Energy

Poor Little Rich Countries: Another Look at the Resource Curse

Resource-rich countries are plagued by macroeconomic crises known as “Dutch Disease,” which is associated with the inflation of local currencies on account of a large influx of foreign exchange and a dip in labor supply for non-traded goods. In developing countries, the historical context of state formation is often such that the revenues generated by natural resource exports bolster the stability of authoritarian regimes and the dominant state actors consolidate their power by managing boom-bust cycles to avert crises. Using Mexico, Venezuela, and Angola as paradigmatic cases, this article examines the relevance of outside forces, domestic policies, and the opportunistic forms of engagement with external power chosen by local actors that produced tragic outcomes in each of these instances.

Originally published in Environmental Politics 20, no. 5 (September 2011): 617-632.

Nuclear Power: Should It Have a Role?

Adequate mitigation of the risks of climate change requires rapid displacement of fossil fuels with carbon-free energy sources. This imperative has prompted a growing chorus of energy analysts, policymakers, and industry advocates to press for a resurgence of nuclear energy. Even some environmentalists are urging reconsideration of the nuclear option, so long anathema to their own movement. Yet, with critical problems unsolved—safety and cost, waste storage, and nuclear weapons proliferation—nuclear power remains a deeply problematic response to the climate challenge.

A Failed Experiment: Why Electricity Deregulation Did Not Work and Could Not Work

The massive national experiment in electricity deregulation—launched by over a dozen states more than a decade ago in the wake of the Reagan revolution—has failed on multiple counts. Intended to reduce electricity rates, deregulation instead increased rates. For the ten months through October 2006, average rates in deregulated states were 55 percent higher than in regulated states. Volatility has also increased, and reliability has decreased. This report explains why deregulation failed.

Automobility, Liberalism, and the Ethics of Driving

Automobility, or the myriad institutions that foster car culture, has rarely if ever been put under the lens of liberal political theory, even though driving is one of the most common and widely accepted features of daily life in modern societies. When its implied promise of guaranteeing both freedom and equality is examined more closely, however, it appears that the ethical implications of driving may be darker than initially supposed.

Originally published in Environmental Ethics 29 (2007): 77-90.

Economic Benefits and Feasibility of Strategies to Reduce Petroleum Consumption in California

This report analyzes the economic benefits and the feasibility of implementing Proposition 87, California’s Clean Alternative Energy Act (CAEA), which will create a modest extraction fee on oil produced in California and use the proceeds (estimated at $4 billion over one decade) as research and production incentives for alternative energy, alternative vehicles, energy efficient technologies, and education and training. Based on our analysis, the CAEA will achieve the expected savings of 4 billion gallons of petroleum in 2017, and total savings of 10 billion gallons over ten years between 2007 and 2017. In achieving these savings, the CAEA will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution while stimulating the California economy.

Sustainable Mobility: From Technological Innovation to Societal Learning

LEAP: Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System User Guide

The Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning system (LEAP) is a scenario-based energy-environment modeling tool. Its scenarios are based on comprehensive accounting of how energy is consumed, converted, and produced in a given region or economy under a range of alternative assumptions on population, economic development, technology, price, and so on. With its flexible data structures, LEAP allows for analysis as rich in technological specification and end-use detail as the user chooses.

Public Avenues to Public Spaces: Regulating the Car

Environmental regulation of automobiles faces the problem that the burden of causing air pollution cannot be borne solely by the manufacturer, the owner, or the driver. This paper explores the implications that this constraint has had on the regulatory modes adopted by the state of California to curb automobile pollution for the past three decades. It argues that California’s experience provides us with a particularly stark view of the regulatory conundrum because of the dual nature of the stakes: a highly automobilized society having severe local air pollution problems. Moreover, by creating for itself the global reputation of being the intrepid pioneer in the field, the state’s leading regulatory agency may have become victim of its own remarkable success and gotten locked into a particular pattern of regulation.

Originally published in J. D. Wufhorst and Anne Haugestad, eds., Building Sustainable Communities: Ecological Justice and Global Citizenship (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 1-9.

