In order to combat global warming, Italy has committed to clear environmental goals by reducing its CO2 emissions. To this purpose, it has notably encouraged renewable energy development through a variety of support schemes, ranging from green certificates to feed-in and premium tariffs. As a...

Electricity production from renewable sources generally displaces thermal generation, which leads to lower CO2 emissions in the power sector. However, the intermittent nature of many renewable technologies leads to greater inefficiencies in the operation of existing fossil power plants. This...

Incentives for the development of renewable energy have increasingly become an instrument of climate policy, that is, as a means to reduce GHG emissions. This research analyzes the German experience in promoting renewable energy over the past decade to identify the ex-post cost of reducing CO2...

This paper provides an introduction to the EU’s Emissions Trading System. As such it provides a discussion of the historical and legal context in which the EU ETS developed and now operates, a presentation of the key performance indicators for the first eight years through the end of the...

This paper provides an updated calculation of the price and income responsiveness of Spanish consumers of car fuels, with an explicit exploration of the effects of the recent economic crisis. We examine separate gasoline and diesel demand models using a set of estimators on a panel of 16 Spanish...

In spite of the large potential and existing efforts to foster energy efficiency in the residential sector, much remains to be achieved. This may be partially due to the many barriers and market failures faced by energy efficiency, which are even greater in the residential sector. In particular,...

The residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions, which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy-efficiency (EE) improvements in both emerging and developed countries. Yet, there are several persistent barriers...

Price elasticities of energy demand have become increasingly relevant in estimating the socio-economic and environmental effects of energy policies or of other events with influence on the prices of energy goods. Since the 1970s a large number of academic papers have provided both short and...