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Decarbonisation of the Nordic power sector entails substantial variable renewable energy (VRE) adoption. While Nordic hydropower reservoirs can mitigate VRE output's intermittency, strategic hydro producers may leverage increased flexibility requirements to exert market power. Using a Nash-Cournot model, we find that even the current Nordic power system could yield modest gains from strategic reservoir operations regardless of a prohibition on "spilling" water to increase prices. Instead, strategic hydro producers could shift generation from peak to offpeak seasons. Such temporal arbitrage becomes more attractive under a climate package with a €100/t CO2 price and doubled VRE capacity. Since the package increases generation variability, lowers average prices, and makes fossil-fuelled plants unprofitable, strategic hydro producers face lower opportunity costs in shifting output from peak to off-peak seasons and encounter muted responses from price-taking fossil-fuelled plants. Hence, a climate package that curtails CO2 emissions may also bolster strategic hydro producers' leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. electricity markets vary by region and imperfectly overlap with regional climate policies. Although emissions leakage across emissions-regulated and -unregulated areas may depend on regional market design, and the extent of trading between market designs, previous studies of leakage from regional climate policies have focused on market power and market efficiency within only a centralized region following market rules. I develop a theoretical model which considers a second-best problem where a climate policy to correct for a negative externality from carbon emissions can be distorted by another market failure from the market design itself. My model allows for several types of non-overlapping climate policies and electricity market designs, and generates leakage predictions for these combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore a major European competition decision, the 2012-18 Gazprom case, using a global gas market simulation model. We find that access to LNG markets alone is insufficient to counterbalance Gazprom's strategic behaviour; central and eastern Europe (CEE) needs to be well interconnected with bidirectional flow capability. 'Swap deals' created by the decision facilitate CEE market integration, while limiting Gazprom's potential market power. Such deals may increase the diversity of contracted gas and number of market players, but do not improve physical supply diversity. In the next five years, swap deals could marginally impact negatively the utilization of strategic assets in CEE, but since Gazprom's commitments expire by mid-2026, utilization of these strategic assets may fall considerably, especially if Gazprom withholds supplies. As an unintended consequence, CEE markets may disintegrate from the rest of Europe. Avoiding such outcomes will require further gas market reforms, particularly, market design for gas transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-induced components constitute the major share of electricity prices for consumers and are generally charged at a fixed rate. We analyze the benefits of charging state-induced price components at time-varying rates instead, especially with regard to the integration of variable renewable energy (VRE) sources and to decarbonization. For this purpose, we apply a detailed power market model that puts particular emphasis on electricity demand and how it is sensitive to prices. For a quantitative case study, the model is parametrized to represent a German energy system with an 85% share of renewables in its power generation. We find that dynamization has a reducing effect on integration costs of VRE, ranging from 0.3 to 3.4 €/MWh. Furthermore, strong distributional effects in favor of flexible consumers can be observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market power in electricity and emission-permit markets in the South-East Europe Regional Electricity Market, which comprises both EU members subject to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and non-EU members exempt from it, affects social welfare and carbon leakage. We examine its impact under three market settings: perfect competition (PC) and two leader-follower versions, in which a leader can exert market power in either the electricity market (S-T) or both the electricity and permit markets (S). Under PC, carbon leakage is equal to 11%-39% of ETS emission reduction depending on the cap stringency. Generally, in S-T, the leader's capacity withholding results in ETS emissions below and non-ETS emissions above PC levels. However, carbon leakage is lower vis-à-vis PC as the ETS emission reduction offsets the non-ETS emission increase. Finally, in S, the leader's propensity to lower the permit price increases ETS emissions and exacerbates carbon leakage compared to S-T. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adding renewable energy sources (RES) to an electricity market has an ambiguous effect on wholesale prices. The merit order effect (MoE) has a downward pressure on prices while, with market power, higher inframarginal rents will tend to increase prices. We quantify the interaction of the two effects in the Ontario electricity market. We identify the market power effect by simulating transfers of RES capacity from the fringe to larger firms: these transfers increase prices by up to 24%. We then add RES capacity and allocate it to players with varying levels of market power. Following a net expansion of RES capacity of 5% relative to total capacity, prices decrease by 30% when new capacity is assigned to the fringe, but only by 7% when assigned to the largest firm. Our findings show that the MoE is largely mitigated by market power, hence the importance of the market structure in the design of uniform incentives for RES adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity production is a key sector in global decarbonization efforts, and variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies are a primary way to produce carbon-free electricity. We study an electricity market where generation is 100 % VRE, while storage and elastic demand resolve temporal supply-demand imbalances. We model hourly market equilibrium to analyze price formation and imperfect, Cournot-type competition with varying levels of ownership concentration. Market power is exerted either with storage-only or with both VRE and storage. In such a system, prices are determined dynamically by demand and intertemporal storage decisions, breaking the static logic of "merit order" with dispatchable generation. The numerical results indicate that market power with storage has a relatively moderate effect on prices and market efficiency. However, market power exerted with VRE has far larger welfare impacts, resulting from curtailed generation. However, such actions could be more readily observed by a regulator via monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the effect of the publication of offer price information on unilateral market power in Alberta's electricity market. This market is an hourly auction characterized by repeated interaction among a small number of produc- ers, common knowledge of costs and production capabilities, and price inelastic demand. For the period July 13, 2000 to May 18, 2017, offer prices for each hour were published by the market operator, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), in the Historical Trading Report (HTR) after the end of the hour. Using counter- factual analysis from 2010 to 2015 (52,584 hours), the paper finds that the effect of offer price changes after the HTR publication was to raise the average hourly price for electricity in Alberta by $2.48/MWh or about 4.2%, which raised the cost of electricity for Alberta consumers during the six-year period by approximately $1.14 billion. Based on an earlier version of this paper, the AESO was instructed by Alberta's utilities regulator to cease publication of the HTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the strategic behavior of wind producers in the presence of uncertain wind resource availability, where wind availability is correlated across firms. We study how the level of correlation between different firms' wind resources impacts strategy and market outcomes. The main insight of our analysis is that increasing heterogeneity in resource availability improves social welfare, as a function of its effects both on improving diversification and on reducing withholding by firms. We show that this insight is robust for common assumptions regarding electricity demand. The model is also used to analyze the effect of wind resource heterogeneity on firm profits and opportunities for collusion. Finally, we analyze the impacts of improving public information and weather forecasting; enhanced public forecasting increases welfare, but it is not always in the best interests of strategic producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity production is a key sector in global decarbonization efforts, and variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies are a primary way to produce carbon- free electricity. We study an electricity market where generation is 100% VRE, while storage and elastic demand resolve temporal supply-demand imbalances. We model hourly market equilibrium to analyze price formation and imperfect, Cournot-type competition with varying levels of ownership concentration. Market power is exerted either with storage-only or with both VRE and storage. In such a system, prices are determined dynamically by demand and intertemporal storage decisions, breaking the static logic of "merit order" with dispatchable generation. The numerical results indicate that market power with storage has a relatively moderate effect on prices and market efficiency. However, market power exerted with VRE has far larger welfare impacts, resulting from curtailed generation. However, such actions could be more readily observed by a regulator via monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the effect of the publication of offer price information on unilateral market power in Alberta's electricity market. This market is an hourly auction characterized by repeated interaction among a small number of producers, common knowledge of costs and production capabilities, and price inelastic demand. For the period July 13, 2000 to May 18, 2017, offer prices for each hour were published by the market operator, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), in the Historical Trading Report (HTR) after the end of the hour. Using counterfactual analysis from 2010 to 2015 (52,584 hours), the paper finds that the effect of offer price changes after the HTR publication was to raise the average hourly price for electricity in Alberta by $2.48/MWh or about 4.2%, which raised the cost of electricity for Alberta consumers during the six-year period by approximately $1.14 billion. Based on an earlier version of this paper, the AESO was instructed by Alberta's utilities regulator to cease publication of the HTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of market power usually has negative impacts on the cost-effectiveness of the carbon market. As market power-induced efficiency loss depends on permit allocation, the choice of permit allocation methods is likely to affect the cost-effectiveness of the carbon market. This paper examines theoretically how the choice of emission permit allocation method affects the cost-effectiveness of an emissions trading system when market power exists. We find that, under grandfathering and benchmarking, the carbon market would be more efficient if the permits initially allocated to the dominant firm were closer to its CO2 emissions. Under auctioning, the dominant