decisions about investment in generation capacity. In a restructured market the generator is no longer guaranteed a reasonable rate of return on assets; instead new investments will earn whatever the spot market or contract market will pay. The market price will be determined by the marginal cost of existing price setting units, the market structure, demand, and the cost of new capacity. Environmental regulations may have a significant impact on that price. This paper summarizes the principal features of restructured electricity markets and their implications for the future price of electricity and for the future of nuclear power, using the emerging rules for the Ontario electricity market as an example.electric utilities, electricity restructuring, nuclear power, nuclear generation, air pollution, emission trading, Ontario, spot market

Price and Environment in Electricity Restructuring

One purpose of electricity restructuring is to create a market in which prices reflect costs to which both generators and consumers may respond efficiently. Yet in many jurisdictions, spot prices may be quite volatile, and both consumers and generators of electricity have made it clear that they do not prices that are highly volatile. This paper examines price plans that have been and might be used in restructured electricity markets assessing their ability to face consumers with efficient prices at the margin but to minimize their exposure to volatility, considering the welfare losses that may be associated with them. It notes that electricity markets are necessarily artificial and that few have managed to create price plans that seem to improve on the efficiency of pre-restructuring prices. Moreover in the California market, the operation of a separate market for air pollution emissions gave rise to emission prices far above reasonable estimates of environmental harm, further exacerbating wholesale price fluctuations in 2000. Solutions to these problems are explored.electric utilities, electricity restructuring, air pollution, spot market, price volatility, price structure, Ontario

Electricity Restructuring and Regulation in the Provinces: Ontario and Beyond

Competitive electricity markets are artificial markets with extensive rules for all participants arising from the complex interconnections of the electricity network. Governments or regulatory agencies oversee the market design process and the operation and maintenance of the market, so market design is necessarily a political process. The conceptual design of the market must recognise the political forces that will operate on the market design process so that the political process will not thwart the intended outcome of the market as it has in some jurisdictions including Ontario. The limited ability of consumers to understand changes in the electricity sector in the short run poses a real constraint on what can be achieved politically. Letting the market set the price means that governments cannot ensure any particular future price level and both theory and experience tell us that prices may increase after restructuring (California, Ontario, Alberta). This makes it difficult to sell restructuring to consumers who will be interested in the price they pay and not much interested in abstractions like efficiency. Another challenge for electricity restructuring is that the starting points differ from one jurisdiction to another and the starting points matter. The problems are different if you begin with a crown monopoly than if you have investor-owned utilities; if expected prices are higher than recent prices rather than lower; if governments have been deeply involved in the electricity sector rather than distant from it; if the public has experience with stable electricity prices rather than fluctuating prices. Finally, the situation in neighbouring jurisdictions matters as well. Restructuring in a low-price jurisdiction surrounded by high prices will increase the prospect of price increases at home, while a high-price island is more likely to see its prices decline. If workable competition will be difficult to achieve at home, strong interties to neighbouring jurisdictions can improve competitive performance if the market is appropriately designed. Air pollution, like electricity, moves across borders, so one must assess and evaluate the pollution implications of competition and make any appropriate adjustments to the market design.electricity restructuring, electric utilities, market design, electricity price, electricity market, spot price, retail competition

Borrowing Trouble: Predatory Lending in Native American Communities

Based on surveys and financial data, examines the prevalence of predatory practices in Native American communities. Includes maps of predatory lenders, case studies of financial education and alternative services and products, and recommendations

The Impact of Sub-Metering on Condominium Electricity Demand

Growing concern about the environmental effects of electricity generation is renewing demands for electricity conservation and efficient usage. With a substantial fraction of the population insulated from energy price signals in bulk-metered apartment and condominium buildings, some jurisdictions are considering mandatory metering of individual suites. This study analyses data from a Toronto condominium building to assess the impacts of suite (or sub-) metering. We estimate the aggregate reduction in electricity usage arising from sub-metering to be about 20%. Financial savings to residents are much smaller. We analyze large variations across units in electricity consumption after sub-metering finding that unit characteristics explain much but not all of this variation. We perform both private and public cost-benefit analyses of sub-metering and find that the social net benefits depend strongly on the value assigned to externalities from generation and that net social benefits may often be positive when private benefits to the residents are negative.electricity demand, electricity sub-metering, energy conservation

From users to custodians : changing relations between people and the State in forest management in Tanzania

Central control of forests takes management responsibility away from the communities most dependent on them, inevitably resulting in tensions. Like many African countries, Tanzania--which has forest or woodland cover over 30-40 percent of its land--established central forestry institutions at a time when there was little need for active management and protection because population pressures were low. But in the face of scarce public resources and burgeoning demand from the growing population for agricultural landand woodland products, there has been growing recognition of the need to bring individuals, local groups, and communities into the policy, planning, and management process if woodlands are to remain productive in the coming decades. Tanzania established its first three community-owned and -managed forest reserves in September 1994. Today, supported by substantive policy reforms that largely grew out of the early experiences with community-based management, more than 500 villages own and manage forest reserves, and anoher 500 or so smaller social units and individuals have recognized reserves. Joint management by the state and the people is getting underway in at least four government-owned forest reserves.The authors describe the evolution of community-based forest and woodland management in Tanzania and the underlying policy, legal, and institutional framework. They draw together some of the lessons from this experience and review emerging issues. They find that the most successful initiatives involving communities and individuals have been those that moved away from a user-centric approach (like that often used in South Asia) and toward an approach based on the idea that communities can be most effective when they are fully involved in all aspects of decisionmaking about management and protection.This suggests that the government should allow communities to become engaged as managers in their own right, rather than as passive participants who merely agree to the management parameters defined by the government. The Tanzanian experience has shown that community-based forest and woodland management can be an integral part of initiatives that seek to improve governance over natural resources by improving accountability and by democratizing decisionmaking at the local level.Forestry,Forests and Forestry,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Drylands&Desertification

“Ain’t My Mama’s Broken Heart”: The Mothers and Daughters of Hillbilly Feminism

The women of country music have long defied the genre\u27s patriarchal associations and used their music as a platform for subversive social messages about gender inequality, and in the past several decades, the country music establishment has grown more willing to alter its image and accommodate these feminist themes. Because country music is marketed and understood by many of its fans as a representation of a lifestyle, this shift in expectations for women’s social roles and possibilities in the genre has an impact on the women who identify themselves with the particular rural, down-home image country music aims to define. This potential for country music to reach women who may not ordinarily be exposed to feminist messages, or who may even feel those messages to be antagonistic in other mediums, demonstrates the possibilities and stakes in revising a fraught and problematic tradition, such as country music, for feminist, socially progressive aims. In this essay, I discuss country music as a type of mother figure, offering advice and defining expectations for its daughter’s lives. This ‘mother’ is imperfect and often maddeningly contradictory, yet, as with many real mothers, her messages should often be questioned but not automatically discounted. In light of the current “cancel culture” or “call-out culture” trend in feminist spaces by which traditions or people associated with current or historical promotion of social inequality are labeled irredeemable, the feminism of country music offers lessons about how one might work within a fraught tradition, or alongside a difficult mother, rather than tossing it/her aside