The world around us is moving online: whether leisure activities, news and information, whether communication with friends, contributions to public debates or the purchase of goods: most of our life takes place online. The question is whether this trend also concerns academic practice.

• What are the benefits and opportunities for Higher Education Institutions to (also) move online? At best, many academics still consider online tools a well-intentioned toy; but even if a move online is considered to be an opportunity for research and teaching, individual efforts often remain isolated or fragmented.
• What is the rational for Higher Education Institutions to incorporate a comprehensive digital agenda into their core strategy, and – perhaps even more importantly – how can we concretely achieve a large-scale ‘online move’ within our institutions?

To begin, this workshop will explore how different online tools (social media tools and online learning) have already entered academic practice. Secondly, we will explore the benefits these online tools and environments offer researchers and institutions to create and share knowledge, especially given their interactive, instantaneous, accessible and open characteristics. Finally, we will present several case studies, focusing on how the process of moving larger projects online can be practically achieved within traditional academic institutions.

Watch the Event Recording

#HEonline Tweets

Aspects of Electric Vehicles Charging | Perspectives from the FSR Policy Workshop

FSR Regulatory Policy Workshop Series 2016-2017

In recent years, the EU has strengthen its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, aiming to a 40% GHG decrease by 2030 (with respect to 1990 levels) and a 90-95% cut by 2050.

Despite past technological improvements, the transport sector is still responsible for around one-quarter of Europe’s GHG emissions. Furthermore, the EU Road transport is accountable for more than 70% of all GHG emissions from transport – and also contributes to the increased concentration of air pollutants (such as NOX and PM) in several European cities. In 2011, the European Commission had already outlined a roadmap to reduced GHG emissions in the transport sector (as part of the Transport White Paper) and, in 2016, adopted a new low-emission mobility strategy, to ensure Europe stays competitive and able to respond to the changing mobility needs.

Electric vehicles are an important contributor towards a more sustainable EU transport system.

Electric cars, and their batteries, may also represent a valuable source of flexibility to support the growing decarbonisation of Europe’s electricity sector. Although electric vehicle ownership is expanding (as is the need for widely distributed and publicly accessible charging stations), current practices can potentially create barriers and delay electric vehicle penetration. Fast plug-in charging requires specialised infrastructure and electric vehicles manufacturers have not yet converged onto a standard charging technology. The consequent lack of a common standard may result in (inefficient) parallel charging networks and in barriers to new entrants, unless they are able to use the network of the incumbent manufacturer(s).

Furthermore, competition concerns related to the supply of electricity for charging electric vehicles might arise. It is not yet clear whether electric vehicle charging stations should be considered as part of the (distribution) grid to which they are connected (and therefore subject to third-party access requirements), or if they should be considered as consumer sites.

The workshop, jointly organised by the Energy and Transport Areas of the FSR, will therefore attempt to define the extent to which charging technology would need to be standardised in order to promote electric vehicle penetration as well as which regulatory access regime and optimal business model should be applied to charging stations.

This workshop is exclusively open to national regulators, representatives from public bodies and FSR donors.

What market design for a decarbonised electricity market?

#marketdesign2050

How will the European electricity market develop and function in the future? This is a key question for all stakeholders of the European energy system: energy companies, consumers, policy makers, academics and energy regulators.

The European energy system is facing profound changes whilst it transitions to a decarbonised power system and it leaves behind its heritage of large-scale fossil-fuelled generation units and passive consumers.

Nowadays stakeholders are confronted with the deployment of decentralised renewable generation which progressively reduces the sector’s carbon footprint, and the empowering of the energy customer through demand response and storage solutions.

The structure of the electricity market will not only have to adapt to these changes but try to anticipate them and be prepared to conceive and adopt innovative business models.

The Florence School of Regulation in partnership with EURELECTRIC is seeking to open the debate and gather innovative visions for the functioning of a decarbonised electricity market.

Following our call for contributions, we invite you to save in your agenda the date of 7 June 2017. After a plenary session, the best contributors will be invited to present their work in interactive workshops organised by theme. The main points of the discussions will then be summed up after lunch by experts of the industry and the institutions.

Download the programme

Read more and register here

The Florence School of Regulation is partnering with ENTSO-E in organizing the 2016 Annual Conference, on 8^th December in Brussels.

