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While a firm knows the carbon price with certainty under a tax, it must form an expectation about future allowance prices to identify its cost-effective abatement investment under a capand-trade program. We illustrate graphically how errors in forming this expectation increase the costs of irreversible pollution abatement investment under cap-and-trade relative to a tax. We describe empirical “cost-effectiveness anomalies” in allowance markets that may be attributed to cap-and-trade's inherent uncertainty. We model investment under simulated US carbon tax and cap-and-trade policies and find that allowance price uncertainty can increase resource costs 20 percent for a given quantity of emission abatement.

This report reflects upon the concept of social innovation and the way it is used in the energy sector. It does so by bringing together theoretical investigations and empirical knowledge. We aim to clarify the concept of social innovation in the energy sector by reviewing the literature and reflecting over a number of social innovation projects in Europe. The analysis of the projects against various contextual factors and their goals reveals the significant potential of social innovation on accelerating the energy transition while tackling societal problems. Energy production, energy efficiency and energy literacy are the main domains to which socially innovative activities contribute the most. High competences of project leadership and management observed though projects are often small in scale and context-dependent. This indicates that successful socially innovative energy initiatives require advanced bottom-up governance structures even if that may imply limitations for scaling up. This setting may complicate top-down support as legal, financial or even cultural policy-making must be tailor-made and reinvent or adjust continuously. Nevertheless, social innovative activities are expected to further proliferate the following years and move towards a sound environmental, cultural, political, economic and social direction, as knowledge creation and diffusion of technological and governance innovations accompanied with policy support are on the rise. JRC.C.7-Knowledge for the Energy Union

Decarbonizing the building sector is extremely important to mitigating climate change as the sector contributes 40% of the overall energy consumption and 36% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Net-zero energy buildings are one of the promising decarbonization attempts due to their potential of decreasing the use of energy and increasing the total share of renewable energy. To achieve a net-zero energy building, it is necessary to decrease the energy demand by applying efficiency enhancement measures and using renewable energy sources. Net-zero energy buildings can be classified into four models (Net-Zero Site Energy buildings, Net-Zero Emissions buildings, Net-Zero Source Energy buildings, and Net-Zero Cost Energy buildings). A variety of technical, financial, and environmental factors should be considered during the decision-making process of net-zero energy building development, justifying the use of multi-criteria decision analysis methods for the design of net-zero energy buildings. This paper also discussed the contributions of renewable energy generation (hydropower, wind energy, solar, heat pumps, and bioenergy) to the development of net-zero energy buildings and reviewed its role in tackling the decarbonization challenge. Cost-benefit analysis and life cycle assessment of building designs were reviewed to shape the priorities of future development. It is important to develop a universal decision instrument for optimum design and operation of net-zero energy buildings.

A Collection of Presentations on new techniques for developing climatological estimates of the solar resource at all locations on earth at a resolution of 100km, and of developing estimates at half-hour intervals at resolutions of 10 km or less in specific locations.

This paper considers several alternative forms of an energy imbalance market (EIM) proposed in the nonmarket areas of the Western Interconnection. The proposed EIM includes two changes in operating practices that independently reduce variability and increase access to responsive resources: balancing authority cooperation and sub-hourly dispatch. As the penetration of variable generation increases on the power system, additional interest in coordination would likely occur. Several alternative approaches could be used, but consideration of any form of coordinated unit commitment is beyond the scope of this analysis. This report examines the benefits of several possible EIM implementations--both separately and in concert.

Currently active suspension system is more applicable than passive for improving the suspension performance, ensuring the stability and passenger safety in modern automotive suspension system. However, high energy consumption is one of the main disadvantages of implementing this system in real applications. In this paper, the energy consumption of electromagnetic actuators used for an active suspension system controlled by proportional-integral-derivative (PID), fuzzy adaptive PID, and neuron adaptive PID are investigated through simulation studies. Based on the energy consumption and the performance analysis, it has found that it is potential to develop a vibration energy recovery system to achieve the energy balance requirement in active suspension systems.