Solar energy and the national energy dilemma : A model for policy evaluation

This study presents solar-enhanced energy scenarios for the future together with the policy considerations they imply. The methodology known as system dynamics is employed, and the work reported here builds on an earlier model developed by Sasser.Policy-related implications include the following. First, after-tax costs of solar technology must be competitive with the costs for coal as well as those for oil and gas to achieve a substantial market penetration. Second, the collapse predicted by the original Sasser model used in this study can be postponed by solar technology alone but not avoided. If solar technology is allowed to supply nearly 100% of the energy needs of each energy consumption sector, then each sector is allowed 100 years more growth before the inevitable collapse occurs. Third, the amount of imported crude oil that can be displayed by solar energy in the next two decades of this century is modest.     

The dynamics of process technology adoption and the implications for upgrade decisions

The need for fundamental, as opposed to incremental change, presents managers with major uncertainty. Such change is likely to involve significant capital cost, but may also bring significant collateral costsjom, for example, retraining, and plant downtime and customer supply disruption during change implementation. This article focuses on a gstem dynamics model that captures the situation of an industry experiencing the switching of competitors' production plants to a new process technology. The model is typical of industries in commodip chemicals or other bulk manufacturing, and enables the complexity of technology moves to be represented. This facilitates a clearer understanding of the expected industry dynamics. The results show that an individual firm facing the upgrade decision must consider the impacts of the change across a number of dimensions, and demonstrates that the point in time along these industries' typical endemic capacig-building/price cycle may haue an important impact on the economics of the decision. The article is also able to draw some comparisons between this and other approaches to modelling technology change decision-making.     

The business cycle implications of the euro adoption in Poland

This article analyses the macroeconomic impact of the loss of autonomous monetary policy after the euro adoption in Poland. Using a two-country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with sticky prices and wages, we find that the euro adoption will have a noticeable impact on the magnitude of economic fluctuations. In particular, the volatility of output, interest rate, consumption and employment is expected to increase while the volatility of inflation should decrease. Also, in order to quantify the effect of the euro adoption, we compute the welfare effect of this monetary policy change. Our findings suggest that the welfare cost is not large.     

Organisational change and the productivity effects of green technology adoption

This study investigates induced productivity effects of firms introducing new environmental technologies. The literature on within-firm organisational change and productivity suggests that firms can achieve higher productivity gains from adopting new technologies if they adapt their organisational structures. Such complementarity effects may be of particular importance for the adoption of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement technologies. The adoption of these technologies is often induced by public authorities to limit the social costs of climate change, whereas the private returns are much less obvious. This study finds empirical support for complementarity between green technology adoption (either CO₂-reducing or resources and energy efficiency-enhancing technologies) and organisational change. While the sole adoption of green technologies is associated with lower productivity, the simultaneous implementation of green technologies and organisational innovations is not.     

Probabilistic temperature change projections and energy system implications of greenhouse gas emission scenarios

This paper explores the implications for global average temperature change of a set of reference and mitigation scenarios in a probabilistic framework. First, we use published probability density functions for climate sensitivity to investigate the likelihood of achieving targets expressed as levels or rates of global average temperature change. We find, for example, that limiting warming to 3 C above pre-industrial levels with at least a medium likelihood requires cumulative emissions reductions on the order of 30-60% below one unmitigated reference scenario by 2100, while a more favorable baseline scenario requires no reductions at all to achieve this outcome with the same likelihood. We further conclude that the rate of temperature change may prove to be more difficult to control, especially if most of the mitigation effort is postponed until later in the century. Rate of change targets of 0.1–0.2 °C/decade are unlikely to be achieved by a target for the long-term level of climate change alone. Second, we quantify relationships between mitigation costs and the likelihood of achieving various targets and show how this depends strongly on the reference scenario. Third, we explore relationships between medium-term achievements and long-term climate change outcomes. Our results suggest that atmospheric concentrations and the share of zero-carbon energy in the middle of the 21st century are key indicators of the likelihood of meeting long-term climate change goals cost-effectively. They also suggest that interim targets could be an effective means of keeping long-term target options open. Our analysis shows that least-cost mitigation strategies for reaching low climate change targets include a wide portfolio of reduction measures. In particular, fundamental long-term structural changes in the energy system in these scenarios are a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve high likelihoods for low temperature targets. The cost-effective portfolio of emissions reductions must also address demand-side measures and include mitigation options in the industry, agriculture, and the forest sector.     

