Measuring the risk-adjusted performance of CO2 emission markets: Evidence from SENDECO2

This paper analyzes the historical risk-adjusted performance of CO₂ emission allowances traded on SENDECO₂ (the reference market for Southern Europe) by using the daily spot prices of the European Union Allowances (EUAs) and Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) from 2008 to 2012. We revisit the Sharpe-ratio, taking into account the modified version proposed by Ferruz and Sarto (1997), to propose a new performance indicator, the Sharpe-VaR_FS, estimated by Monte Carlo simulation. Due to the existing imbalances between demand and supply for allowances, both the EUA and CER markets underperform when compared with financial stock markets, being unattractive to potential investors.     

Impacts of green deal policies on the Nordic power market

This study analyzes how the Green Deal affects the Nordic electricity and district heat market, considering carbon pricing alone and in combination with policy measures such as a coal phaseout, a renewable target, or an electrification strategy. Our findings show that the Green Deal targets significantly increase CO₂ prices and power price variability. The Green Deal has a minor impact on Nordic electricity production, while a switch to increased power-to-heat is observed in the district heating sector. However, if the EU ETS is supplemented with other policies, generation mix, producer revenues, and CO₂- and power prices are significantly impacted.     

Implementation of scarcity pricing without co-optimization in European energy-only balancing markets

The implementation of scarcity pricing is underway in the Belgian balancing market. The market design proposed in this paper aims at transposing the first principles of scarcity pricing theory to the boundary conditions of European balancing markets. One relevant boundary condition is the absence of real-time co-optimization of energy and reserves in Europe. As international experience demonstrates, the fact that energy and reserves are not co-optimized in balancing markets does not preclude the implementation of scarcity pricing. The mechanism can be implemented implicitly, and a concrete path has been proposed in the context of the Belgian balancing market. The Belgian design proposal, which is based on the implicit trading of reserve in real time, has raised questions related to financial implications for market stakeholders, the pricing of multiple reserve products, cross-border interactions, the financing of the mechanism, compatibility with EU law, and the coexistence of the proposed mechanism with capacity markets. We attempt to address these questions in the present work by drawing comparisons between the explicit co-optimization of energy and reserves and the implicit trading of reserve capacity.     

European Union emissions trading scheme impact on the Spanish electricity price during phase II and phase III implementation

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a cornerstone of the European Union's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the influence of CO₂ opportunity cost on the Spanish wholesale electricity price. Our sample includes all Phase II of the EU ETS and the first year of Phase III implementation, from January 2008 to December 2013. A vector error correction model (VECM) is applied to estimate not only long-run equilibrium relations, but also short-run interactions between the electricity price and the fuel (natural gas and coal) and carbon prices. The four commodities prices are modeled as joint endogenous variables with air temperature and renewable energy as exogenous variables. We found a long-run relationship (cointegration) between electricity price, carbon price, and fuel prices. By estimating the dynamic pass-through of carbon price into electricity price for different periods of our sample, it is possible to observe the weakening of the link between carbon and electricity prices as a result from the collapse on CO₂ prices, therefore compromising the efficacy of the system to reach proposed environmental goals. This conclusion is in line with the need to shape new policies within the framework of the EU ETS that prevent excessive low prices for carbon over extended periods of time.     

Property-based welfare and European homeowners: how would housing perform as a pension?

Notwithstanding current market volatility, there has been exceptional expansion in owner-occupied housing sectors and increases in house prices across European countries in recent decades. In the EU, individual wealth held in housing equity, especially among older people, has been considered a substantial reserve that could be tapped into to meet future pension needs as the ageing of the population becomes a greater stress on European welfare states. This paper seeks to take the notion of ‘property-based welfare’ further by examining, in principle at least, how home ownership may function as a pension across EU states. This firstly involves very approximate estimates of the types of, and rates of, income homeowners could hypothetically generate from their homes, including forms of income in kind. Secondly, criteria are identified to estimate how ‘adequate’ such potential incomes are in relation to working incomes and in bringing retired households above poverty levels. Thirdly, different circumstances across EU member states with regard to existing housing and pension arrangements are examined. Broad national groupings appear evident, with housing income having least impact in older member states in central and northern Europe. The paper concludes that while the potential outcome of housing wealth is country specific, in many cases, greater dependency on home ownership in welfare provision, particularly if it is used as a substitute rather than a complement to existing arrangements, may have adverse consequences for many.     

