• Energy Research
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In this paper the German congestion management regime is analyzed and future congestion management costs are assessed given a higher share of intermittent renewable generation. In this context, cost-based re-dispatching of power plants and technical flexibility through topology optimization are considered as market-based and technical congestion management methods. To replicate the current market regime in Germany a two-step procedure is chosen consisting of a transactional spot market model and a congestion management model. This uniform pricing model is compared to a nodal pricing regime. The results show that currently congestion can mainly be managed by re-dispatching power plants and optimizing the network topology. However, congestion management costs tend to increase significantly in future years if the developments of transmission as well as generation infrastructure diverge. It is concluded that there is a need for improving the current congestion management regime to achieve an efficient longterm development of the German electricity system.

This paper assesses the economic impacts of linking the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) to emerging schemes beyond Europe in the presence of a post-Kyoto agreement in 2020. Numerical simulations with a multi-country equilibrium model of the global carbon market show that linking the European ETS induces only minor economic benefits. As trading is restricted to energy-intensive companies that are assigned high initial emissions, the major compliance burden is carried by the non-trading industries excluded from the linked ETS. In the presence of parallel government trading under a post-Kyoto Protocol, the burden of the excluded sectors can be substantially alleviated by international permit trade at the country level. However, the parallel carbon markets of linked ETS companies and post-Kyoto governments are still separated here. From an efficiency perspective, the most desirable future climate policy regime is thus represented by a joint trading system facilitating international emissions trading between ETS companies and post-Kyoto governments. While the Clean Development Mechanism is not able to attenuate the inefficiencies within linked ETS, in a parallel or joint trading regime the economy-wide access to project-based abatement options in developing countries induces large additional cost-savings.

With the case of Lliuya v. RWE, climate change litigation has come to Germany. The article explores the German law of torts or delict, asking whether it has something to offer to victims of climate change. The essential elements of negligence liability, i.e. scope of protection, duty of care, breach of duty, regulatory compliance defense, are examined. Another important category is the law of nuisance. As it turns out, the German of delict attaches many strings to a successful damages claim.

Industrialized countries around the world have set ambitious climate targets and face the challenge that existing mechanisms for CO2 pricing alone are not sufficient to achieve the desired level of ambition. In a multi-level electricity market model that captures investments in grid and generation capacities as well as electricity trading, we analyze different policy approaches to curb emissions by phasing out emission-intensive technologies, expanding renewables or by simply tightening CO2 pricing. We extend existing modelling approaches to endogenize (welfare-optimal) expansion of renewable energy capacities, taking into account the respective grid expansion necessary for a particular expansion path. Applying the approach to the German electricity market shows that both, the strengthening of the incentives from emissions trading through a minimum CO2 price as well as a forced complete coal exit lead to a significant additional decrease in emissions. The stepwise coal phase-out as decided in Germany, on the other hand, does not come close to achieving this reduction in emissions, largely due to the sequence of the phase-out decided (first hard coal, then lignite). The avoided CO2 emissions are accompanied by significant welfare gains in the respective scenarios. Further welfare gains can be achieved through a system-optimal expansion of renewables, especially because grid expansion can be avoided. We also consider different ways to remunerate renewables for all scenarios. It turns out that the renewable generators’ revenues from the electricity market together with the revenues from CO2 pricing are fully sufficient to finance renewables.

The bigger picture Renewable energy technologies are necessary to maintain secure energy supplies and limit the impacts of climate change. Developments of these technologies are mostly planned purely based on economic criteria, but this can lead to resistance in local communities. Among the diverse renewable technologies, especially onshore wind turbines may negatively affect the scenicness of beautiful landscapes. We analyze how cost-efficient local energy systems could be impacted through public opposition toward onshore wind. In doing so, we draw on a database of public evaluation of landscape beauty across Germany. In the energy systems of German municipalities with high scenicness, onshore wind would mainly be replaced by solar photovoltaics. Depending on the location, the local energy systems may be associated with a significant increase in costs and CO$_{2}$ emissions. These insights can support local and national stakeholders in making decisions relating to energy and climate policy. Summary Local resistance often hinders renewable energy technology developments, especially for onshore wind. In decentralized energy systems, the landscape impact of wind turbines or transmission lines is a key barrier to public acceptance. By using landscape scenicness as a proxy for public acceptance, we quantify its impact on the optimal energy systems of 11,131 German municipalities. In municipalities with high scenicness, it is likely that onshore wind will be rejected, leading to higher levelized costs of energy by up to about 7 €-cent/kWh. Onshore wind would be replaced mainly by solar photovoltaics and imports, and the cost-optimal energy systems would be associated with higher CO$_{2}$ emissions of up to about 200 gCO$_{2}$/kWh compared with an average of around 50 gCO$_{2}$/kWh. The findings help to identify municipalities where public resistance to onshore wind could be particularly high and support the scientific and policy debate about the location of onshore wind farms.

The Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the first “global” and largest carbon offset instrument, supplementing national or regional cap and trade systems such as the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This paper draws on weekly IDEACarbon survey data from 2008 to 2010 to empirically examine how investor’s perception of the CDM regulatory and administrative framework affects the price of CERs in secondary markets (denoted as sCER) and the price spread with EUAs. Results from cointegration analysis and GARCH modeling indicate that the perception of investors about the relative stringency and efficiency of this framework is a significant determinant of the sCER price and the EUA-sCER price spread. An increase in perceived stringency causes significant increases in sCER prices and a substantial narrowing of the EUA/sCER price spread (and vise versa). The analysis also shows that the EU ETS market was instable over the period examined, with a structural shift occurring at the end of 2008 likely due to the 2008 financial crisis.

AbstractWe analyze whether lower rents for energy-inefficient apartments reflect tenants’ willingness to pay due to a higher green awareness, purchasing power, or energy consumption costs. Based on a German rental apartment dataset from Q1 2007 to Q1 2019, we use interaction terms for socioeconomic characteristics in a hedonic regression model. We find that rents are lower for apartments with higher energy consumption, even in neighborhoods with lower levels of green awareness. This relationship is stronger in neighborhoods with higher purchasing power, such that communities with low levels of green awareness and high purchasing power show the steepest negative slope for increasing energy consumption (−8.6% from the highest to lowest rating). Thus, the rent-decreasing effect of purchasing power is higher than that of green awareness. Splitting the entire period into smaller windows, we find that the interaction effect of green awareness has emerged in the most recent years (2017–2019). This may be driven by changes in regulation, which have made it easier for tenants to assess the energy consumption before they rent, or by a general increase in green awareness over this period.