Determinants of renewable energy adoption in China and India: a comparative analysis

This article examines the dynamic relationships among output, carbon emission and renewable energy generation of India and China during the period 1972 to 2011 using a multivariate vector error correction model (VECM). The results for India reveal unidirectional short-run causality from carbon emission to renewable energy generation and from renewable energy generation to output, whereas in the long run, the variables have bidirectional causality. Causalities in China give a rather different scenario, with a short-run unidirectional causality from output to renewable energy and from carbon emission to renewable energy generation. In the long run, for China, unidirectional causality is found from output to renewable energy generation, while bidirectional causality is found between carbon emission and renewable energy generation.     

Incentives for investment in energy efficiency: an econometric evaluation and policy implications

Technical studies suggest that there exist many opportunities to improve energy efficiency, and that a substantial proportion is profitable by current business standards. This study deals with the question why so many of these profitable opportunities are not used. Reasons for not implementing profitable opportunities are idetified, and their effect is estimated on the basis ofa survey among Dutch firms, designed specifically for this study. The reasons that prevail indicate what policy measures may accompany energy taxes in the pursuit of energy efficiency improvement. In addition, energy efficiency elasticities are estimated, as well as the factors that determine the elasticities. These too indicate opportunities for government policy, if it wants to improve the effectiveness of energy taxes.     

Climate change and hailstorm damage: Empirical evidence and implications for agriculture and insurance

There is much uncertainty about the effects of anthropogenic climate change on the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like hailstorms, and subsequent economic losses, while this is also relevant information for the design of climate policy. Few studies conducted indicate that a strong positive relation exists between hailstorm activity and hailstorm damage, as predicted by minimum temperatures using simple correlations. This relation suggests that hailstorm damage may increase in the future if global warming leads to further temperature increase. This study estimates a range of Tobit models of relations between normalized insured hailstorm damage to agriculture and several temperature and precipitation indicators for the Netherlands. Temporal dynamics are explicitly modelled. A distinction is made between damage costs for greenhouse horticulture and outdoor farming, which appear to be differently affected by variability in weather. ‘Out of sample’ forecast tests show that a combination of maximum temperatures and precipitation predicts hailstorm damage best. Extrapolations of the historical relations between hailstorm damage and weather indicators under climate change scenarios project a considerable increase in future hailstorm damage. Our estimates show that by 2050 annual hailstorm damage to outdoor farming could increase by between 25% and 50%, with considerably larger impacts on greenhouse horticulture in summer of more than 200%. The economic implications of more hailstorm damage for, and adaptation by, the agricultural and insurance sectors are discussed.     

The Internet and other networks: utilization rates and their implications

Costs of communications networks are determined largely by the maximal capacities of those networks. On the other hand, the traffic those networks carry depends on how heavily those networks are used. Hence, utilization rates and utilization patterns determine the costs of providing services and, therefore, are crucial in understanding the economics of communications networks. A comparison of utilization rates and costs of various networks helps disprove many popular myths about the Internet. Although packet networks are often extolled for the efficiency of their transport, it often costs more to send data over internal corporate networks than using modems on the switched voice network. Packet networks are growing explosively not because they utilize underlying transport capacity more efficiently but because they provide much greater flexibility in offering new services. Study of utilization patterns shows there are large opportunities for increasing the efficiency of data transport and making the Internet less expensive and more useful. On the other hand, many popular techniques, such as some Quality of Service measures and ATM, are likely to be of limited usefulness.     