A shortage pricing mechanism for capacity remuneration with simulation for the Greek electricity balancing market

In a shortage pricing (or else scarcity pricing) model, the goal is to create extra revenues whenever the electric system approaches a shortage situation and send market signals that will drive capacity investments. Shortage pricing aims at producing a substantial increase in prices under shortage conditions, thus providing better incentives for new flexibility capacity investment and operation while keeping the security of supply within strict acceptable levels. The shortage price is based on the Loss of Load Probability and the Value of Lost Load. The purpose of this study is to simulate the hypothetical implementation of a shortage pricing mechanism in the Greek balancing market in order to discover cases of reserve capacity scarcity and provide indications for further considerations toward capacity remuneration mechanisms for this system. A real dataset from the Greek TSO data portfolio was used for this purpose. We examine two case studies showcasing that the proposed shortage pricing function can considerably increase the shortage prices exactly when needed by the electric system. Finally, policy implications are provided regarding the future use of the shortage pricing in Greece and its integration in the EU balancing market platforms currently under development.     

我国建筑市场寻租活动的经济学分析

寻租活动在我国普遍存在，而在建筑市场尤为严重。从产权、委托代理、信息不对称和博弈论等经济学视角对建筑市场的寻租活动进行了分析，进而对建筑市场寻租活动的防范提出政策性的建议。     

Hidden Properties of Irish House Price Vintages

Using spectral analysis, prices of two Irish house vintages are investigated for hidden periodicities. What emerges is a major periodicity consistent with an Irish business cycle. A further hidden intermediate cycle in second-hand housing, that is common to all areas of Eire but featured not nearly so prominently in new housing, is posited to be related to life events and space stress. By revisiting the housing market more often, the repeat buyer injects additional volatility in house prices. It is proposed that housing policy should be directed at reducing the number of repeat buyers as a means of deflating property bubbles.     

Analysis of hourly price granularity implementation in the Brazilian deregulated electricity contracting environment

Brazil’s electricity market is the largest in Latin America and the ninth largest in the world. It has been implemented as a mixed market in which regulated and deregulated contracting environments coexist. The volume of transactions in the deregulated market has experienced steep growth over the last few years and is expected to surpass the regulated market. Different programs to diversify the country’s energy matrix have been devised, especially by integrating intermittent renewable sources to address the deregulated market expansion. Consequently, such an energy policy path has prompted the need to increase the granularity of the Brazilian deregulated market’s spot price, namely the Difference Settlement Price (DSP). The DSP had been weekly defined accounting for three loading levels and four submarkets, and, as of 2021, it has been hourly defined accounting for four submarkets; the weekly DSP is inefficient in actually signaling prices based on ex-ante marginal cost of operation of the interconnected Brazilian power system. Besides such granularity alteration, Brazil has also undergone a severe hydrological crisis in 2021 that led to significantly lower water inflows into major hydrographic watersheds and, as a result, most hydroelectric power plant reservoirs hit a 91-year low. The described scenario is relevant in utility policies and energy economics since it depicts a significant paradigm shift experience in such a large electricity market. This study presents the first hourly DSP behavior analysis since its implementation in the Brazilian electricity market and explores its statistical characteristics and relationships with exogenous variables throughout 2021. Additionally, we discuss the hourly DSP’s volatility observed in the year 2021 and how it has resulted in price spikes. At last, we compare the behavior of the Brazilian hourly DSP with the energy prices of five other countries’ electricity markets. Despite being a significant market improvement, the DSP granularity increase per se could not accurately represent the actual marginal cost of operation over the year 2021 since, besides instabilities observed in the hourly DSP, market intervention mechanisms had to be applied by Brazilian regulatory agencies to minimize the hydrological crisis’ impacts.     

Expert survey on capacity markets in the US: Lessons for the EU

We present a survey of US capacity market experts with the purpose of drawing lessons for the EU. Of the respondents, 41% advised EU member states against implementing capacity markets, while the remaining were neutral or provided suggestions for improving capacity markets. Cross-border effects are currently not a concern but may become so in the future. Imports may dampen prices in a capacity market, but neighbouring markets may also experience pressure to implement a capacity market. The capacity markets in the USA were believed to have achieved their goals with respect to reliability, but in an economically inefficient manner.     

The environmental impact of stock market capitalization and energy transition: Natural resource dynamics and international trade

This paper examines the effect of stock market capitalization and energy transition on the environment between 1994 and 2020, considering the roles of economic growth, natural resources, and international trade in Asian countries. The results indicate that stock market capitalization, energy transition, and natural resources reduce CO₂ emissions. International trade and economic growth are positively associated with CO₂ emissions. There is a suggestion that the government should encourage companies to determine the material business risks they face. Aside from traditional risks related to operations, technology, and the market, climate change-related risks should likewise be considered significant.     