firm tends to lower the CO2 price, which may result in efficiency loss. By combining the modelling results of efficiency loss due to market power and the fairness in terms of CO2 cost pass-through, we finally provide some policy recommendations on how to choose a CO2 emission permit allocation method for different industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effects of commonly employed renewable compensation policies on firm behavior in an imperfectly competitive market. We consider a model where firms compete for renewable capacity in an auction prior to choosing their forward positions and competing in wholesale markets. We focus on fixed and premium-priced feed-in tariff (FIT) compensation policies. We demonstrate that compensation policies impact both the types of resources that win the auction and subsequent competition. While firms have stronger incentives to exercise market power under a premium-priced FIT, they also have increased incentives to sign pro-competitive forward contracts. In net firms have stronger incentives to exercise market power under the premium-priced policy. We find conditions under which renewable resources that are more correlated with market demand are procured under a premium-priced design, while the opposite occurs under a fixed-priced policy. If the cost efficiencies associated with the "more valuable" renewable resources are sufficiently large, then welfare is higher under the premium- priced policy despite the stronger market power incentives in the wholesale market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a sample of 1,867 firms that participate in the "Top-10,000 Energy- Consuming Enterprises Program" in China and aims to identify strategic traders in its pilot emissions trading scheme. Firms included in the ETS can exert their market power and manipulate allowance prices to achieve low compliance costs, which will consequently influence the effectiveness of this platform. This is of great importance to regulators or designers of this system in identifying these strategic traders and understanding their impact. We follow the basic principle proposed by Godal (2005) and develop a simple and implementable empirical procedure to study firm-level data from seven pilot programs in China. The results show that strategic traders exist with clear regional and sectoral differences. As a consequence of strategic trading by these firms, the overall volume of trading falls remarkably, with a clear increase in total compliance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence indicates that electricity producers use production failures to disguise strategic reductions of capacity in order to influence prices, but systematic evidence is lacking. We use an instrumental variable approach and data from the Swedish electricity market to examine such behavior. In a market without strategic withholding, reported production failures should not depend directly on the market price. We show that marginal producers in part base their decision to report a failure on prices, which indicates that production failures are a result of economic incentives as well as of technical problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity market manipulation enforcement actions have moved from conventional analysis of generator market power in real-time physical markets to material allegations of sustained cross-product price manipulation in forward financial markets. A major challenge is to develop and apply forward market analytical frameworks and models. This task is more difficult than for the real-time market. An adaptation of cross-product manipulation models from cash-settled financial markets provides an existence demonstration under uncertainty and asymmetric information. The implications of this analysis include strong empirical predictions about necessary randomized strategies that are not likely to be observed or sustainable in electricity markets. Absent these randomized strategies and other market imperfections, the means for achieving sustained forward market price manipulation remains unexplained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to a low-carbon power system requires growing the share of generation from (intermittent) renewables while ensuring security of supply. Policymakers and economists increasingly see a capacity mechanism as a way to deal with this challenge. Yet this raises new concerns about the exercise of market power by large players via the capacity auction. We present a new modelling approach that captures such strategic behaviour together with a set of ex ante empirical estimates for the new Irish electricity market design (I-SEM)--in which a single firm controls 44% of generation capacity (excluding wind). We find significant costs of strategic behaviour, even with new entry: In our baseline scenarios, procurement costs in the capacity auction are around 150-400 million EUR (or 40-100%) above the competitive least-cost solution. From a policy perspective, we also examine how market power can be measured and mitigated through auction design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restructuring and liberalisation of the electricity industry creates opportunities for investment in energy storage, which could be undertaken by a profit-maximising merchant storage operator. Because such a firm is concerned solely with maximising its own profit, the resulting storage-investment decision may be socially suboptimal (or detrimental). This paper develops a bi-level model of an imperfectly competitive electricity market. The modelling framework assumes electricity-generation and storage-operations decisions at the lower level and storage investment at the upper level. Our analytical results demonstrate that a relatively high (low) amount of market power in the generation sector leads to low (high) storage-capacity investment by the profit-maximising storage operator relative to a welfare