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This paper aims to evaluate through an empirical analysis the impact of social capital on the innovative performance of companies of the energy sector in Spain, as well as the role of firms’ absorptive capacity and membership to a business association as mediating variables in this relationship. The energy supply sector in Spain is analyzed through a sample of 197 companies, using PLS-SEM technique. This study provides empirical evidence on the positive and significant effect of firms’ social capital on their innovative performance, and the mediating effect of firms’ absorptive capacity and membership in a business association. It is concluded that politicians and managers should be aware about the importance of firms’ connectivity in the current digital society. But interaction and knowledge diffusion are of little use if companies do not develop their knowledge absorptive capacity, to effectively exploit external knowledge. Finally, the role of business associations as platforms for the dissemination and absorption of knowledge, as well as business innovation, is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe Indonesian electricity industry was under the management of PLN, presenting a significant opportunity to embrace renewable energy sources in response to tightening green energy regulations. This study utilized the sustainable business model concept, deconstructing the value economic, socio-cultural, and ecological. The goal was to pinpoint critical factors influencing business strategies for supplying renewable energy electricity to customers. Employing the Delphi method, which compiles expert consensus from PLN, was the subject of this study. In achieving a value delivery, collaboration with the government, suppliers, and technology partners played a vital role to achieving business objectives. Understanding customer requirements and desires was imperative for renewable energy companies in Indonesia to meet customer expectations. The value creation dimension emphasized establishing strong relationships and ensuring consumer satisfaction to foster loyalty. The value proposition served as the bedrock for articulating the distinct benefits of products and services, setting the company apart from competitors. Within the Indonesian renewable energy context, value capture stood as a crucial component in shaping a company’s business strategy. This involved efficiently managing production costs, investment costs, and attribute costs to guarantee consistent and profitable revenue. Future research should explore priority factors in-depth and craft intricate business models tailored to meticulously analyzed priorities.

Stakeholders and communities' involvement is vital for shaping novel intergenerational resource governance frameworks. This is crucial for modelling upcoming energy transitions towards cleaner and more sustainable production systems. New models envisage energy mixes in which renewable resources are prominent and offer sustainable development advantages. Examining electricity production figures is, hence, necessary to understand trends and formulate policies and actions. This paper aims at drafting the state-of-the-art of electricity production in the Nordic-Baltic Sea area, moving an exploratory regional appraisal. Aggregated and disaggregated data on electricity production sources are explored and compared for all the eleven selected countries—at domestic, sub-regional, and regional levels. The region shows great national diversity, which implies diversified energy policies. Thus, the role of local initiatives—such as power grid implementation—in local communities empowerment is revealed. From this outcome, possible strategies are prescribed locally to assist the regional sustainable energy appraisal and furnish indications for the European energy and ecological transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In electricity markets, ancillary services (AS) are vital to ensuring system reliability through the instantaneous balancing of supply and demand. An important current policy question is whether AS markets clear simultaneously or sequentially with wholesale markets. We develop a model to study the strategic implications of market timing. We demonstrate that a strategic incentive to reduce AS and, consequently, lower marginal cost in the wholesale market arises when markets clear sequentially. Using data from Alberta, we find that the strategic effect has a small impact on wholesale outcomes but a large impact on the AS market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study default effects in the context of a residential electricity-pricing program. In the large-scale randomized controlled trial we analyse, one treatment group was given the option to opt-in to time-varying pricing while another was defaulted into the program but allowed to opt-out. We provide dramatic evidence of a default effect on program participation, consistent with previous research. A novel feature of our study is that we also observe how the default manipulation impacts customers' subsequent electricity consumption. Passive consumers who did not opt-out but would not have opted in-comprising more than 70% of the sample-nonetheless reduce consumption in response to higher prices. Observing of this follow-on behaviour enables us to assess competing explanations for the default effect. We draw conclusions about the likely welfare effects of defaulting customers onto time-varying pricing.

Research purpose. In recent years, the importance of moving from a linear economy to a circular economy in every area and sector of the economy has been discussed more than ever before. This includes discussions on a net zero energy system as the basis for a fully decarbonised electricity sector. The increase in demand for electricity and the push for net zero emissions are leading to a focus on using electric vehicles to meet the EU's sustainability targets. The European transport sector is responsible for a significant part of the European Union's total greenhouse gas emissions. The main aim is to evaluate the impacts of the automotive industry from an economic point of view because the increase in sales of electric cars can lead, among other things, to the mitigation of environmental problems.

Biotic and abiotic carbon sequestration currently seems to be the only viable tools at the disposal of mankind for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus a remedy for tackling global warming challenges. This study accesses the global carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme: the level of success in its implementation and its impact using panel data from eight countries, the majority of which have begun one or more operational CCS facilities. To achieve this objective, fifteen years period time series data was sourced for the eight selected countries based on data availability, namely the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, China, Australia, Norway, South Africa, and Nigeria; ranging from 1990 to 2015. The panel ARDL results show that the explanatory variables, global industrial production (LIP), Electricity production (LEP), Agricultural production (LAP), transportation (LTR), and energy supply (LES) have a long-run relationship with the dependent variable (LGHG emissions). While the short-run results show that none of the variables have a significant contribution to LGHG emissions. In the long-run results, LIP and LTR significantly contribute to the reduction of LGHG courtesy of the CCS programme while LEP, LAP, and LES contribute to a rise in the LGHG emission. The cross-sectional results show that all the variables have significant impacts on LGHG in all the sampled countries except Australia. Suggesting that, the CCS programme is viable for mitigating global warming and climate change and therefore should be considered by the various countries of the world.