Technological Change and Regulation in the Car Industry

The choices we have made over the past 200 years about modes and technologies of transportation have brought us unprecedented global interaction and, in many respects, increased personal freedom. However, all this mobility has come at a cost to society, to the economy, and to the environment. This special issue of Greener Management International attempts to inform the broad and systemic change required in the wider concept of automobility by exploring the role of the regulator, in particular in the context of more recent co-operative and partnership approaches with private-sector stakeholders, particularly the automotive industry.

Originally published in Greener Management International 47 (Autumn 2004): 5-11.

The August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States: Technical and Regulatory Issues

The blackout that struck the Northeast and Midwest of the United States, and portions of Canada, on August 14, 2003, had no simple, single cause, as far as is currently known. However, while this blackout cannot be definitely attributed to the restructuring of the electricity industry in the Midwest, it appears that the restructuring process, especially the unbundling of certain electric services, did create conditions that led to the blackout. This report provides a detailed analysis of such impacts.

Can We Get There From Here? The Challenge of Restructuring the Electricity Industry So That All Can Benefit

The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has announced its intent to restructure the electricity industry in this state. The primary objective of this report is to investigate whether small customers will have a reasonable opportunity to benefit from industry restructuring. While it is not possible to predict whether small consumers will benefit from restructuring, the report investigates whether there are plausible scenarios under which small consumers are likely to benefit. In particular, it analyzes the extent to which the requirement of real-time pricing (RTP) to participate directly in wholesale markets is likely to limit individual small consumers from potentially enjoying benefits from a competitive market.

Managing Risk with Renewable Resources

The question of uncertainty and risk in electric utility resource planning has received considerable attention in recent years. One approach to managing risk is for a utility company to invest in diverse power sources such as wind power plants. The authors of this report test this hypothesis by conducting an in-depth analysis of the risk implications of a decision to build a 1600 MW wind power plant instead of a 400 MW gas-fired combined cycle plant. The uncertain inputs included fuel prices, environmental regulations, wind plant output, conventional plant availability, and load growth. This paper examines two different market scenarios: traditional regulation and an unregulated wholesale market characterized either by a power pool or fixed-price contracts of varying duration.

Design of Coordinated Energy and Environmental Policies Using Multicriteria Decision Methods

Assessment of Policies to Support Fuel Cell Buses and the Transition to the Hydrogen Economy

Fuel cells represent a promising clean and efficient energy conversion technology for urban bus fleets throughout the world. Currently, UNDP/GEF-supported demonstration projects are underway in five countries: China, Brazil, Egypt, India, and Mexico. At the end of the GEF project’s lifetime, it is expected that the FCB initiative will have helped to bring fuel cell buses closer to commercialization and make them more attractive to other donors, and—ultimately—to private investors. This report presents an approach to evaluating investments in FCBs in a subsequent commercialization phase. It provides a policy framework to assess the country context favoring the continued support of multilateral institutions and other sources of investment in fuel cell buses.

The Role of Regulators: Energy Efficiency

This paper explores possible responses to the fact that unregulated generation prices are higher than hoped and few consumers are using non-utility power suppliers. It identifies regulatory access points relative to demand-side management and energy efficiency that cross-cut the various restructurings of the electric industry across the US, while pointing out how cross-cutting elements of regulatory roles vary depending on the local situation. Four major categories of leverage points are addressed: planning, retail rate-making, environmental regulation, and funding.

Originally published in Pace Environmental Law Review 18, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 295-307.

Using Modern Bioenergy to Reduce Rural Poverty

This report considers village-scale biomass energy as a means of providing modern energy services to the billions who lack them, thus helping to reduce poverty. It concludes that there are large opportunities for meeting this goal effectively, affordably, and sustainably. However, persistent world-wide efforts to develop and improve bioenergy systems will be needed to achieve this goal and to resolve some key problems associated with bioenergy.

