Climate Adaption for Energy Utilities: Lessons Learned From California's Pioneering Regulatory Actions

This Policy Brief provides lessons learned from regulation of climate adaptation by energy utilities. The regulatory bodies responsible for oversight of investor-owned energy utilities are ill-equipped to regulate climate adaptation in the energy sector; but they may be the only institutions with authority to do so. In 2018, the California Public Utilities Commission initiated the first quasi-legislative procedure to regulate investor owned energy utilities' climate adaptation activities. The Commission's new rules for climate adaptation offer some general guidance on climate adaptation, and require investor owned utilities to conduct and submit climate vulnerability studies. Structural limitations, including conflicting interest, capacity of staff, and scope of the problem hampered the success of adaptation regulation, which failed to address fundamental questions about what constitutes adaptive measures.

Nexus between Internal Controls System and Effectiveness in Revenue Collection in Energy Utilities in Tanzania

This research examined the nexus between internal controls system and revenue collection effectiveness in energy utilities in Tanzania. Multiple regression analysis was applied to the collected data from respondents. It was revealed that, control environments and control activities have insignificant and positive association with revenue collection effectiveness while risk assessment and monitoring of controls had significant and positive influence to effectiveness in revenue collection. In order to improve revenue collection efficiency in energy utilities and other related public authorities in Tanzania, it is indispensable to support and improve internal controls system like segregation of duties, reconciliations and physical controls so as to bring efficiency in revenue collection. Also, assessment of risk is another control which needs to be undertaken in order to encourage revenue collection effectiveness. For all these controls to be active, monitoring of controls should be highly undertaken on periodic basis. Since our research considered energy sector as the study area particularly at TANESCO in Morogoro region, it is recommended that next studies should take into consideration other sectors and related public bodies.

Influence of Population Income on Energy Consumption for Heating and Its CO2 Emissions in Cities

As a result of the increase in city populations, and the high energy consumption and emissions of buildings, cities in general, and buildings in particular, are the focus of attention for public organizations and utilities. Heating is among the largest consumers of energy in buildings. This study examined the influence of the income of inhabitants on the consumption of energy for heating and the CO2 emissions in city buildings. The study was carried out using equivalized disposable income as the basis for the analysis and considered the economies of scale of households. The results are shown per inhabitant and household, by independently considering each city. Furthermore, to more clearly identify the influence of the population income, the study was also carried out without considering the influence of the climate. The method was implemented in the case of Spain. For this purpose, Spanish cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants were analyzed. The results show that, both per inhabitant and per household, the higher the income of the inhabitants, the greater the consumption of energy for heating and the greater the emissions in the city. This research aimed to help energy utilities and policy makers make appropriate decisions, namely, planning for the development of facilities that do not produce greenhouse gases, and enacting laws to achieve sustainable economies, respectively. The overall aim is to achieve the objective of mitigating the impact of emissions and the scarcity of energy resources.

Government choice between contract termination and contract expiration in re-municipalization: a case of historical recurrence?

Since the early 2000s, the terms ‘re-municipalization’ and ‘reverse privatization’ entered the lexicon as several examples emerged of governments taking ownership of assets and services that had previously been privatized or outsourced. Various methods are used to implement re-municipalization decisions and differences are observed across countries and sectors. The approaches most frequently adopted are re-municipalization through contract termination and contract expiration. We utilize a wide database of re-municipalizations worldwide to analyse the factors that influence governments’ choice between these two approaches. The results from our multivariate analysis find a pattern of historical recurrence in the characteristics of the current re-municipalization process. Points for practitioners Most governments wait for contracts to expire but the number of contract terminations is sizeable. Re-municipalization in larger cities, network sectors (particularly water) and implemented by municipal governments have a positive association with termination. Re-municipalization of energy utilities and conducted in countries of French legal origin is positively associated with contract expiration. Patterns of contemporary re-municipalization closely resemble those witnessed in the ‘Progressive Era’.

Barriers for Clean Energy Projects

Clean energy may offer a more environmentally friendly outcome than fossil fuels. However, clean energy is beset by uncertainties when the sun does not shine through and the wind does not blow. Worse still, science has not yet overcome scalability issues that are compounded by lack of technological knowhow on how to store solar and wind energy. The electrical “green-outs” of August 2020 in California are a reminder that without storage facilities for clean energy, utilities are driven to spot markets for electricity rendered from traditional sources of energy as economic setbacks occur due to compromised supplies of electricity. Without means of energy storage, new technology cannot fully replace the old. One can only hope that the dream to build a future based on renewable energy will lead to discoveries that will overcome scalability and storage issues.

Multinational energy utilities in the energy transition: A configurational study of the drivers of FDI in renewables

The global energy system has a long way to go to meet international climate goals, and significant investment in renewable energy is required to accelerate the energy transition (IRENA, 2016, 2019). We examine how firm- and country-specific conditions in the electric utility sector impact foreign direct investment (FDI) in renewables. Using a unique dataset of 289 greenfield investments by 17 multinational energy utilities, we employ a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) that yields five causal configurations leading to FDI in renewables and four configurations leading to investment in non-renewables. Our results indicate that private MNEs are at the forefront of investment in renewables, and while state-owned MNEs (SOMNEs) do invest in them, they tend to follow strategies that are less risky compared to private MNEs and more responsive to host-country incentives. Our analysis suggests that for private MNEs, international experience is strongly associated with investment in renewables, while for SOMNEs it is associated with investment in non-renewables. Further, we also identify instances where MNEs contribute simultaneously to a ‘race to the top’ and a ‘race to the bottom’ by investing in both renewables and non-renewables in different markets, thereby reducing the pace of the energy transition.

BLOCKCHAIN IN PUBLIC SECTOR

The Internet has radically transformed access to and exchange of information, and it plays a fundamental role in today's society and economy. Yet it was difficult to imagine all the services offered today when the first tools necessary for its democratization were introduced thirty years ago. The blockchain, since the publication of the white paper of bitcoin as the first digital asset, has considerably broadened the range of its fields of application and its potential use cases in ten years; it could play, in different forms, a role comparable to that of the Internet in an area that the latter does not cover: trusted IT and legal transactions. Indeed, while the Internet is the privileged vehicle for the exchange of all digitized forms of information, it is not the guarantor, as a network infrastructure, of its uniqueness or its functioning. Blockchain technology has evolved from a niche subject to the hottest tech disruption buzzword, but there is still a lot of confusion about the subject. Without a clear understanding about what Blockchains are, their potential public sector potential impact is sometimes misunderstood or, more often, ignored. Questions related to their technical complexity, risk, security, and appropriateness often serve as obstacles to government officials’ ability to truly engage with this emerging technology. In this article, we consider the key features and types of blockchain technology and describe the potential use of blockchain technology in the public sector. In general, the blockchain can be used in the public sector to address the following tasks: authentication, traceability and uniqueness. We have identified ten potential directions of using blockchain technologies in public sector: self-sovereign identity, contract and vendor management, notarization, aid management, secure data sharing, financial services and banking, voting, verifiable diplomas and certificates, energy utilities, copyrights.