Blog edited by Professor Lévêque

EU Energy Policy Blog

• Is Europe shooting itself in the foot (to the benefit of Russia)?
  The logic behind the question in the title is straightforward. Iran is a country with very large reserves of natural gas, a lot of it relatively low-cost. With the right investment it could become an exporter of global significance in about a decade. Europe is one of the largest gas markets in the world. Its [...]
  
  
• Why Nuclear Faces Uphill Battle
  In late May, Citigroup released a report titled New Nuclear – the Economics and Politics concluding that prospects for equity investors has further deteriorated. It lists rising nuclear construction costs and more positive long-term prospects for availability and price of natural gas among the reasons why the nuclear option remains an expensive proposition. While the [...]
  
  
• How integrated are European electricity markets?
  Electrons passing through international electricity networks follow the complicated physics of meshed alternating-current grids and do not respect price-zone borders. Correspondingly, scheduling power plants on the basis of national prices without taking into account the real physical networks within and between countries makes it necessary for the system operator to take non-market measures to ensure [...]
  
  
• Using EU gas supply diversification to reinforce Member States’ buyer power
  A recurrent theme in the EU security of supply debate is the need to diversify natural gas imports, and to reduce the EU’s dependence on a few large suppliers. In 2008, the EU’s gas imports comprised some 65% of its total consumption, with over 80% of those imports originating from only three large sellers: around [...]
  
  
• Discussion on the deregulation of electricity markets
  The past two decades have witnessed efforts throughout the world to deregulate electricity markets. The world´s main economies have carried out schemes to put in place efficient and competitive wholesale markets for electricity within the framework of globalization and liberalization. Yet the physical peculiarities of electricity make it a rather complex commodity, and frequent inefficiencies [...]
  
  
• Do VPP option contracts mitigate market power in France?
  In a recent study on the impact of long term call auctioned by EDF on the French day-ahead market we found some quite unexpected results when we analysed the aggregated curves of offers to buy & sell power. To introduce more competition into the French electricity market the European Union constrained the historic operator EDF [...]
  
  
• What will be the EU energy consumption in 2050?
  In the EU like elsewhere the amount of energy that will be consumed in the future is determined as the product of population, wealth and energy intensity. The EU’s population is expected to remain more or less stable to 2050, according to Eurostat increasing from 495 million today to 520 million in 2035 and then [...]
  
  
• Is what is good for China good for the world and vice-versa?
  In promising on a unilateral level to reduce the energy intensity of its economy by more than 40% from 2005 levels by 2020, China has positioned itself among the political leaders in the debate about climate change. Is China’s target ambitious and achievable? China had already taken steps forward a few years ago, since in [...]
  
  
• The single market and green growth: energy, climate change, environment
  The energy sector is one of the late arrivals in the single market. At the same time, it is the sector on which the highest expectations are placed today. 2012 will not be the 20th anniversary of the single market for energy. Rather it will just mark the beginning of the consolidation of a common [...]
  
  
• Innovation trends in nuclear power generation
  The number of patents in a given technological field provides a proxy of the strengths and paths of innovation. Using a worldwide database on patents, we gave a quick glance at patterns in innovation in nuclear technology, its relation with specific historical events and oil prices. We also found interesting trends regarding nuclear innovation in [...]