The event aims to investigate the next steps of the Energy Union, comparing the visions and the real implementation of market design, the future of smart cities, the infrastructure implementation challenge and regional cooperation. It also raises the question: what’s in it for the customer?

Despite the political uncertainty experienced in the current post-Brexit scenario, European citizens still want to see the Energy Union delivered. It is the citizen, and the customer, who is on the move in Europe’s energy landscape. But what does this change look like? What should be expected? How can the sustainability be delivered while maintaining the market in power?

The Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures is the annual event that brings together all the Areas of the Florence School of Regulation. This 6th edition aimed at taking stock of the major challenges infrastructure regulation is currently facing in the context of smart cities.

Continue reading “6th Conference on the Regulation of Infrastructures: Challenges for smart cities”

At the conclusion of our training on State aid in the Energy Sector, there will be a special open lecture from William Scherman, partner at the Washington D.C offices of Gibson Dunn LLP, in which he will examine the role of transmission system operators (TSOs) in the US, what lessons can be learned from these experiences and how these can be applied in the EU.”

Register here

The Policy Advisory Council gather renowned academics, experts from leading energy companies (being also FSR-Energy Major Donors) as well as representatives from the European Commission, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and National Regulatory Authorities to discuss and test the relevance and robustness of FSR research.

This year the Florence School is experimenting a new interactive format to enable and  facilitate the debate and the brainstorming among participants and the FSR discussants. The resulting outcomes will consequently shape the direction of the School’s forthcoming research.

The event will be divided in two sessions, as follows:

• Session I: The Regulation of Storage

• Session II: Integrating EU Power System?

Julian Barquin Gil | Gas in the EU, a golden age or no future?

Download the programme

Please note that this is a closed event and participation is by invitation only.

SEE Regional Conference 2016

The Florence School of Regulation is partnering ENTSO-E in the organisation of the South Eastern Europe Regional Conference, taking place in Thessaloniki (Greece), on Thursday 3^rd November 2016.

The third and last appointment of the ‘Regional Tour’ will engage relevant stakeholders from the policy, industrial and academic sectors to address the main challenges of South East Europe (SEE)’s electricity field with the aim of fostering their cooperation within and across the region. Reinforcing regional cooperation in markets, planning and operations is in fact essential to achieve the Internal Energy Market (IEM) and deliver the benefits of the Energy Union to its citizens.

The Conference will thus investigate how to overcome the current market fragmentation in favour of more liquid cross-border markets in the region; and consequently analyse which regional infrastructures are needed, how to attract sufficient investments for their development and how to optimise their usage. A special focus in the debate will also be given to the potential for TSO-DSO cooperation, smart grids and data management in the SEE region.

Read more information about the event

Speaker: Lawrence H. Goulder, Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University /Director of the Stanford Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis Center
Discussant: Xavier Labandeira, Director, FSR Climate 

In this seminar Professor Goulder presents recent research that evaluates quantitatively the trade-offs between cost-effectiveness and fairness (as measured by the evenness of distributional impacts) from a revenue-neutral US carbon tax.  Applying a numerical general equilibrium model of environment-energy-economy interactions in the USA, Professor Goulder  (1) suggests how the costs of the carbon tax are likely to be distributed across industries and household income groups, (2) shows how these costs differ, depending on the nature of revenue-recycling and various compensation schemes, and (3) evaluates the efficiency costs of reducing inequality in the distribution of policy impacts across industries and household income groups. The research applies a new method for addressing the distributional impacts across households and reveals that these impacts change dramatically over time.

Lawrence H. Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics at the Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis Center.  He is also a University Fellow at Resources for the Future and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research examines the environmental and economic impacts of U.S. and international environmental policies, including policies to deal with climate change and pollution from power plants and automobiles.  His work also explores the “sustainability” of consumption patterns in various countries. At Stanford Goulder teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental economics and policy, and co-organizes a weekly seminar in public and environmental economics.  He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in philosophy and received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford.

