This paper summarizes the approaches to and the implications of bottom-up infrastructure modeling in the framework of the EMF28 model comparison "Europe 2050: The Effects of Technology Choices on EU Climate Policy". It includes models covering all the sectors currently under scrutiny by the European Infrastructure Priorities: Electricity, natural gas, and CO2. Results suggest that some infrastructure ...
The interdependence of electricity and natural gas is becoming a major energy policy and regulatory issue in all jurisdictions around the world. The increased role of gas fired plants in renewable-based electricity markets and the dependence on gas imports make this issue particular striking for the European energy market. In this paper we provide a comprehensive combined analysis of electricity and ...
We quantify externalities on profitability and market shares of competing firms in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n - 1 player oligopoly after a merger. Competitors are identified via the European Commission's market investigations and our methodology allows us to distinguish the externality due to the change in market structure from the merger effect. We obtain results ...
The North and Baltic Sea Grid is one of the largest pan-European infrastructure projects raising high hopes regarding the potential of harnessing large amounts of renewable electricity, but also concerns about the implementation in largely nationally dominated regulatory regimes. The paper develops three idealtype development scenarios and quantifies the technical-economic effects: i) the Status quo ...
Between 2002 and 2007, Germany introduced its National Strategy for Sustainable Development and its Integrated Climate Protection Program, which both defined clear energy and climate-related objectives, setting an emissions reduction trajectory of 40% below the 1990 level by 2020. This spurred the development and refinement of a set of policies to create incentives for energy efficiency improvements, ...
The German government has committed to reducing the primary energy demand of buildings by 80% by 2050 and to attaining a thermal retrofit rate of 2%. Achieving both goals will require deep thermal retrofits across the existing building stock. To meet this challenge, the government is exploring what role tax support options could play in encouraging thermal retrofits and ensuring that they deliver the ...
The Eurozone is still stuck in a downward spiral: high public and private debts weigh on potential growth; gloomy prospects for growth prevent the further reduction of these debts. A European plan to support growth should be a complement, and not a substitute, to the ongoing efforts to reduce public deficits. It should both encourage structural reforms and incentivize investments. In the short term, ...
The North and Baltic Seas Grid is one of the largest pan-European infrastructure projects, increasing the potential of harnessing large amounts of renewable energy. This paper addresses the economic implications of different development scenarios of the North and Baltic Seas Grid on individual countries and stakeholders which may raise concerns about the implementation in largely nationally dominated ...
Integrating large quantities of variable renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns. We model the current methodology for controlling congestion ...