The Federal Student Loan Program: Quantitative implications for college enrollment and default rates

I quantify the effects of alternative student loan policies on college enrollment, borrowing behavior, and default rates in a heterogeneous model of life-cycle earnings and human capital accumulation. I find that the combination of learning ability and initial stock of human capital drives the decision to enroll in college, while parental wealth has minimal effects on enrollment. Repayment flexibility increases enrollment significantly, whereas relaxation of eligibility requirements has little effect on enrollment or default rates. The former policy benefits low-income households, while the latter has negligible effects on these households.     

Inter-fuel substitution,technical change and the demand for energy in the UK economy

A model for energy demand, based on a translog cost function is formulated. Unlike previous studies, technical progress is modelled by means of stochastic, as opposed to deterministic, trend components. The model is estimated using quarterly UK data for four economic sectors, and forecasts of the future level of demand are made.     

Policy instruments and self-reported impacts of the adoption of energy saving technologies in the DACH region

Empirica - Using a large sample of enterprises from a survey that was simultaneously conducted in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we study the self-reported impacts of the adoption of...     

Empirical and public choice evidence for hyperbolic social discount rates and the implications for intergenerational discounting

The derivation of the correct discount rate for intergenerational projects in Cost Benefit Analysis is particularly contentious. Public choice has resulted in lower discretionary exponential discount rates for many intergenerational projects in Britain and the USA. This is shown to be strong indirect evidence that the true social discount rate may be a hyperbolic (rather than an exponential) function. There is also empirical evidence for this hypothesis. The hyperbolic nature of discounting is also a standard finding in the behavioural sciences. For intergenerational time frames hyperbolic discount rates should be employed together with exponential discount rates in cost-benefit sensitivity analyses.Sincere thanks to Maureen Cropper and Paul Portney for supplying their survey results and to Elaine Barrow and Phillip Judge for graphics assistance. Two anonymous referees also provided valuable comments.     

Backing into the future : On the methodological and institutional biases embedded in energy supply and demand forecasting

The great variability and inaccuracy of past energy supply and demand forecasts suggests that they are an unreliable basis for policy analysis and planning. This paper argues that unreliability cannot be eliminated from these analyses by increasing their sophistication, since many of the problems involved in forecasting inhere in the techniques themselves or in the institutional context within which they are used. This argument is illustrated by an examination of the natural gas forecasts of the Canadian National Energy Board.     

Asian economic success and Latin American failure in the 1980s: new analyses and future policy implications

A striking feature of the world economy during the last decade has been the collapse of economic growth in Latin America whilst industrialization and development have proceeded apace in the Asian countries. This paper, firstly, reviews and assesses alternative hypotheses concerning Asian economic success and the Latin American failure during the 1980s. Secondly, it examines the related question of the long-term development strategies followed by the outstandingly successful east Asian economies. The paper arrives at rather different analyses and policy conclusions on these issues from those of the international financial institutions and the mainstream economists.     

Testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics: An analysis via the learning curve approach

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock-in. It presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors, i.e. learning-by-doing, learning-by-searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system. The paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach. Econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications. These specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias, the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators. Results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock-in phenomena of the energy system. They also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle (maturity). In particular, results point out that, 1) the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty, 2) the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and R&D activities development, 3) conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects.     

FIDIC合同条件下业主索赔的权利与程序

由于国际工程项目标的大、建设周期长、施工情况复杂、参与人数众多,承包商在施工中难免出现工期延误和质量瑕疵等问题,造成业主的经济损失,而合理有效的索赔则为业主减少风险、维护合法权利提供了重要手段.因此,在FIDIC合同条件下,研究业主索赔的实体权利、法律依据,明确工程师、DAB解决索赔的程序,优化业主的索赔技术,对于预防索赔的发生,提高索赔的针对性、及时性和友好性,具有一定的理论价值和实践意义.