Identifying Search Space: Evidence from the Renewable Electricity Sector

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilanjana Dutt ◽  
Will Mitchell
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 852
Author(s):  
Florin Teodor Boldeanu ◽  
José Antonio Clemente-Almendros ◽  
Ileana Tache ◽  
Luis Alberto Seguí-Amortegui

The electricity sector was negatively impacted by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), with considerable declines in consumption in the initial phase. Investors were in turmoil, and stock prices for these companies plummeted. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significant negative influence of the pandemic on abnormal returns for the electricity sector, specifically for traditional and renewable companies and the influence of ESG scores, using the event study approach and multi-variate regressions. Our results show that the pandemic indeed had a negative impact on the electricity sector, with renewable electricity companies suffering a sharper decline than traditional ones. Moreover, we find that ESG pillar scores affected electricity companies differently and are sector-specific. For renewable electricity companies, the returns were positively influenced by the environmental ESG scores and negatively by governance ESG scores.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Olczak ◽  
Andris Piebalgs

Gas is considered an important part of the European Union’s (EU) energy mix. Making up a quarter of the energy consumed in the EU, it is widely used by both households and industry. Gas supports the penetration of intermittent renewable electricity and is considered the cleanest of the fossil fuels but its combustion emits a considerable amount of greenhouse gases. In the fight against climate change, the EU has committed itself to the near-complete decarbonisation of the energy sector well before 2050. This will have a significant impact on the gas sector, especially in the EU, which has significant gas transportation and storage assets. This commentary examines two potential pathways that could enable the gas sector to contribute to the EU’s decarbonisation efforts while continuing to play a substantial role in the EU’s energy supply. The pathways include gas and electricity sector coupling and the substantial increase of renewable gas production. Those options, which are not mutually exclusive, provide an opportunity for the gas sector to thrive in a decarbonised energy future. In some cases, it could require changes in the EU’s gas legislation announced by the European Commission to be proposed in 2020.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Hochstetler ◽  
Genia Kostka

This article examines developments in the renewable electricity sector in Brazil and China since 2000. The two countries share many interests with respect to solar and wind power, but institutional differences in state–business relations led to different outcomes. In China, in a context of corporatist state–business relations, state interventions were more far-reaching, with the state coordinating with state-owned banks, offering large financial and investment incentives to state-owned or state-connected enterprises. By contrast, in Brazil’s public–private partnerships, state support to promote renewable energies was shaped by a stronger preference for competitive auctions and stricter financing rules. The differences in state–business relations help explain the observed developmental trajectories in wind and solar power.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Philipp Sasse ◽  
Evelina Trutnevyte

Abstract Achieving current electricity sector targets in Central Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland) will redistribute regional benefits and burdens at sub-national level. Limiting emerging regional inequalities would foster the implementation success. We model one hundred scenarios of electricity generation, storage and transmission for 2035 in these countries for 650 regions and quantify associated regional impacts on system costs, employment, greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions, and land use. We highlight tradeoffs among the scenarios that minimize system costs, maximize regional equality, and maximize renewable electricity generation. Here, we show that these three aims have vastly different implementation pathways as well as associated regional impacts and cannot be optimized simultaneously. Minimizing system costs leads to spatially-concentrated impacts. Maximizing regional equality of system costs has higher, but more evenly distributed impacts. Maximizing renewable electricity generation contributes to minimizing regional inequalities, although comes at higher costs and land use impacts.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olakunle Alao ◽  
Paul Cuffe

Sub-Saharan Africa requires affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity to boost its economic, social, and human development. The main challenge posed to the region's electricity sector is the large investment gap needed to finance new power projects. The employment of new and innovative financing options is required to bridge this investment gap. Independent power projects have become one of the fastest-growing sources of new finance in the region. However, their development is constrained by the limited availability of debt finance for project implementation. The limited capital and bureaucratic burden of traditional financial institutions coupled with the high risks in the region ensures that the debt finance required by independent power projects is raised only after an arduous voyage and at high interest rates. We address these challenges by proposing a novel decentralized finance instrument, a blockchain special purpose vehicle that streamlines the processes in the financial layer of a traditional special purpose vehicle -- finance mobilization, revenue collection, and revenue disbursal. Specifically, the proposed decentralized finance instrument facilitates the mobilization of finance for the special purpose vehicle from a location-independent crowd, revenue collection from the electricity offtaker in a risk-mitigated manner, and disbursal of eventual project revenues to investors.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olakunle Alao ◽  
Paul Cuffe

Sub-Saharan Africa requires affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity to boost its economic, social, and human development. The main challenge posed to the region's electricity sector is the large investment gap needed to finance new power projects. The employment of new and innovative financing options is required to bridge this investment gap. Independent power projects have become one of the fastest-growing sources of new finance in the region. However, their development is constrained by the limited availability of debt finance for project implementation. The limited capital and bureaucratic burden of traditional financial institutions coupled with the high risks in the region ensures that the debt finance required by independent power projects is raised only after an arduous voyage and at high interest rates. We address these challenges by proposing a novel decentralized finance instrument, a blockchain special purpose vehicle that streamlines the processes in the financial layer of a traditional special purpose vehicle -- finance mobilization, revenue collection, and revenue disbursal. Specifically, the proposed decentralized finance instrument facilitates the mobilization of finance for the special purpose vehicle from a location-independent crowd, revenue collection from the electricity offtaker in a risk-mitigated manner, and disbursal of eventual project revenues to investors.


Author(s):  
Lucy Baker ◽  
Jesse Burton ◽  
Hilton Trollip

This chapter explores key processes within South Africa’s electricity sector that evolved under the presidency of Jacob Zuma from his inauguration in 2009 until he was forced out of office in early 2018. These processes include the introduction of a national planning process for electricity; the implementation of a procurement program for privately generated renewable electricity; and a highly controversial nuclear procurement program, since scrapped following Zuma’s departure. The chapter’s exploration takes place within the context of a decade of “state capture” and corruption. Drawing from a wide range of literature on South Africa’s energy policy, it advances perspectives of the “minerals-energy complex” (Fine and Rustomjee 1996), which has been a dominant framework for the analysis of the country’s political economy and its electricity sector. The chapter concludes with a research agenda that brings together the literature on sociotechnical transitions with that of analyses of the nature of the state.


Energy Policy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 378-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Paladino ◽  
Ameet P. Pandit

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Philipp Sasse ◽  
Evelina Trutnevyte

<p>Achieving current electricity sector targets in Central Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland) will redistribute regional benefits and burdens at sub-national level. Limiting emerging regional inequalities would foster the implementation success. We model one hundred scenarios of electricity generation, storage and transmission for 2035 in these countries for 650 regions and quantify associated regional impacts on system costs, employment, greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions, and land use. We highlight tradeoffs among the scenarios that minimize system costs, maximize regional equality, and maximize renewable electricity generation. Here, we show that these three aims have vastly different implementation pathways as well as associated regional impacts and cannot be optimized simultaneously. Minimizing system costs leads to spatially-concentrated impacts. Maximizing regional equality of system costs has higher, but more evenly distributed impacts. Maximizing renewable electricity generation contributes to minimizing regional inequalities, although comes at higher costs and land use impacts.</p>


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