Technology Learning: Wind Electric Generators, Solar Photovoltaics, and Fuel Cells

The purpose of this study is to investigate the empirical basis in recent history for cost reductions for three advanced energy technologies—solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and fuel cells—and their prospects for further cost reductions. The report presents simple models based on manufacturing output and research and development (R&D) spending for each of these three technologies. Policymakers and modelers can use these tools to help assess policies such as the renewable portfolio standard and R&D subsidies, as well as more general policies such as emission taxes or cap-and-trade systems.

Best Practices Guide: Integrated Resource Planning for Electricity

This guide is for resource planners at national and sectoral levels; for businesses or agencies providing electricity services through generation, transmission, or distribution; regulators of electricity markets; and others interested in the structuring of policies, markets, and regulations affecting electricity. It provides the analytical framework and assessment methodologies needed to promote integrated resource planning in different economic, political, and geographic settings.

Can Electric Utility Restructuring Meet the Challenges It Has Created?

Over the past five years, portions of the US electric utility industry have experienced a sweeping series of changes referred to as restructuring. These changes affect both the structure of the organizations involved in the electric utility industry and the institutional arrangements by which decisions involving planning and pricing are made. As change usually does, restructuring creates many challenges. This report identifies some of the challenges created by restructuring and then discusses the extent to which restructuring has met, or can likely meet, the challenges it has created.

Putting the Brakes on Sprawl: Innovative Transportation Solutions from the U.S. and Europe

There is no one formula for reversing the consequences of uncontrolled and unplanned growth, yet there are successful strategies that can help American towns and cities combat sprawl. This report examines some innovative transportation practices in six cities—practices that can lessen sprawl’s impact on our neighborhoods and on our environment. The report groups the problems and solutions under three, interrelated themes: (1) relieving traffic congestion, (2) overcoming inaccessibility, and (3) restoring neighborhood quality of life and downtown vitality.

A Better Approach to Market Power Analysis

This paper shows that analyses of market power for wholesale electric markets are best done using electricity market simulation models rather than the more commonly used Hirschman Herfendahl Index (HHI). Market simulation models are more useful than HHI in determining price impacts due to the exercise of market power, since the HHI is far too simplistic to capture the dynamic nature of electricity markets or the behavior of market participants.

Regulatory Incentives for Demand-Side Management

This review outlines the basic considerations involved in establishing incentives for demand-side management. Its purposes are to provide background material for assessing West Kootenay Power’s DSM incentive mechanism, explore modifications to that incentive structure, and record the final incentive for 2000 that was adopted based on discussions informed by an earlier draft of this report.

Energy Innovations: A Prosperous Path to a Clean Environment

This study analyzes a balanced national strategy that can put the United States on an innovative, prosperous path leading to an economically and environmentally sustainable energy future. This strategy, referred to as the “Innovation Path,” is marked by a set of programs and policies that would guide our economy toward lower cost, less polluting, more secure, and more sustainable ways of producing and using energy. The approach involves setting fair performance standards, creating incentives, providing better information, and reducing transaction costs in order to foster investments in clean and efficient technologies.

Strategies for Reducing Energy Consumption in the Texas Transportation Sector

Texas is the nation’s highest energy consumer and its highest emitter of carbon dioxide, and the state’s contribution to global climate stabilization and local environmental quality will require a re-examination of its transportation system. In this study, four alternative scenarios were constructed, reflecting different energy strategies that Texas could pursue to address these issues. These scenarios suggest that only if very aggressive policies are adopted—such as those modeled in the Visionary Scenario—will transport energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in Texas stabilize, let alone decline.

Avoided Cost Handbook for Electric Utilities

Environmental Sustainability as a Goal in Resource Planning and Policy

Resource planning and policy must consider impacts on the quality of our environment. Economic theory offers both a basis for environmental policy—the allocation of resources based upon individuals’ willingness to pay—and instruments for achieving policy goals, for example emissions taxes and pollution trading systems. This paper points out some of the shortcomings of an economic-based approach, particularly when used as the basis for environmental policy. It calls for a shift to an approach in which sustainability is emphasized.