Generalized Nash Equilibrium and Market Coupling in the European Power System

Market Coupling'' is currently seen as the most advanced market design in the restructuring of the European electricity market. Market coupling, by construction, introduces what is generally referred to as an incomplete market: it leaves several constraints out of the market and hence avoids pricing them. This may or may not have important consequences in practice depending on the case on hand. QuasiVariational Inequality problems. We apply one of these methods to a subproblem of market coupling namely the coordination of counter-trading. This problem is an illustration of a more general question encountered for instance in hierarchical planning in production management. We first discuss the economic interpretation of the Quasi-Variational Inequality problem. We then apply the algorithmic approach to a set of stylized case studies in order to illustrate the impact of different organizations of counter-trading. The paper emphazises the structuring of the problem. A companion paper considers the full problem of market coupling and counter-trading and presents a more extensive numerical analysis

Dynamic Spatial Auction Market Models with General Cost Mappings

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New YorkThe deregulation of electricity markets in Europe has deeply changed the organization of this sector. Vertically integrated generating companies have been unbundled to create competition and to increase the competitiveness of electricity markets. Directive 96/92/EC was issued by the European Commission to liberalize electricity markets and to pave the way for the creation of the Internal Electricity Market. In particular, this Directive aimed at promoting the competition in the activities of electricity generation and wholesale through the creation of a “marketplace” and the maximization of transparency and efficiency. Competition in European day-ahead electricity markets has been established through auction markets where electricity producers and consumers offer/bid prices and volumes. This paper suggests a dynamic equilibrium model for a system of auction markets linked by transmission lines and subject to energy balance and transmission constraints, such as those characterizing restructured electricity markets. This model is treated as a system of variational inequalities with arbitrary monotone mappings. An inexact splitting type method is proposed to find its solution. Numerical experiments are conducted on the Italian day-ahead electricity market

Evaluating the effects of environmental regulations on a closed-loop supply chain network: a variational inequality approach

© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Global climate change has encouraged international and regional adoption of pollution taxes and carbon emission reduction policies. Europe has taken the leadership in environmental regulations by introducing the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) in 2005 and by promoting a set of policies destined to lower carbon emissions from energy, industrial, and transport sectors. These environmental policies have significantly affected the production choices of these European sectors. Considering this framework, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the application of environmental policies in a multitiered closed-loop supply chain network where raw material suppliers, manufacturers, consumers, and recovery centers operate. In particular, we assume that manufacturers are subject to the EU-ETS and a carbon tax is imposed on truck transport. In this way, the developed model captures carbon emission regulations, recycling, transportation and technological factors within a unified framework. In particular, it allows for evaluating the impacts of the considered environmental regulations on carbon emissions, product flows, and prices. The proposed model is optimized and solved by using the theory of variational inequalities. Our analysis shows that the combined application of the EU-ETS at the manufacturers’ tier and the carbon tax on truck transport implies additional costs for producers that reduce their good provisions. On the other side, this has a positive outcome for the environment since (Formula presented.) emissions reduce. Moreover, an increase of the efficiency level of the recycling process increments the availability of reusable raw material in the reverse supply chain. Finally, the distance between a couple of CLSC tiers plays a very important role. The lower is the distance covered by vehicles, the higher is the production of goods and the lower is the amount of (Formula presented.) emitted

Decomposition method for oligopolistic competitive models with common environmental regulation

© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media New YorkGlobal climate change has encouraged international and regional adoption of environmental policies aiming at reducing the generation of greenhouse gas emissions. Europe has taken the leadership in environmental regulations by introducing the European-Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) in 2005 and other policies to mitigate carbon emissions and increase the efficiency of production processes. These environmental policies have significantly affected the production choices of the European energy and industrial sectors. In this paper, we consider a market where a set of players (firms) produce different commodities under a common environmental regulation that limits their emissions. Due to these environmental restrictions, the problem is treated as a generalized non-cooperative game where players have joint (environmental) constraints caused by the common and compulsory emission regulation. The problem is to find a natural mechanism for attaining the corresponding generalized equilibrium state. We suggest a share allocation method, which yields a suitable decomposition type procedure and replaces the initial problem with a sequence of non-cooperative games on Cartesian product sets. We also show that its implementation can be simplified essentially after the application of a regularized penalty method. In the case study, we take inspiration from the EU-ETS and we introduce an environmental regulation that restricts the carbon emissions of firms representing the energy, cement, and steel sectors respectively in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Our results confirm the important role played by energy sector in reducing carbon emissions

Characteristics of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Abkhazia (Georgia), a high-prevalence area in Eastern Europe