We propose a novel penalized splines method to estimate a stochastic frontier model in which the frontier is linear and the inefficiency has a single index structure with unknown link function and a linear index. The approach is more flexible than the traditional methodology requiring a parametric link function and, at the same time, it does not incur the curse of dimensionality as a fully non-parametric approach. The procedure can be easily implemented using existing software. We give conditions for the model to be identified and provide some asymptotic results. We also use Monte Carlo simulations to show that the approach works well in finite samples in many situations when compared to the well specified maximum likelihood estimator. An application to the residential energy demand of US states is considered. In this case, the penalized splines approach estimates inefficiency functions that deviate substantially from those resulting from parametric maximum likelihood methods previously implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion policies aid the adoption of technologies by targeting various channels of influence in an innovation system, including costs, learning, and standards. Little empirical research exists on their impacts, however, largely because of a lack of data. Using a panel dataset and econometric models, I analyze the determinants of the early diffusion of smart electricity meters in the US electric power industry, where public policy and regulation have supported the adoption of smart meters by electric utilities. The empirical findings suggest multiple drivers of smart meter diffusion. Policy and regulatory support have had a significant, positive impact on adoption, but the findings also suggest that utility characteristics and some combination of learning, cost reductions, and technology standards have been important determinants affecting smart meter diffusion. The timing, sequence, and context of diffusion policies are important to consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambitious climate packages promote the integration of variable renewable energy (VRE) and electrification of the economy. For the power sector, such a transformation means the emergence of so-called prosumers, i.e., agents that both consume and produce electricity. Due to their inflexible VRE output and flexible demand, prosumers will potentially add endogenous net sales with seasonal patterns to the power system. With its vast hydro reservoirs and ample transmission capacity, the Nordic region is seemingly well positioned to cope with such intermittent VRE output. However, the increased requirement for flexibility may be leveraged by incumbent producers to manipulate prices. Via a Nash-Cournot model with a representation of the Nordic region’s spatio-temporal features and reservoir volumes, we examine how hydro producers’ ability to manipulate electricity prices through temporal arbitrage is affected by (i) VRE-enabled prosumers and (ii) the latter plus a high CO 2 price. We find that hydro reservoirs could exploit prosumers’ patterns of net sales to conduct temporal arbitrage more effectively, viz., by targeting periods in which prosumers are net buyers (net sellers) to withhold (to “dump”) water. Meanwhile, a higher CO 2 price would further enhance hydro reservoirs’ market power because flexible price-taking thermal plants would be unable to ramp up production in order to counter such producers’ strategy to target VRE’s intermittency. Hence, in spite of a flexible demand side to complement additional intermittent VRE output, strategic hydro producers may still exacerbate price manipulation in a future power sector via more tailored exercise of market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Visual functions of the dorsal stream are considered vulnerable in children with early brain damage. Considering the recognition of objects in suboptimal representations a dorsal stream dysfunction, we examined whether children with early brain damage and impaired object recognition had either general or selective dorsal stream dysfunctions. Method: In a group of children with early brain damage (n = 48) we evaluated the dorsal stream functioning. To determine whether these patients had an increased risk of a dorsal stream dysfunction we compared the percentage of patients with impaired object recognition, assessed with the L94, with the estimated base rate. Then we evaluated the performance levels on motion perception, visual attention and visuomotor tasks in patients with (n = 18) and without (n = 11) object recognition abnormalities. A general dorsal stream dysfunction was considered present if a patient showed at least one abnormally low score in two out of three additional dorsal stream functions. Results: Six of the eighteen (33.3%) patients with object recognition problems scored abnormally low on at least two additional dorsal stream functions. This was significantly higher than the base rate (p = 0.01). The difference of 24.1% between the patients with and without object recognition problems was not significant. Of the patients with object recognition problems 72.2% had at least 1 dorsal weakness, whereas this was only the case in 27.3% of patients without object recognition problems. Compared to patients with normal object recognition, patients with object recognition problems scored significantly more abnormally low on motion perception and visual attention (p s = 0.03) but did not differ on visuomotor skills. Conclusion: Children with object recognition problems seem at risk for other dorsal stream dysfunctions, but dysfunctions might be rather specific than general. Multiple functions/aspects should be evaluated in neuropsychological assessment of children at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the regulation of network tariffs, the compensation for the opportunity costs of capital through the Weighted Average Costs of Capital (WACC) plays a crucial role. Determining the appropriate level for the WACC is, though, problematic because of the uncertainty about the future conditions in capital markets. When the WACC is set above the future opportunity costs of capital, consumers will pay too much, while when the WACC is below that level, network operators may be unable to finance investments affecting quality of network services. In this paper, we explicitly take this uncertainty into account when we determine the optimal WACC for the tariff regulation of an electricity network. By trading off consumer surplus and expected disruption costs in the electricity grid, we conclude that from a social-welfare perspective in most cases the optimal WACC in tariff regulation is above the historical mean costs of capital. Only in case of high uncertainty about the true costs of capital while network operators are able to quickly increase investment levels, the optimal WACC is below the historical mean because then it is less likely that the WACC is constantly insufficient to cover actual costs of capital. However, when network operators cannot quickly increase investment levels the optimal WACC is always above the historical mean cost of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]