maximiser. This can result in net social welfare losses with a profit-maximising storage operator compared to a no-storage case. Moreover, there are guaranteed to be net social welfare losses with a profit-maximising storage operator if the generation sector is sufficiently competitive. Using a charge on generation ramping between off- and on-peak periods, we induce the profit-maximising storage operator to invest in the same level of storage capacity as the welfare-maximising firm. Such a ramping charge can increase social welfare above the levels that are attained with a welfare-maximising storage operator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey is a key country in order to realize the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) due to its geographical location. However, as the main transit country within the SGC, Turkey could potentially exert market power with gas transits. Whether Turkey exerts market power or not, is crucial for an economic assessment of the SGC. Hence, the article investigates this issue quantitatively using a global partial equilibrium gas market model. An oligopolistic and a competitive supply structure in the European upstream market in 2030 are considered in the model based on calibrations to historical gas market situations. If the European gas market in 2030 is characterized by an oligopolistic supply, Turkey is able to exert market power resulting in higher prices compared to competitive transits, in particular in South Eastern Europe. In a competitive market structure, however, the importance of the SGC and thus the potential of Turkish transit market power is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the relationship between market power in emission permit markets and endogenous technology adoption. We find that the initial distribution of permits, in particular, the amount of permits initially given to the dominant firm, is crucial in determining over- or under-investment in relation to the benchmark model without market power. Specifcally, if the dominant firm is initially endowed with more permits than the corresponding cost effective allocation, this results in under-investment by the dominant firm and over-investment by the competitive fringe, regardless of the specific amount of permits given to the latter firms. The results are reversed if the dominant firm is initially endowed with relatively few permits. Also, the presence of market power results in a divergence of both abatement and technology adoption levels with respect to the benchmark scenario of perfect competition, as long as technology adoption becomes more effective in reducing abatement costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some restructured power systems rely on audited cost information instead of competitive bids for the dispatch and pricing of electricity in real time, particularly in hydro systems in Latin America. Audited costs are also substituted for bids in U.S. markets when local market power is demonstrated to be present. Regulators that favor a cost-based design argue that this is more appropriate for systems with a small number of generation firms because it eliminates the possibilities for generators to behave strategically in the spot market, which is a main concern in bid-based markets. We discuss existing results on market power issues in costand bid-based designs and present a counterintuitive example, in which forcing spot prices to be equal to marginal costs in a concentrated market can actually yield lower social welfare than under a bid-based market design due to perverse investment incentives. Additionally, we discuss the difficulty of auditing the true opportunity costs of generators in cost-based markets and how this can lead to distorted dispatch schedules and prices, ultimately affecting the long-term economic efficiency of a system. An important example is opportunity costs that diverge from direct fuel costs due to energy or start limits, or other generator constraints. Most of these arise because of physical and financial inflexibilities that become more relevant with increasing shares of variable and unpredictable generation from renewables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Italian electricity market has been characterized by a remarkable increase of renewable energy source (RES) supply since 2010, which has determined relevant structural changes in the electric system. Noticeably, during favorable weather conditions, such as sunny or windy hours, increasing supply of RES generation exerts a downward pressure to the formation of the equilibrium price in the market and at the same time forces an increase in line congestion. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether such RES increase has affected the exercise of market power in the Italian Power Exchange (IPEX), explicitly considering transmission line congestion. We employ our approach to construct the residual demand curve and to disentangle the measure of the unilateral market power from the congestion rent. We compute the zonal Lerner index during the period 2009 to 2013 for the main generators in the Italian day-ahead market and we analyze the correlation among market power, congestion and RES supply. In particular, we investigate whether RES development has affected congestion and firm's strategic behavior, empirically testing whether structural changes have occurred in market power or in congestion rent. Our results show that the exercise of market power has been considerably weakened during peak hours by the massive competition of RES, but it has been surprisingly reinforced in specific off-peak hours, in the absence of solar RES and in specific zones, where congestion yields market splitting. These findings support pro-competitive market regulation and reform strategies, and shed light on the impact of RES and congestion on market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to shed light on the relative