Speaker: William Kenneth Jaeger, Professor, Department of Applied Economics, Oregon State University
Discussant: Xavier Labandeira, Director, FSR Climate 

Download the presentation in pdf

How can society overcome the daunting obstacles to collective action and move decisively to slow climate change? The problem of climate change poses unprecedented challenges at the national and international levels. There has been much research on various policy approaches (carbon taxes and cap-and-trade), and there is a literature on the ways that international mechanisms could be implemented. At the same time, however, there is well-established empirical and theoretical research from both economics and political science strongly suggesting that the characteristics of the global climate commons create overwhelming barriers for effective collective action, barriers that may be insurmountable using conventional policy approaches. Indeed, empirical evidence and the very slow progress toward effective abatement policies over the past 25 years suggests that it could take more than 50 years to implement an effective policy to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. The irreversibility of a changed climate, combined with uncertainty and potentially catastrophic damages, suggests that this is no time for wishful thinking. There are no “do-overs.” With this sobering assessment in mind: What kinds of alternative, unconventional, “outside-the-box” actions may hold promise for improving the chances of stabilizing the world’s climate? Three potential options are described that would change these incentives, and that individually, or in combination, could increase the odds of reducing global emissions and slowing climate change. 

William Jaeger is a professor in the Department of Applied Economic at Oregon State University. His research includes environmental and resource economics, taxation and public economics, agricultural economics and development economics. In particular his work addresses water, climate change, land and energy policy issues, as well as issues related to economic growth and the environment. Before coming to Oregon State in 2001, he was on the economics faculty at Williams College (1989-2001). He has also been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy, and has taught at the University of Washington and the University of Oregon. His prior experience includes five years as a research economist at the World Bank where he worked on development policy in Africa. He also spent four years living in West Africa. Jaeger is the author of Environmental Economics for Tree Huggers and Other Skeptics, Island Press in 2005.

FSR Regulatory Policy Workshop Series 2016-2017

The establishment of a fully integrated European energy market is one of the five mutually-reinforcing and closely interrelated dimensions of the EU Energy Union strategy aimed at bringing greater energy security, sustainability and competitiveness to the EU’s economy. In this regard, the integration of national markets has been one of the primary objectives of EU energy policy since the 1990s and has been pursued throughout three legislative packages and detailed provisions defined in Network Codes and Guidelines.

The achievement of a fully integrated and well-functioning EU energy market requires both an optimal level of physical interconnection between national systems and the efficient use of such interconnection. Since the former does not necessarily imply a sufficient level of physical interconnection capacity to meet the demand for transport services at all times, the latter has to ensure that the available capacity is allocated in the most efficient way and is fully utilised when congestion occurs. Consequently, capacity allocation and congestion management procedures have been introduced both in the electricity and gas sectors; in some cases long before the entry into force of the formal provisions.

This Workshop aims at reviewing the experience with the implementation of capacity allocation and congestion management procedures in the electricity and gas sectors, considering both the early voluntary and the mandatory implementation phases. The discussion is also expected to inquire into the way cross-border capacity can be valued in the intra-day timeframe and the best indicators to signal congestion at gas interconnection points. While recognising the different characteristics of the two sectors, the Workshop will also consider whether there are lessons learned from one sector which can be relevant for the other.

The introductory session of the Workshop will broadly analyse the experience with capacity allocation and congestion management in the electricity and gas sectors. The following two Sessions will focus on the respective and specific experiences in the electricity and gas, identifying the most topical and yet – open issues.

This workshop is exclusively open to national regulators, representatives from public bodies and FSR donors.

Special registration requests must be submitted to the coordinator of this workshop, Ilaria Bellacci.

Download the programme

Register here

Programme

Papers and presentations
Videos

The FSR Climate Annual Conference focused on the economic assessment of European climate policies.

The conference covered the main climate-related existing policies, at EU, national and subnational levels and  included four sessions, each of them with an invited speaker:

• EU ETS: Simone Borghesi (University of Siena)
• Carbon/energy taxation: Thomas Sterner (University of Gothenburg)
• Energy efficiency policies: Joachim Schleich (Grenoble Ecole de Management and Fraunhofer ISI)
• Renewable policies: Karsten Neuhoff (DIW Berlin and Technical University Berlin)

Roger Guesnerie (Collège de France), gave the keynote speech.

Jos Delbeke, Director General for Climate Action, European Commission, attended the conference and gave a keynote speech during the social dinner of the event. 

