Browsing by Subject "Electricity sector"
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Item Diversity and resilience of the electricity sector in the U.S. and Texas(2016-05) Wu, Tiffany Yue-wei; Rai, Varun; King, Carey; Zarnikau, JayOften current energy and environmental policies follow the neoclassical economic paradigm of focusing on getting the prices right within a market system. The general argument is that such a focus would lead to socially optimal outcomes in the long run. An important weakness of this paradigm is that it is not robust to major or rapid shifts in our knowledge about the benefits and costs of the production system. At the societal level, preparing for such shifts inherently requires a different approach than a focus only on prices. It requires an adaptive, systemic approach that is open to the possibility that assumptions underlying today’s markets and technologies may turn out to be quite different as more experience and knowledge is gained over time (or sometimes quite rapidly). The evolutionary economics approach, with its focus on diversity to enhance long-term resilience, is one such alternative approach to classical economic approaches. Based on these approaches, I quantified diversity of the electricity sector in the U.S. using primary energy source data from the EIA. I used the Shannon-Weiner Index, Simpson Index, and Stirling Index to compare the diversity of each state and regional entity’s electricity system and found that the major drivers of diversity change have been the result of wind and natural gas adoption. Using expert elicitation, I also specifically analyzed diversity in the Texas electricity market, with a focus on the transition to a deregulated market in Texas at the turn of the century. In general, I found that Texas regulators do think diversity is important, but do not think that it should be centrally planned.Item Essays in environmental regulation and firm dynamics(2011-05) Dardati, Evangelina Alejandra; Corbae, DeanIn this dissertation, I study the effect of environmental regulation on firm behavior. In the first chapter, I use a dynamic model to quantify the effects on exit, entry, investment and welfare of different allocation schemes of a cap-and-trade program. I focus on allocation rules regarding closing plants and new entrants. I calibrate the model with data from the US power plants and perform two policy experiments: first I quantify the effects of the introduction of a cap-and-trade program; second, I do a counterfactual where I switch the allocation rule and study the effect on the new equilibrium and welfare. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I ask whether multinational firms are harmful for a host country environment. I use plant-level data from Chile and find empirical evidence that multinational are cleaner than domestic plants. Based on the trade literature, I build a model where I add environmental regulation and a technology choice. The model proposes a new explanation of why multinationals firms might be cleaner than their domestic peers. I get policy implications from the model and test them with the data. In the third chapter, I study the relation between free permit allocation in a cap-and-trade program and financial constraints. I use the change in the permit prices and the heterogeneity in permit allocation to identify financial constraints for the investor-owned utilities in the electricity sector.