IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mns/wpaper/wp201207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Renewable Electricity Policies, Heterogeneity, and Cost Effectiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Harrison Fell

    (Division of Economics and Business, Colorado School of Mines)

  • Joshua Linn

    (RFF (Resources for the Future))

Abstract

Renewable electricity policies promote investment in renewable electricity generators and have become increasingly common around the world. Because of intermittency and the composition of other generators in the power system, the value of certain renewables---particularly wind and solar---varies across locations and technologies. This paper investigates the implications of this heterogeneity for the cost effectiveness of renewable electricity prices as compared to one another and to a carbon dioxide emissions price. A simple model of the power system shows that renewable electricity policies cause different mixes of investment in renewable and other generator technologies. Policies also differ according to their effect on electricity prices, and both factors cause the cost effectiveness to vary across policies. We use a detailed, long-run planning model that accounts for intermittency on an hourly basis to compare the cost effectiveness for a range of policies and alternative parameter assumptions. The differences in cost effectiveness are economically significant, where broader policies, such as an emissions price, outperform renewable electricity policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Harrison Fell & Joshua Linn, 2012. "Renewable Electricity Policies, Heterogeneity, and Cost Effectiveness," Working Papers 2012-07, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:mns:wpaper:wp201207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econbus-papers.mines.edu/working-papers/wp201207.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel T. Kaffine & Brannin J. McBee & Jozef Lieskovsky, 2012. "Emissions savings from wind power generation: Evidence from Texas, California and the Upper Midwest," Working Papers 2012-03, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.
    2. Fell, Harrison & Li, Shanjun & Paul, Anthony, 2014. "A new look at residential electricity demand using household expenditure data," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 37-47.
    3. Alberini, Anna & Gans, Will & Velez-Lopez, Daniel, 2011. "Residential consumption of gas and electricity in the U.S.: The role of prices and income," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 870-881, September.
    4. Erin T. Mansur, 2008. "Measuring Welfare in Restructured Electricity Markets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 369-386, May.
    5. Fischer, Carolyn & Newell, Richard G., 2008. "Environmental and technology policies for climate mitigation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 142-162, March.
    6. Daniel T. Kaffine, Brannin J. McBee, and Jozef Lieskovsky, 2013. "Emissions Savings from Wind Power Generation in Texas," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    7. Paul, Anthony & Myers, Erica & Palmer, Karen, 2009. "A Partial Adjustment Model of U.S. Electricity Demand by Region, Season, and Sector," RFF Working Paper Series dp-08-50, Resources for the Future.
    8. Kevin Novan, 2015. "Valuing the Wind: Renewable Energy Policies and Air Pollution Avoided," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 291-326, August.
    9. Carolyn Fischer, 2010. "Renewable Portfolio Standards: When Do They Lower Energy Prices?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 101-120.
    10. Maddala, G S, et al, 1997. "Estimation of Short-Run and Long-Run Elasticities of Energy Demand from Panel Data Using Shrinkage Estimators," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(1), pages 90-100, January.
    11. Alberini, Anna & Gans, Will & Velez-Lopez, Daniel, 2011. "Residential Consumption of Gas and Electricity in the U.S.: The Role of Prices and Income," Sustainable Development Papers 99637, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    12. Barnes, Roberta & Gillingham, Robert & Hagemann, Robert, 1981. "The Short-run Residential Demand for Electricity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(4), pages 541-552, November.
    13. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Stanley S. Reynolds & Mario Samano, 2016. "Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1187-1234.
    14. Peter C. Reiss & Matthew W. White, 2005. "Household Electricity Demand, Revisited," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 853-883.
    15. Lamont, Alan D., 2008. "Assessing the long-term system value of intermittent electric generation technologies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1208-1231, May.
    16. Castillo, Anya & Linn, Joshua, 2011. "Incentives of carbon dioxide regulation for investment in low-carbon electricity technologies in Texas," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1831-1844, March.
    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. Wichsinee Wibulpolprasert, 2016. "Optimal Environmental Policies and Renewable Energy Investment in Electricity Markets," PIER Discussion Papers 47, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Wichsinee Wibulpolprasert, 2016. "Optimal Environmental Policies And Renewable Energy Investment: Evidence From The Texas Electricity Market," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(04), pages 1-41, November.
    3. Fell, Harrison & Li, Shanjun & Paul, Anthony, 2014. "A new look at residential electricity demand using household expenditure data," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 37-47.
    4. Cho, Seong-Hoon & Kim, Taeyoung & Kim, Hyun Jae & Park, Kihyun & Roberts, Roland K., 2015. "Regionally-varying and regionally-uniform electricity pricing policies compared across four usage categories," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 182-191.
    5. Mark Miller & Anna Alberini, 2015. "Sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation, unobserved heterogeneity, price trends, and price endogeneity: Evidence from U.S. Data," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 15/223, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    6. Miller, Mark & Alberini, Anna, 2016. "Sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation, unobserved heterogeneity, price trends, and price endogeneity: Evidence from U.S. Data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 235-249.
    7. Alberini, Anna & Gans, Will & Velez-Lopez, Daniel, 2011. "Residential consumption of gas and electricity in the U.S.: The role of prices and income," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 870-881, September.
    8. Csereklyei, Zsuzsanna, 2020. "Price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    9. Motavasseli, Ali, 2016. "Essays in environmental policy and household economics," Other publications TiSEM b32e287e-169b-4e89-9878-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Hu, Wenhao & Ho, Mun S. & Cao, Jing, 2019. "Energy consumption of urban households in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    11. Mar Reguant, 2018. "The Efficiency and Sectoral Distributional Implications of Large-Scale Renewable Policies," NBER Working Papers 24398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Romero-Jordán, Desiderio & del Río, Pablo & Peñasco, Cristina, 2016. "An analysis of the welfare and distributive implications of factors influencing household electricity consumption," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 361-370.
    13. Kiran B Krishnamurthy, Chandra & Kriström, Bengt, 2013. "A cross-country analysis of residential electricity demand in 11 OECD-countries," CERE Working Papers 2013:5, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics, revised 30 Jun 2014.
    14. Nina Boogen & Souvik Datta & Massimo Filippini, 2014. "Going beyond tradition: Estimating residential electricity demand using an appliance index and energy services," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 14/200, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    15. Boogen, Nina & Datta, Souvik & Filippini, Massimo, 2021. "Estimating residential electricity demand: New empirical evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    16. Su, Yu-Wen, 2019. "Residential electricity demand in Taiwan: Consumption behavior and rebound effect," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 36-45.
    17. Gautam, Tej K. & Paudel, Krishna P., 2018. "Estimating sectoral demands for electricity using the pooled mean group method," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 54-67.
    18. Alberini, Anna & Filippini, Massimo, 2011. "Response of residential electricity demand to price: The effect of measurement error," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 889-895, September.
    19. Hung, Ming-Feng & Chie, Bin-Tzong, 2017. "The long-run performance of increasing-block pricing in Taiwan's residential electricity sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 782-793.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:mns:wpaper:wp201207. 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: Jared Carbone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decsmus.html .

    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.