The electricity sector is facing a new wave of changes supported by new business models, two of which are key to our understanding of the ongoing transformations. The first model secures ex-ante investments into fixed cost generation assets with guaranteed long-term revenue streams. It is typical of investments into green generation, be they wind or solar, onshore or offshore, utility-scale or individual prosumer, within regulated schemes or private bilateral contracting. The second model is built with the light asset approach typical of the digitalisation era. It favours particular product characteristics for targeted customers and has many variants: aggregators as new intermediaries; digital platforms bypassing intermediaries; direct peer-to-peer exchange such as blockchain; fleets of consumption, generation and storage devices managed ‘behind the meter’, such as mini-grids or off-grid. Between the two, transmission and distribution grids will have to reinvent, as much as regulatory frames will permit, to create efficient loops of deeper interaction with the active users of the grids in operation and investments.
We examine the optimal behavior of carbon-emitting companies operating under the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS), under which firms are obliged to purchase emission permits on the secondary [...]
The Brief explores pathways to promote a sustainable agricultural trade regime for the EU. We identify three challenges and propose three potential paths forward. We discuss potential implications of the [...]
The rewable energy resources within EU27 are highly dominated by wind and solar energy delivering electricity as output. As electrification is the most efficient way to deliver the energy services [...]
Manufacturing firms in the EU face the double challenge of decarbonisation and (international) competitive pressure. Based on the key findings of the 2024 EIB investment survey and considering the economic [...]
Regulation 1370/2007, as amended by the Fourth Railway Package, set the date of 25 December 2023 for the opening to competition of services subject to public service obligations. As opposed [...]
This policy brief contends that a new approach to Long Term Contracts (LTCs) in European competition policy based on new facts, new realities and a revised reasoning must be urgently [...]
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