-
DIW Discussion Papers 1699 / 2017
This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between CO2 emissions, energy consumption, GDP, and trade-openness from 1971 to 2013, based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for 70 WTO countries. Using recently developed secondgeneration panel data methods, the empirical results support the EKC hypothesis for the high-, middle-, and lower-income panels used. Concerning the energy consumption ...
2017| Lars Sorge, Anne Neumann
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1684 / 2017
Power systems with increasing shares of wind and solar power generation have higher capital and lower operational costs than traditional technologies. This increases the importance of the cost of finance for total system cost. We quantify how renewable policy design can influence cost of finance by addressing regulatory risk and facilitating hedging. We use interview data on wind power financing costs ...
2017| Nils May, Karsten Neuhoff
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1620 / 2016
Nearly every carbon price regulates the production of carbon emissions, typically at midstream points of compliance, such as a power plant. Over the last six years, however, policymakers in Australia, California, China, Japan, and Korea implemented carbon prices that regulate the consumption of carbon emissions, where points of compliance are farther downstream, such as distributors or final consumers. ...
2016| Clayton Munnings, William Acworth, Oliver Sartor, Yong-Gun Kim, Karsten Neuhoff
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1607 / 2016
This paper presents a novel theory of corruption in public procurement. It considers an agency setting of contract execution where the principal is a politician who can commit to a contract auditing policy. It is found that a benevolent politician, by choosing a sufficiently strict auditing, deters the contracting firm from padding costs, conversely, a selfish politician chooses a relatively lax auditing ...
2016| Olga Chiappinelli
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1601 / 2016
Moving non-incremental innovations from the pilot scale to full commercial scale raises questions about the need and implementation of public support. Heuristics from the literature put policy makers in a dilemma between addressing a market failure and acknowledging a government failure: incentives for private investments in large scale demonstrations are weak (the valley of death) but the track record ...
2016| Gregory F. Nemet, Martina Kraus, Vera Zipperer
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1579 / 2016
A world of unequal carbon prices requires measures aimed at preventing carbon leakage. Climate policy imperatives demand that such measures must be compatible with the goal of sending a carbon price signal down the value chain. For carbon intensive materials, the combination of dynamic free allocation combined with Inclusion of Consumption (IoC) into emissions trading systems such as the European Union ...
2016| Roland Ismer, Manuel Haussner, Karsten Neuhoff, William Acworth
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1574 / 2016
The increasing scale and dynamics of the global market for renewable energy technologies has often resulted in unexpected high deployment volumes in EU Member States. These deployment peaks were particularly strong for solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies in countries using feed-in tariff remuneration mechanisms. In this paper, we develop an analytic model to capture the interactions of national remuneration ...
2016| Thilo Grau, Karsten Neuhoff
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1570 / 2016
After the Paris Climate Agreement, it is anticipated that carbon prices will differ across regions for some time. If countries use free allowance allocation as carbon leakage protection, only a fraction of carbon prices are passed through to consumers particularly by carbon intensive materials producers. Adding a consumption charge based on benchmarks applied to the material content can reinstate the ...
2016| Stefan Pauliuk, Karsten Neuhoff, Anne Owen, Richard Wood
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1565 / 2016
The Italian white certificate scheme is the main national policy instrument to incentivise energy efficiency of the industrial sector. The mechanism sets binding energy-saving targets on electricity and gas distributors with at least 50,000 clients and includes a voluntary opt-in model for participation from other parties. This paper investigates and assesses the elements of the scheme that help overcome ...
2016| Jan Stede
-
DIW Discussion Papers 1544 / 2016
A fundamental question regarding the design of electricity markets is whether adding auctions to the continuous intraday trading is improving the performance of the market. To approach this question, we assess the experience with the implementation of the 3 pm local auction for quarters in Germany at the European Power Exchange (EPEX SPOT) in December 2014 to assess the impact on trading volumes/liquidity, ...
2016| Karsten Neuhoff, Nolan Ritter, Aymen Salah-Abou-El-Enien, Philippe Vassilopoulos