Loading...
3 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
- Have fossil fuels been substituted by renewables? An empirical assessment for 10 European countriesPublication . Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José Alberto; Pereira, Diogo AndréThe electricity mix worldwide has become diversified mainly by exploiting endogenous and green resources. This trend has been spurred on so as to reduce both carbon dioxide emissions and external energy dependency. One would expect the larger penetration of renewable energies to provoke a substitution effect of fossil fuels by renewable sources, in the electricity generation mix. However, this effect is far from evident in the literature. This paper thus contributes to clarifying whether the effect exists and, if so, the characteristics of the effect by source. Three approaches, generation, capacity and demand, were analysed jointly to accomplish the main aim of this study. An autoregressive distributed lag model was estimated using the Driscoll and Kraay estimator with fixed effects, to analyse ten European countries in a time-span from 1990 until 2014. The paper provides evidence for the substitution effect in solar PV and hydropower, but not in wind power sources. Indeed, the generation approach highlights the necessity for flexible and controllable electricity production from natural gas and hydropower to back up renewable sources. Moreover, the results prove that peaks of electricity have been na obstacle to the accommodation of intermittent renewable sources.
- The effect of Public Policies Supporting Renewable energy: A comparative study of installed capacity and electricity generationPublication . Pereira, Diogo André dos Santos; Marques, António Manuel CardosoThe design of energy policies, namely those focused on supporting renewable energy sources is crucial for facing the major challenge of combining economic growth and sustainable development. This paper focuses on the 20 countries with the highest electricity production from renewables, and uses a database of policies since 1971. In addition, this paper uses a time-span from 1990 until 2014, which makes it possible to capture the effects of public policies and the drivers that promote renewable energy implementation, in its take-off phase. The paper contributes to the literature by assessing the effects of public policies supporting renewables on both aggregated renewable sources and individual new renewables. Moreover, it contributes by appraising how public policies are influencing both electricity generation and the installed capacity of renewable sources. The characteristics of the panel data require the use of the Driscoll-Kraay estimator with fixed effects to handle them. The results emphasize that the implementation of renewable energy sources has been established essentially by policy-drivers, but that market-drivers are able to promote renewable energy deployment.
- Essays on demand-side management policies and measures: renewables accommodation, energy poverty and pricing strategiesPublication . Pereira, Diogo André dos Santos; Marques, António Manuel Cardoso; Fuinhas, José Alberto Serra Ferreira RodriguesClimate change is a phenomenon primarily caused by an increase in the percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A large proportion of these polluting emissions come from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. Researchers and policymakers point to the generation of electricity from endogenous and green resources as the most promising solution to fight global climate change. While the deployment of renewable energy resources has been widely applied, their intermittent features largely mask their advantages over polluting fossil fuels. It is expected that the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources with low marginal costs would reduce electricity prices, also known as the merit-order effect. However, the opposite frequently occurs, i.e., electricity prices show a tendency to increase with the implementation of these energy sources. This could indicate that the deployment of renewable energy sources could deepen the problems related to energy poverty. This fact has been the motivation for the first essay of this thesis; the observation of the impact of renewable energy sources integration on the risk of poverty and social exclusion. A panel data of European countries was analyzed using Kao’s residual cointegration test with a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach. The main findings suggest that an increase in the capacity of intermittent renewable energy as a whole accentuates the risk of poverty and social exclusion for European households. In contrast, it is found that electricity generation from wind power and hydropower reduces households' risk of poverty and social exclusion. These divergent effects highlight the consequences of the intermittency phenomenon of renewable energy, more noticeable with wind power. The potential role of the demand-side in accommodating intermittent renewable energy sources in electricity systems is an area that needs further investigation. This thesis introduces an innovative line of study to provide enhanced empirical evidence about this topic. In the second essay, an empirical analysis of daily data was used to verify the interactions between electricity sources and the periods of differing consumption. The findings indicate that fluctuations in electricity demand are the main barrier to the integration of renewable energy sources. This outcome motivated the following two essays to go further and to break new ground by proposing demand classification methods by levels and time periods, obtained through the assessment of high-frequency historical data. The demand classification methods have provided new knowledge about the occurrence of electricity demand levels (namely, peak, valley, and intermediate), which is highly useful and valuable for designing new pricing strategies. These demand levels were studied in German and French electricity systems due to their high contribution of intermittent renewables and their largest rigid nuclear baseload sources, respectively. The most revealing finding in these two essays was the potential of a Timeof- Use tariff to provide the required demand-side flexibility to accurately accommodate renewables’ intermittence. In other words, involving consumers as an active player in the electricity market, leveraging renewables integration, can be achieved through a time-ofuse pricing strategy. It is crucial to understand whether the benefits promised by renewables effectively occur, specifically for households already suffering from energy poverty, or whether they will contribute to accentuating inequalities, increasing the number of households threatened by energy poverty. Once again, following the energy poverty reasoning, the sixth essay is dedicated to providing evidence on the impact of residential energy consumption forms on energy poverty. This essay assessed the energy poverty of European countries by degrees of urbanization, namely in cities, towns and suburbs, and rural areas. It emerges that energy transition to electricity should be carefully planned and stimulated in towns and suburbs, and rural areas so as not to threaten families with energy poverty. Conversely, in cities, households are prepared to totally satisfy their energy consumption through electricity. The last essay of this thesis assessed the impact of pricing strategies on households' energy cost burden. It is the first research that has extensively analyzed the social and economic impacts of electricity pricing strategies. In this sense, it was able to provide new knowledge and guidance on the design of energy policies, especially those focused on energy transition and on consumer empowerment. To sum up, this thesis proposes pricing strategies and demand-side management measures focused on increasing consumers' willingness to adjust their demand to the availability of renewable energy sources.