merits of centralized electricity markets with multipart bids and dispatch using an MIP-based unit commitment optimization approach vs. self-committed markets with linear energy supply curves. We conduct an empirical study of data from the Colombian market, which in 2009 transitioned from a self-commitment paradigm to a centralized unit commitment approach where generators offer a linear supply function for energy along with start-up costs while the commitment and dispatch are determined by the system operator using MIP-based optimization. The results indicate that the transition to centralized dispatch has resulted in productive efficiency gains through a decrease in production costs. However, these gains have not translated into wholesale price decreases; in fact, wholesale prices increased after the change in the dispatch approach. These results suggest that productive efficiency gains have been captured by suppliers through the exercise of market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of market power in electricity markets is relevant for understanding the competitive development of the industry's restructuring and liberalization process, but in the existing literature, there is not an adequate consideration of line transmission congestion. The aim of this paper is to propose a new approach to measuring market power in the Italian Power Exchange (IPEX), explicitly considering transmission line congestion. We construct a new measure of the residual demand curve to disentangle unilateral market power from congestion rent for the main Italian generators during the period April 2004 to December 2007. In Italy, this period was one of stable transmission network structure. Following the approach of Wolak (2003, 2009), we measure the unilateral market power with the Lerner index (LI), computed as the inverse of the residual demand elasticity. In conclusion, the correct modeling of the residual demand curve including transmission congestions enables us to compute the zonal LI and therefore more accurately measure the market power when congestion occurs. Our results show that various generators exercise market power only in specific zones. These findings provide deeper understanding of market outcomes in the presence of congestion, suggesting appropriate policy directions for market surveillance and competition regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we test whether producers in the southern Norway price zone utilize information on available transmission capacity to induce transmission congestion in their price zone to exercise market power or not. Endogeneity results for import congestion suggest that congestion is endogenous during late night and morning hours implying that producers in southern Norway restrict their output to induce transmission congestion into their price zone. We find an average markup of about 19.5 percent above the marginal cost during these hours. These results point that NordPool's policy of making transmission capacity information public to ensure market transparency is not welfare maximizing as strategic producers can use this information to anticipate and induce transmission congestion into their price zone for driving prices away from the competitive levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose nuclear capacity auctions as a means to correcting the incentives for investing in nuclear power. In particular, capacity auctions open the market for large-scale entry by outside firms. Requiring licensees to sell a share of capacity as virtual power plant contracts increases auction efficiency by mitigating incumbent producers' incentive to bid for market power. A motivating example is Sweden's policy reversal to allow new nuclear power to replace old reactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the exercise of market power in California's power market in 1998-2000, with a focus on its day-ahead energy market and its five non-utility thermal generating companies. Our goal is to assess whether the hourly bids of market participants, together with information on thermal unit characteristics and power output, suggest that the five suppliers were behaving in line with Nash supply function competition, bidding close to their marginal costs or restraining quantities relative to the Nash level. The analysis of residual demand inverse elasticities suggests that the five thermal generators had an incentive to exercise unilateral market power that was not always fully exploited. A comparison of market-clearing prices, estimated marginal costs and marginal revenues finds that firm conduct was broadly consistent with Nash supply function competition or more competitive than Nash behavior in most of our sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact and efficacy of a cap-and-trade regulation on the electric power industry depend on interactions of demand elasticity, transmission network, market structure, and strategic behavior of generation firms. This paper develops an equilibrium model of an oligopoly electricity market in conjunction with a Cap-and-Trade emissions permits market to study such interactions. The concept of conjectural variations is proposed to account for imperfect competition in the permits market. We demonstrate the model using a WECC 225-bus system with a detailed representation of the California market. In particular, we examine the extent to which permit trading strategies affect the market outcome. We find that a firm with more efficient technologies can employ strategic withholding of permits, which allows for its increase in output share in the electricity market at the expense of other less efficient firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of how investments in imperfectly competitive electricity markets interact with a price on carbon. The analysis is based on a dynamic numerical Cournot model calibrated to the German market and focuses on (a) the level of investments