The effectiveness of a strategic reserve in the presence of a high portfolio share of renewable energy sources

To ensure sufficient investment in electricity generation capacity, mechanisms such as strategic reserves are being considered or already implemented. We analyze the effectiveness of a strategic reserve in the presence of a growing portfolio share of renewable energy sources (RES) with EMLab-Generation, an agent-based electricity market model. A strategic reserve can stabilize investment, but within limits. Uncertainty regarding future demand may cause the market to become instable, potentially leading to periods with very high electricity prices. In the presence of a large share of variable renewable energy sources, the reserve design should be adjusted or replaced by an alternative capacity mechanism.     

预售对住宅价格的影响及住宅价格指数衍生品的开发

作为远期实物交易制度的房地产预售并不必然导致住宅价格的上升,但在供求失衡条件下,远期交易的缺失有可能使得市场价格波动趋于加剧。由于房地产预售制在实践中存在诸多问题,于是我们可以考虑将房地产价格风险规避、投资和投机等交易意愿从实物交易转移到房地产指数衍生合约交易上,从而使得房地产市场的实物交易更多地体现真实的消费需求。衍生市场有效的套期保值、投机需求管理更有助于市场供求平衡的实现。     

Effectiveness of Macro-regulation Policies on Housing Prices: A Spatial Quantile Regression Approach

The central government of China intensively implemented a series of housing macro-regulation policies to cool down overheated housing market in 2011–2013. This research uses spatial quantile regression to try to answer the question “How effective are the policies?” Results indicate that house-purchasing restrictions are effective to kerb the speculative demand for houses but are difficult to cool down housing prices especially for the cities with higher housing prices, the other policies could effectively decrease housing prices; however, the degree of effectiveness changes across cities with different level of housing prices. This suggests that China’s government may choose market-classified housing policies in future and heavily increase reserve requirement ratios and interest rates while house-purchasing restrictions are practiced. In addition, we find the positive spatial dependence of housing prices is stronger among cities with higher housing prices, which may more easily weaken the effects of housing policies for these cities when housing prices rise.

Highlights

? We model effects of macro-regulation policies on housing prices by spatial quantile regression in China’s housing market.

? We examine heterogeneous effectiveness of the policies across cities with different level of housing prices.

? House-purchasing restrictions are effective to kerb the speculative demand for houses but are difficult to cool down housing prices effectively especially for the cities with higher housing prices.

? The other macro-regulation policies effectively regulate housing prices; however, the degree of effectiveness changes across cities.

? Positive spatial dependence of housing prices is stronger among cities with higher housing prices.

     

Impact of crude oil market behaviour on unit bid prices: the evidence from the highway construction sector

It is well known that the cost of highway construction is affected by the cost of crude oil. While this relationship is highly visible for construction items such as asphalt cement (a by‐product in the process of refining oil), the effects of the crude oil prices on the cost of other construction items, such as concrete cement or construction operations are less direct, but equally important. For unit‐based contracts without price adjustment clauses, this relationship is of a particular significance. In fact, an increase in price of fuel could result in substantial losses, as contractors are not protected. Hence, to hedge against this risk, contractors are likely to incorporate a premium in bid prices to manage project risks. The objective of this paper is to investigate the evidence of this behaviour. New evidence shows that the expected change in oil prices (the difference between future and spot price) and the implied volatility in the oil market affect the price of bid items for contracts without price adjustment clauses. Such results allow for more effective implementation of risk management on project‐ and programme‐level basis.     

Exploring,modelling and predicting spatiotemporal variations in house prices

Hedonic price modelling has long been a powerful tool to estimate house prices in the real estate market. Increasingly, traditional global hedonic price models that largely ignore spatial effects are being superseded by models that deal with spatial dependency and spatial heterogeneity. In addition, many novel methods integrating spatial economics, statistics and geographical information science (GIScience) have been developed recently to incorporate temporal effects into hedonic house price modelling. Here, a local spatial modelling technique, geographically weighted regression (GWR), which accounts for spatial heterogeneity in housing utility functions is applied to a 19-year set of house price data in London (1980–1998) in order to explore spatiotemporal variations in the determinants of house prices. Further, based on the local parameter estimates derived from GWR, a new method integrating GWR and time series (TS) forecasting techniques, GWR–TS, is proposed to predict future local parameters and thus future house prices. The results obtained from GWR demonstrate variations in local parameter estimates over both space and time. The forecasted future values of local estimates as well as house prices indicate that the proposed GWR–TS method is a useful addition to hedonic price modelling.