Although multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Eastern Europe, the factors contributing to emergence, spread and containment of MDR-TB are not well defined. Here, we analysed the characteristics of drug-resistant TB in a cross-sectional study in Abkhazia (Georgia) between 2003 and 2005, where standard short-course chemotherapy is supplemented with individualized drug-resistance therapy. Drug susceptibility testing (DST) and molecular typing were carried out for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex strains from consecutive smear-positive TB patients. Out of 366 patients, 60.4% were resistant to any first-line drugs and 21% had MDR-TB. Overall, 25% of all strains belong to the Beijing genotype, which was found to be strongly associated with the risk of MDR-TB (OR 25.9, 95% CI 10.2-66.0) and transmission (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.6-5.0). One dominant MDR Beijing clone represents 23% of all MDR-TB cases. The level of MDR-TB did not decline during the study period, coinciding with increasing levels of MDR Beijing strains among previously treated cases. Standard chemotherapy plus individualized drug-resistance therapy, guided by conventional DST, might be not sufficient to control MDR-TB in Eastern Europe in light of the spread of "highly transmissible" MDR Beijing strains circulating in the community

Dynamic Spatial Auction Market Models with General Cost Mappings

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York. The deregulation of electricity markets in Europe has deeply changed the organization of this sector. Vertically integrated generating companies have been unbundled to create competition and to increase the competitiveness of electricity markets. Directive 96/92/EC was issued by the European Commission to liberalize electricity markets and to pave the way for the creation of the Internal Electricity Market. In particular, this Directive aimed at promoting the competition in the activities of electricity generation and wholesale through the creation of a “marketplace” and the maximization of transparency and efficiency. Competition in European day-ahead electricity markets has been established through auction markets where electricity producers and consumers offer/bid prices and volumes. This paper suggests a dynamic equilibrium model for a system of auction markets linked by transmission lines and subject to energy balance and transmission constraints, such as those characterizing restructured electricity markets. This model is treated as a system of variational inequalities with arbitrary monotone mappings. An inexact splitting type method is proposed to find its solution. Numerical experiments are conducted on the Italian day-ahead electricity market

Dietary nitrate does not modify blood pressure and cardiac output at rest and during exercise in older adults : a randomised cross over study

Dietary nitrate (〖NO〗_3^-) supplementation has been associated with improved vascular and metabolic health. We conducted a double-blind, cross-over, placebo-controlled RCT to investigate the effects of 7-day consumption of beetroot juice compared with placebo on 1) blood pressure (BP) measured in resting conditions and during exercise, 2) cardiac and peripheral vascular function and 3) biomarkers of inflammation, oxidative stress and endothelial integrity. Twenty non-smoking healthy participants aged 60-75y and BMI 20.0-29.9kg/m2 were recruited. Measurement were conducted before and after each 7-day intervention period. Consumption of 〖NO〗_3^- had no effect on resting systolic and diastolic BP. 〖NO〗_3^- consumption did not improve indexes of central and peripheral cardiac function responses during cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Dietary 〖NO〗_3^- supplementation did not modify biomarkers of inflammation, oxidative stress and endothelial integrity. This study do not support the short-term benefits of dietary 〖NO〗_3^- supplementation on physiological and biochemical markers of vascular health in older healthy adults. Trial Registration: ISRCTN1906495

Deletion of the zinc transporter lipoprotein AdcAII causes hyperencapsulation of Streptococcus pneumoniae associated with distinct alleles of the Type I restriction modification system

The capsule is the dominant Streptococcus pneumoniae virulence factor, yet how variation in capsule thickness is regulated is poorly understood. Here, we describe an unexpected relationship between mutation of adcAII, which encodes a zinc uptake lipoprotein, and capsule thickness. Partial deletion of adcAII in three of five capsular serotypes frequently resulted in a mucoid phenotype that biochemical analysis and electron microscopy of the D39 adcAII mutants confirmed was caused by markedly increased capsule thickness. Compared to D39, the hyperencapsulated adcAII mutant strain was more resistant to complement-mediated neutrophil killing and was hypervirulent in mouse models of invasive infection. Transcriptome analysis of D39 and the adcAII mutant identified major differences in transcription of the Sp_0505-0508 locus, which encodes an SpnD39III (ST5556II) type I restrictionmodification system and allelic variation of which correlates with capsule thickness. A PCR assay demonstrated close linkage of the SpnD39IIIC and F alleles with the hyperencapsulated adcAII strains. However, transformation of adcAII with fixed SpnD39III alleles associated with normal capsule thickness did not revert the hyperencapsulated phenotype. Half of hyperencapsulated adcAII strains contained the same single nucleotide polymorphism in the capsule locus gene cps2E, which is required for the initiation of capsule synthesis. These results provide further evidence for the importance of the SpnD39III (ST5556II) type I restriction-modification system for modulating capsule thickness and identified an unexpected linkage between capsule thickness and mutation of adcAII. Further investigation will be needed to characterize how mutation of adcAII affects SpnD39III (ST5556II) allele dominance and results in the hyperencapsulated phenotype