and technology choice and (b) welfare impacts under optimal carbon pricing. As a special feature, we also restrict access to one technology (coal) to strategic players ("technological market power"). The main results are: (a) In the long-run prices reach competitive levels due to entry by the competitive fringe. If technological market power prevails, this can only be accomplished through high carbon prices. (b) Investment levels and technology choice show different patterns under market power and perfect competition. (c) Apart from driving investments, carbon pricing also renders old carbon-intensive capacities unprofitable and thus induces more extensive fleet turnover. (d) Welfare almost always increases as a result of carbon pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the exertion of market power in the global crude oil market over the past years. Recognizing the difficulty of identifying market power in the crude oil market by empirical studies, we propose a numerical partial equi-librium model formulated as a mixed complementarity problem. Our approach allows for strategic behavior in a Nash-Cournot market, a Stackelberg leader-follower game, an OPEC oligopoly or cartel, as well as perfect competition. To take account of liquid spot markets, the model specifically includes arbitragers to capture the effect of global crude oil market integration. Our results indicate a market structure shift over the past years. Reported quantities and prices before the 2008 turmoil are close to those derived from a Stackelberg market simulation, with Saudi Arabia acting as Stackelberg leader vis-a-vis a non-cooperative OPEC oligopoly and a competitive fringe. However, in 2008 and 2009, observed prices are closer to the competitive benchmark. We conclude that OPEC suppliers' ability to exert market power was reduced in the 2008 turmoil and its aftermath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tradable allowances have received considerable attention in recent years. One emerging issue is their interaction with electricity markets. This paper extends the model of Allaz and Vila (1993) by incorporating emissions trading with forward and spot markets for electricity. We focus on the effects of strategic forward position and initial allowances allocation on the equilibrium outcomes. We find that firms with a dirty portfolio would have stronger incentives to take a long position in the forward market to raise the electricity price. Increasing the amount of allowances assigned to clean firms leads to a reduction in electricity and allowance prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to elucidate under which circumstances, how, and to what extent market power on a Tradable Green Certificates (TGC) market can be used to affect an entire electricity market. There are basically two reasons for being concerned with this. One is that a small number of companies may have exclusive access to first rate sites for wind power generation. The other is that withdrawal of a small number of TGCs implies a multiple reduction of electricity consumption, with corresponding increases of end user prices. We formulate both an analytical model to investigate economic principles and a numerical model based on that to investigate the Swedish TGC market operating in a setting of a common Nordic electricity market. The analysis shows that Swedish producers may exercise market power using the TGC-market but that this problem will be eliminated by opening the TGC-market for other Nordic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allaz and Vila (1993) have shown that forward markets could mitigate market power and improve efficiency. This paper shows that efficiency-improving effect of forward markets is sensitive to the assumption that market participants behave like rational expectations agents when forecasting prices. The existence of forward contracts could increase spot prices and hurt efficiency if buyers engage in bilateral forward contracts and forward rates are influenced by historic prices. These findings have important policy implications for the electricity industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decades the production of electrical energy has been liberalized. This paper studies the effect of using a market mechanism to allocate scarce transmission capacity when the incumbent producers remain dominant. We show that granting exclusive use to an incumbent producer is preferred to trading access to this essential facility if interregional production-cost differences are significant and transmission capacity is scarce. This result counters the intuition on third degree price-discrimination, that arbitrage will improve the social surplus when there is no output contraction. The reason is that with arbitrage the incumbent can still charge different regional prices as long as it creates congestion on the transmission lines. As a consequence, welfare will be lower, since the incumbent distorts production decisions to congest the lines. We recommend that a market-oriented access to scarce transmission capacity should be accompanied by additional regulatory or structural measures to address market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As with other commodity markets, markets for trading pollution permits have not been immune to market power concerns. In this paper, I survey the existing literature on market power in permit trading but also contribute with some new results and ideas. I start the survey with Hahn's (1984) dominant-firm (static) model that I then extend to the case in which there are two or more strategic firms that may also strategically interact in the output market, to the case in which current permits can be stored for future use (as in most existing and proposed market designs), to the possibility of collusive behavior, and to the case in which permits are auctioned off instead of allocated for free to firms. I finish the paper