Major Reforms in Electricity Pricing: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment

The global energy mix and cost structure of the power industry are experiencing a redefinition. Many countries are revamping electricity-pricing systems to guarantee fixed-cost recovery, often by raising the fixed charge of two-part tariff schemes. However, a key assumption of two-part tariff schemes and associated fixed cost recoveries is that consumers discriminate fixed from marginal costs. We conduct a quasi-experiment with data from a major electricity price reform recently implemented in Spain and find robust evidence indicating that consumers fail to distinguish between fixed and marginal costs. As a result, policymakers are not achieving the goal of cost recovery

China’s Natural Gas Price Reform and Its Impact Analysis

With the further development of new types of industrialization and urbanization in China, the environmental deterioration and energy safety problems have been increasingly prominent. As a clean, efficient and high-quality energy source, natural gas has ushered in unprecedented development opportunities. In recent decades, the natural gas consumption has kept high-speed growth in China, but its proportion in the energy consumption structure still has a long way to go to reach the international average level, which is mainly ascribed to the not perfect enough market-oriented reform of natural gas price. Natural gas price reform is not a simple project, but instead, it is complicated as it needs to integrate the reform in the natural gas industry chain, management system reform and market supervision of natural price in different phases. Therefore, promoting the natural gas price reform and establishing a perfect supervision system is the only way to ensure China’s energy safety and realize the transformation and development of low-carbon economy. In this research, the current situation and problems existing in the natural gas price reform in China were analyzed, and the concrete solutions specific to the natural gas industry chain, pricing and market supervision.

Research on Post Investment Evaluation of Distribution Network Infrastructure Project Adapting to Transmission and Distribution Price Reform

Under the background of the continuous promotion of the current transmission and distribution price reform, the company's investment strategy is constantly inclined to the distribution network, so it is more important to evaluate the implementation process and effect of its investment. Therefore, on the basis of the current distribution network post evaluation work, it is urgent to adjust the project investment post evaluation index system adaptively, and strengthen its application in investment management, so as to give play to its greater value in the company's investment lean management. For this reason, combined with the requirements of the current transmission and distribution price reform, this paper puts forward two suggestions for the current post evaluation work: first, to adapt to the transmission and distribution price reform, it is suggested to optimize the existing indicators and improve the adaptability of post evaluation work; second, it is suggested to strengthen the application of post evaluation results. Through the optimization of the above two points, the closed-loop investment management of distribution network project is formed, and the efficiency of investment management is improved.