Publications

    Green, Richard, and Iain Staffell. “Richard Green and Iain Staffell - The Contribution of Taxes, Subsidies and Regulations to British Electricity Decarbonisation,” 2021.Abstract

    Great Britain’s carbon emissions from electricity generation fell by two-thirds between 2012 and 2019, providing an important example for other nations. This rapid transition was driven by a complex interplay of policies and events: investment in renewable generation, closure of coal power stations, raising carbon prices and energy efficiency measures. Previous studies of the impact of these simultaneous individual measures miss their interactions with each other and with exogenous changes in fuel prices and the weather. Here we use Shapley values, a concept from cooperative game theory, to disentangle these and precisely attribute outcomes (CO2 saved, changes to electricity prices and fossil fuel consumption) to individual drivers. We find the effectiveness of each driver remained stable despite the transformation seen over the 7 years we study. The four main drivers each saved 19–29 MtCO2 per year in 2019, reinforcing the view that there is no ‘silver bullet’, and a multi-faceted approach to deep decarbonisation is essential.

    Weiss, Jurgen, Ryan Hledik, Roger Lueken, Tony Lee, and Will Gorman. “Estimating the Value of Electricity Storage in PJM: Arbitrage and Some Welfare Effects.” Energy Economics 31, no. 2 (2020): 269-277. Publisher's VersionAbstract

    Significant increases in prices and price volatility of natural gas and electricity have raised interest in the potential economic opportunities for electricity storage. In this paper, we analyze the arbitrage value of a price-taking storage device in PJM during the six-year period from 2002 to 2007, to understand the impact of fuel prices, transmission constraints, efficiency, storage capacity, and fuel mix. The impact of load-shifting for larger amounts of storage, where reductions in arbitrage are offset by shifts in consumer and producer surplus as well as increases in social welfare from a variety of sources, is also considered

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