Videos

Interview with Jos Delbeke, Director General for Climate Action, European Commission

Keynote speech:
Roger Guesnerie, Collège de France

Plenary Presentations

Karsten Neuhoff, DIW Berlin

Heterogeneity in household preferences – implications for energy efficiency modeling and policy
Joachim Schleich, Grenoble Ecole de Management

Carbon tax: an option in designing climate policies
Thomas Sterner, University of Gothenburg
 

The EU ETS and its followers: connecting the dots
Simone Borghesi, University of Siena
 

Papers/Presentations

1 DECEMBER

Plenary presentation

How can renewables support Europe Karsten Neuhoff, DIW Berlin

Session 1: Energy and carbon taxation

Cars, carbon taxes and CO2 emissions (PAPER) Julius Andersson, LSE

Is the gasoline tax regressive in the twenty-first century? Taking wealth into account (EUI WORKING PAPER) Jordi J. Teixidó, Stefano F. Verde, FSR Climate, EUI

Tax incidence in the fuel market: evidence from station-level data (PAPER) Jarkko Harju, Tuomas Kosoneny, Marita Laukkanen, VATT

Efficiency and distributional impacs of Swiss energy policies Mirjam Kosch, ETH Zurich, Florian Landis, Sebastian Rausch

Session 2: Renewable energy

Carbon mitigation in the electric power sector under cap-and-trade and renewables policies (PAPER) Eric Delarue, KU Leuven, Kenneth Van den Bergh
The impact of carbon pricing on renewables’ profitability (PAPER) Alexander Verhagen, Kris Poncelet, Eric Delarue, KU Leuven

Renewables vs. conventional power: peak-load pricing with different types of dispatchability (PAPER) Klaus Eisenack, Mathias Mier, University of Oldenburg

The French nuclear bet (PAPER) Quentin Perrier, CIRED

How critical is the CO2 price for the recovery of electricity prices in CWE? Johan Albrecht, Gent University, Lennert Thomas, Sam Hamels

Keynote speech:

Economic debates on the design of climate policies : selected insights 
Roger Guesnerie, Collège de France

Plenary presentation

Heterogeneity in household preferences – implications for energy efficiency modeling and policy
Joachim Schleich, Grenoble Ecole de Management

Session 3: Climate and energy policy issues

The role of moderate carbon prices in electricity sector decarbonisation (see chapter 3) Jesse Scott, IEA

Hitting the mark on missing money: how to ensure reliability at least cost to consumers (PAPER) Michael Hogan, Regulatory Assistance Project

EU Reference Scenario 2016 Energy, transport and GHG emissions (REPORT) Joan Canton, DG Energy, European Commission

Translating the collective climate goal into a common climate commitment (POLICY BRIEF) – presentation Peter Cramton, University of Maryland and EUI, Axel Ockenfels, Jean Tirole

Session 4: Households and climate policies

Preferences for energy efficiency vs. renewables: how much does a ton of CO2 emissions cost? (download the paper here) Anna Alberini, Andrea Bigano, Milan Ščasný, Charles University, Iva

Zvěřinová

Which climate change policies do Czech, British, and Polish citizens prefer? (PAPER, see also the presentation) Milan Ščasný, Iva Zvěřinová, Charles University, Mikolaj Czajkowski, Eva Kyselá, Katarzyna Zagórska

Welfare and redistribution in energy markets with solar power Fabian Feger | University of Bern, Nicola Pavanini, Doina Radulescu

Carbon is forever: a climate change experiment on cooperation Giacomo Calzolari, Marco Casari, University of Bologna, Riccardo Ghidoni

Plenary presentation

Carbon tax: an option in designing climate policies
Thomas Sterner, University of Gothenburg

Session 5: International dimension of climate policy

The effect of carbon taxes on emissions and carbon leakage: evidence from the European Union Maria Alsina Pujols, University of Zurich

Carbon-motivated border tax adjustment: a proposal for the EU Paola Rocchi, University of Barcelona, Iñaki Arto Jordi Roca Mònica Serrano

Foreign direct investment and the pollution haven hypothesis – evidence from listed firms Grégoire Garsous, OECD, Tomasz Koźluk

Global warming as an asymmetric public bad (PAPER) Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet,  CIRED, Céline Guivarch

Session 6: Multiple instruments in climate policy

Second-best analysis of European energy policy: is one bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Carolyn Fischer, Michael Hübler, Oliver Schenker, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management

Equity vs efficiency in energy regulation Carolyn Fischer,  Resources for the Future, William Pizer