     

Customer response to day-ahead market hourly pricing: Choices and performance

Real-time pricing (RTP) has been advocated to address extreme price volatility and market power in electricity markets. This study of Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation's largest customers analyzes their choices and performance in response to day-ahead, default-service RTP. Overall price response is modest: 119 customers are estimated to reduce their peak demand by about 10% at high prices. Manufacturing customers are most responsive with a price elasticity of 0.16, followed by government/education customers (0.11), while commercial/retail, healthcare and public works customers are, at present, relatively unresponsive. Within market segments, individual customer response varies significantly.     

An integrated model for electricity market coupling simulations: Evidence from the European power market crossroad

Motivated by the project of European Power Exchanges to develop a single price-coupling solution to calculate electricity prices across Europe that respects the cross-border capacity constraints on a day-ahead basis, we empirically examine and quantify market inefficiencies in non-coupled day-ahead electricity markets. These result from inefficient cross-border capacity allocation and its underlying effect on the market clearing prices. Efficient cross-border capacity allocation and new market clearing prices are simulated using a social welfare maximisation algorithm for the capacity of relevant network elements, whereas the order book generation process is reproduced by the econometrically estimated supply price elasticity functions. The estimated vector autoregression model and the underlying impulse response functions examine price shock transmission under different market regimes. The market coupling process is simulated on the historical non-coupled day-ahead market realisations at the junction of three regional power markets: Central Western Europe, Northern Italian, and South Eastern European markets. Simulation results confirm steady, efficient cross-border capacity utilisation, reduced price variance, improved overall price convergence and amplified price shock transmission in coupled electricity markets. Furthermore, in the simulated period, we have estimated an increase in the overall suppliers' and consumers’ surplus of almost EUR 16 million. The proposed simulation framework is a clear choice for applied simulation in coupled day-ahead electricity markets, offering valuable visual insights into the cross-border capacity allocation and its implications on electricity prices.     

European residential buildings and empirical assessment of the Hellenic building stock,energy consumption,emissions and potential energy savings

The existing building stock in European countries accounts for over 40% of final energy consumption in the European Union (EU) member states, of which residential use represents 63% of total energy consumption in the buildings sector. Consequently, an increase of building energy performance can constitute an important instrument in the efforts to alleviate the EU energy import dependency (currently at about 48%) and comply with the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This is also in accordance to the European Directive (EPBD 2002/91/EC) on the energy performance of buildings, which is currently under consideration in all EU member states. This paper presents an overview of the EU residential building stock and focuses on the Hellenic buildings. It elaborates the methodology used to determine the priorities for energy conservation measures (ECMs) in Hellenic residential buildings to reduce the environmental impact from CO₂ emissions, through the implementation of a realistic and effective national action plan. A major obstacle that had to overcome was the need to make suitable assumptions for missing detailed primary data. Accordingly, a qualitative and quantitative assessment of scattered national data resulted to a realistic assessment of the existing residential building stock and energy consumption. This is the first time that this kind of aggregate data is presented on a national level. Different energy conservation scenarios and their impact on the reduction of CO₂ emissions were evaluated. Accordingly, the most effective ECMs are the insulation of external walls (33–60% energy savings), weather proofing of openings (16–21%), the installation of double-glazed windows (14–20%), the regular maintenance of central heating boilers (10–12%), and the installation of solar collectors for sanitary hot water production (50–80%).     

Interconnecting an isolated electricity system to the European market: The case of Malta

The long-term European Union (EU) energy policy increasingly requires member countries to reform existing power systems, including those of small island states. These are commonly isolated electricity systems that rely heavily on imported fossil fuels. Interconnections with mainland power systems are an alternative to offset the exposure to volatile fuel prices. This paper studies the 200-MW (MW) subsea transmission cable between the EU island member state of Malta and Sicily that was inaugurated on April 2015. Our main purpose is to examine whether and to what extent Malta's vulnerability to distinct oil price scenarios can be overcome with this new interconnector. We describe the process used to simulate the merit order for both Malta's isolated and interconnected electric generation setup. The algorithm used provides the average electricity spot price and economic scarcity rent of electricity imports and exports. The main finding is that the Malta-Sicily interconnector does not necessarily lower electricity prices for Malta's consumers. However, some scenarios, notably the incorporation of natural gas in Malta's future generation portfolio, achieve win–win situations for both consumer and supplier. The Malta case study shows that cable impacts depend on the installed generation capacity, oil price, and market design.