with a review of empirical evidence on market power, if any, with particular attention to the U.S. sulfur market and the Southern California NOx market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European natural gas market is characterized by declining indigenous resources, particularly in the UK and the Netherlands, and a growing dependence on a small number of large exporters who, as a consequence, see their market power increasing. In this paper we analyze long-run scenarios for the European natural gas markets in a model, NATGAS, that explicitly includes both factors, resource constraints and producers' market power. Finite resources lead to interdependencies of current production decisions and future opportunities. These decisions in turn depend on the potential for large producers to set market prices above marginal costs. We analyze the impact of conditions on the global LNG market on market shares of pipeline gas suppliers, as well as on the speed of depletion of indigenous European resources. We focus on how shadow prices of resource constraints affect substitution patterns in the various scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent increases in the world price of oil have led to higher gas prices in Europe, possibly leading to greater opportunities for exercising market power. The effect of different gas producer strategies upon price levels in the liberalised European gas market over the period 2005-2030 is analysed using a dynamic gas market model that accounts for demand, supply, and investments in pipeline transport, LNG, and storage. The multi-period model formulation allows exploration of the dynamics of market power as transportation and storage capacities are augmented and interact with demand growth. The combined effects of spatial configuration of the supply network and supplier location upon intensity of competition in ten different regions in Europe are considered. Differences in prices are due to the interaction of (1) inherent ability of producers to exercise market power (determined by production capacity and costs) with the (2) accessibility of the market (determined by gas transport infrastructure). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain was one of the first countries to introduce competition to retail energy markets in 1998: after a decade of choice, around half of its residential consumers have switched supplier. This paper presents evidence on consumer and supplier behaviour over the decade since the markets were opened to assess the success of the 'experience' to date. The early debate about the value of extending choice to householders, in which David Newbery was amongst those who expressed doubts, remains to be resolved in an era of rising costs and increasing politicisation. "While Britain has coped very well with wholesale market power, ending the domestic franchise and removing regulation from the retail supply margin has exposed households to considerable increases in those margins, as switching casts appear significant, and vertically integrated companies have been effective in exploiting their power." David Newbery, Market Design, EPRG working paper 0515 p.9, 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy sector worldwide is facing the enormous challenge of finding a path of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. This paper argues that, although markets are adequate instruments to achieve an efficient allocation of resources and to promote private initiative, the resolution of the sustainability challenge cannot be left only to market forces, but requires other complementary instruments, among which we highlight indicative energy planning. We discuss the role of indicative energy planning in the future of liberalized energy markets, and propose a general methodology for its implementation, as well as the identification of the major issues to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the market power and the welfare performance of the deregulated wholesale electricity market of Colifornia between 1998 and 2000 by incorporating the structure of the transmission network. While Wolfram (1999), Borenstein, Bushnell, and Wolak (2002) and Joskow and Kahn (2002) treat the difference between the market price and the marginal production cost of the marginal generator as the indicator for market power, we decompose the difference into the market power and the inefficiency arising from the network constraint. Based on public data for the market from 1998 to 2000, we demonstrate that the welfare loss due to the finite transmission capacity accounts for 29-38% of the total annual welfare loss, while the remaining portion can be explained by the market power exercised by the generators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity industry restructuring is only now beginning to focus on the role of utilities in distributed generation (DG). This paper examines whether, as restructuring unfolds, regulators may permit investor-owned distribution companies to own DG, and if so, under what terms. Concomitantly, the paper explores how ownership of DG by distribution companies impacts electricity restructuring. The paper concludes that regulated utilities should readily obtain approval to install DG on utility sites as long as the utility remains vertically integrated. Approval is also possible for vertically integrated or restructured utilities to provide DG at customer sites if it is shareholder-funded and connected on the customer's side of the meter. However, distribution company ownership of DG at utility sites or on the utility's side of the meter conflicts with electricity industry restructuring. Regulatory approval under restructuring is therefore highly problematical. Should regulatory approval be granted, the need to mitigate vertical market power is likely to precipitate the disaggregation of the distribution company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]