IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/enejou/v39y2018i1p143-158.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Caused the Drop in European Electricity Prices? A Factor Decomposition Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Lion Hirth

Abstract

European wholesale electricity prices have dropped by nearly two thirds since their all-time high around 2008. Different factors have been blamed, or praised, for having caused the price slump: the expansion of renewable energy; the near-collapse of the European emissions trading scheme; over-optimistic power plant investments; a decline in final electricity consumption; and cheap coal and natural gas. This ex-post study of European electricity markets from 2008 to 2015 uses a fundamental power market model to quantify their individual contributions on day-ahead prices. The two countries we study in detail, Germany and Sweden, differ significantly: fuel and CO2 prices were important price drivers in Germany, but in Sweden it was electricity demand. This difference is explained by the nature of the hydro-dominate Nordic electricity system. In both countries, however, the single largest factor depressing prices was the expansion of renewable energy. At the same time, Germany's nuclear phase-out had an upward effect on prices. If one defines the Energiewende as the combination of these two policies, its net effect on power prices was negligible.

Suggested Citation

  • Lion Hirth, 2018. "What Caused the Drop in European Electricity Prices? A Factor Decomposition Analysis," The Energy Journal, , vol. 39(1), pages 143-158, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:39:y:2018:i:1:p:143-158
    DOI: 10.5547/01956574.39.1.lhir
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/01956574.39.1.lhir
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5547/01956574.39.1.lhir?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hirth, Lion, 2013. "The market value of variable renewables," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 218-236.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Keppler, Jan Horst & Quemin, Simon & Saguan, Marcelo, 2022. "Why the sustainable provision of low-carbon electricity needs hybrid markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    2. Csereklyei, Zsuzsanna & Qu, Songze & Ancev, Tihomir, 2019. "The effect of wind and solar power generation on wholesale electricity prices in Australia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 358-369.
    3. Simshauser, P., 2019. "On the impact of government-initiated CfD’s in Australia’s National Electricity Market," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1901, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Wang, Jingxing & Chung, Seokhyun & AlShelahi, Abdullah & Kontar, Raed & Byon, Eunshin & Saigal, Romesh, 2021. "Look-ahead decision making for renewable energy: A dynamic “predict and store” approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    5. Karsten Neuhoff & Nils May & Jörn C. Richstein, 2018. "Renewable Energy Policy in the Age of Falling Technology Costs," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1746, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Curtis, John & Lynch, Muireann Á. & Zubiate, Laura, 2016. "The impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on electricity markets: A case study on Ireland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 186-198.
    7. Christopher Kath & Florian Ziel, 2018. "The value of forecasts: Quantifying the economic gains of accurate quarter-hourly electricity price forecasts," Papers 1811.08604, arXiv.org.
    8. Würzburg, Klaas & Labandeira, Xavier & Linares, Pedro, 2013. "Renewable generation and electricity prices: Taking stock and new evidence for Germany and Austria," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 159-171.
    9. Merrick, James H. & Bistline, John E.T. & Blanford, Geoffrey J., 2024. "On representation of energy storage in electricity planning models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    10. Mwampashi, Muthe Mathias & Nikitopoulos, Christina Sklibosios & Konstandatos, Otto & Rai, Alan, 2021. "Wind generation and the dynamics of electricity prices in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    11. Winkler, Jenny & Gaio, Alberto & Pfluger, Benjamin & Ragwitz, Mario, 2016. "Impact of renewables on electricity markets – Do support schemes matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 157-167.
    12. René Aïd & Matteo Basei & Huyên Pham, 2020. "A McKean–Vlasov approach to distributed electricity generation development," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 91(2), pages 269-310, April.
    13. Davis, Dominic & Brear, Michael J., 2024. "Impact of short-term wind forecast accuracy on the performance of decarbonising wholesale electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    14. Luis M. Abadie & José M. Chamorro, 2014. "Valuation of Wind Energy Projects: A Real Options Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(5), pages 1-38, May.
    15. Paul Simshauser & Farhad Billimoria & Craig Rogers, 2021. "Optimising VRE plant capacity in Renewable Energy Zones," Working Papers EPRG2121, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    16. Marshman, Daniel & Brear, Michael & Ring, Brendan, 2022. "Impact of unit commitment and RoCoF constraints on revenue sufficiency in decarbonising wholesale electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    17. Ruhnau, Oliver & Hirth, Lion & Praktiknjo, Aaron, 2020. "Heating with wind: Economics of heat pumps and variable renewables," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    18. Li, Yan & Feng, Tian-tian & Liu, Li-li & Zhang, Meng-xi, 2023. "How do the electricity market and carbon market interact and achieve integrated development?--A bibliometric-based review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    19. Robert Cruickshank & Gregor Henze & Rajagopalan Balaji & Bri-Mathias Hodge & Anthony Florita, 2019. "Quantifying the Opportunity Limits of Automatic Residential Electric Load Shaping," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-19, August.
    20. Leonard Burg & Gonca Gürses-Tran & Reinhard Madlener & Antonello Monti, 2021. "Comparative Analysis of Load Forecasting Models for Varying Time Horizons and Load Aggregation Levels," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-16, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:39:y:2018:i:1:p:143-158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.