In the mid-1990s, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was preparing to release Order 888 requiring open access to the transmission grid, the commission, environmental groups, and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, raised the question of how open access and greater...

Using rockets to launch communications satellites and other spacecraft poses risks to the uninvolved public, including persons and property under the flight path of the launch vehicle. The federal government plays a pivotal technical role during the actual launch by carrying out certain...

The distribution grid for delivering electricity to the user has been paid for as part of the charge per kilowatt-hour that covers the cost of the energy itself. Conservation advocates have promoted the adoption of policies that “decouple” electric distribution company revenues or profits...

We analyse effects of various natural gas supply scenarios in a liberalised Western European energy market in 2010. Our starting point is the uncertainties about future natural gas exports from Russia and LNG-producing countries. Our results indicate that the average natural gas producer price...

Natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels. Using the World Gas Model, a large-scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation, this paper analyzes possible...

Between 2008 and 2012, the delivered price of natural gas to the U.S. power sector fell 60 percent. This paper addresses, in theory and in practice, the effects of this negative price shock on electricity consumers and the environment. We demonstrate with a simple model that the larger the...

This paper discusses and shows how a CGE model can be used to assess welfare effects of structural policy reforms targeting inefficiency problems at micro levels that normally are not captured in operational CGE-models. The CGE approach allows computation of shadow prices which are generally...

Recent efforts to site renewable energy projects have provoked as much, if not more, opposition than conventional energy projects. Because renewable energy resources are often located in sensitive and isolated environments, such as pristine mountain ranges or coastal waters, siting these...

The worldwide demand for new energy infrastructures has been paralleled in recent years by the increasing difficulty of siting major facilities. Siting difficulty is the subject of widespread discussion, but because of the complexity of the problem, potential solutions are not obvious or well...

We develop a conceptual model of the economic value of space solar power (SSP) as a source of power to in-space activities, such as spacecraft and space stations. We offer several estimates of the value based on interviews and published data, discuss technological innovations that may compete...