Paradox of overlapping climate policy Instruments Roland Magnusson, University of Helsinki

Compliance technology and self-enforcing agreements (PAPER) Alessia Russo,  University of Oslo, Francesco Lancia, Bard Harstad

2 DECEMBER

Session 7: Investment and innovation

Laggard sectors and green growth policies Claudio Baccianti, ZEW

Investment, technological progress and energy efficiency (PAPER) Antonia Diaz, Luis A. Puch, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The political economy of energy innovation (PAPER) Shouro Dasgupta, FEEM, Enrica De Cian, Elena Verdolini

Session 8: EU ETS

EU ETS, free allocations, and activity level thresholds: the devil lies in the details Frédéric Branger, Jean-Pierre Ponssard, Oliver Sartor, Misato Sato, LSE

Emission benchmark setting in the materials sector: an analytical framework Vera Zipperer, Misato Sato, Karsten Neuhoff, DIW Berlin

Differentiating permits allocation across areas Jean-Philippe Nicolai, ETH Zurich, Jorge Zamorano

Facts and figures for finalising an effective reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (PAPER – see also presentation) Stefan P. Schleicher, University of Graz, Angela Köppl, Alexander Zeitlberger 

Plenary presentation

The EU ETS and its followers: connecting the dots
Simone Borghesi, University of Siena

Other conference’s editions:

FSR Climate Annual Conference 2017

FSR Climate Annual Conference 2015

Bios of keynote and invited speakers 

Simone Borghesi

Simone Borghesi (M.Sc. University College London, Ph.D. European University Institute) is Associate Professor at the University of Siena. He worked at the International Monetary Fund, the Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei and the University of Pescara. He is currently President-elect of the Italian Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (IAERE) and Co-director of the research group R4S (Regulation for Sustainability). He has been member/Unit coordinator of several Italian and European research projects and invited to the UN 2012 High-Level Meeting on Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining A New Economic Paradigm. He published over 50 articles in edited volumes and peer-reviewed international journals and three books. His main research areas are globalisation and sustainable development, the environmental Kuznets curve, emission trading, evolutionary game models. 

Roger Guesnerie

Roger Guesnerie has been Professor at Collège de France and Chairman of the Board of the Paris School of Economics until 2015. He has taught in France and abroad, (LSE and top American Universities) and served as coeditor of Econometrica (1984–1989). He has published more than a hundred academic articles and a dozen of books. His fields of interest include general equilibrium, public economics, incentives and mechanism design, and more recently the assessment of expectations formation and climate policies. He was elected President of several scholarly societies, notably the Econometric Society (1996), and the European Economic Association (1994). He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

Karsten Neuhoff

Karsten Neuhoff is head of the Department Climate Policy at the German Institute for Economic Research and Professor for Energy and Climate Policy at the Technical University Berlin. He has published 42 journal articles and 4 books on the topic of Power Market design, Technology Policy in the context of materials sector and renewables technologies, Emission Trading and International Climate Policy. He is leading research and advice projects for the EU Commission and governments for several EU member states. He holds a Diploma in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Joachim Schleich

Joachim Schleich received economics degrees from University of Mannheim (Diploma), University of Florida (MSc) and Virginia Tech (PhD). He is Professor of Energy Economics at Grenoble Ecole de Management (France), where he leads the Energy Management Team. He is also employed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Germany), and an Adjunct Professor at Virginia Tech (USA). Schleich has consulted for the European Commission and several national governments on energy efficiency policy, the EU ETS, and international climate policy. He has published more than forty articles in peer-reviewed journals. His current research focuses on conceptual and empirical analyses of factors driving company and household adoption of energy-efficient technologies, the evaluation of energy efficiency policies, and on corporate response to the EU ETS.

Thomas Sterner

Thomas Sterner, is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on the design of policy instruments to deal with resource and environmental problems. Sterner has published more than a dozen books and a hundred articles in refereed journals, mainly on environmental policy instruments with applications to energy, climate, industry, transport economics and resource management in developing countries. With Gunnar Köhlin, he has founded the Environment for Development Initiative. Sterner is the recipient of the Myrdal Prize and has been President of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. In 2012-2013 he served as Visiting Chief Economist of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York and in 2015-2016 he was guest professor at the Collège de France.