With the continued successful operation of its greenhouse gas emissions market, California can become a global leader in the design and implementation of regional carbon polices. Moreover, if more regions use the California market as their starting point, then linking these programs together will be more straightforward and the ultimate goal of an effective global climate policy the more likely end result.

Last week, Stanford's Board of Trustees announced that the university would not directly invest funds from its endowment in coal mining companies.  Even the strongest advocates of this action acknowledge that it is a symbolic gesture with little direct effect on the coal industry or global greenhouse gas emissions.  But if a university administration wants to take symbolic (or real) action on climate change, is coal investment a wise choice?

In this report we identify the key drivers of observed market outcomes in the Colombian electricity supply industry during the fourth quarter of 2015 and first quarter of 2016, the time period covered by the most recent El Niño Event. We analyze how effective the market rules and market structure of Colombian electricity supply industry are in managing El Niño Events. The performance of the Reliability Payment Mechanism (RPM) is a major focus of this report because of its designation as the primary mechanism for ensuring an adequate supply of energy at a reasonable price during El Niño Events. We find that the RPM creates a number of perverse economic incentives for supplier behavior, particularly if suppliers have a significant ability to exercise unilateral market power, that works against the RPM mechanism ensuring an adequate supply of electricity at a reasonable price during El Niño Events. We identify several features of the RPM that make it extremely challenging even for a modified version of this mechanism to achieve its goal. We propose an alternative mechanism for ensuring an adequate supply of energy at a reasonable price during El Niño Events that should be straightforward to implement under the current market design in Colombia.

A spatial equilibrium model of the world coal market is developed that accounts for coal to natural gas switching in the electricity sector in the United States and Europe, the potential for China to exercise monoposony power in its coal purchasing behavior, and the impact of increasing the western US coal export port capacity. The global coal market equilibrium is computed as the solution to a nonlinear complementarity problem. Where possible parameters of the model are estimated econometrically. Where this is not possible the parameters are calibrated to global coal market outcomes in 2011. The model is used to assess how the shale gas boom in the United States impacts global coal market outcomes for dierent models of Chinese coal buyers' purchasing behavior and dierent scenarios for the capacity of coal export terminals on the US west coast.  Although reductions in US and European natural gas prices reduce coal consumption in the US and Europe, the percentage reduction in coal consumption in Europe is much less than that in the US. Increasing US west coast port capacity increases coal exports from the western US and reduces Chinese coal production. US coal prices increase which causes more coal to natural gas switching in the US, further reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling China as a monopsony buyer of coal reduces the absolute magnitude of these impacts.

The variability of solar and wind generation increases transmission network operating costs associated with maintaining system stability. These ancillary services costs are likely to increase as a share of total energy costs in regions with ambitious renewable energy targets. We examine how ecient deployment of intermittent renewable generation capacity across locations depends on the costs of balancing real-time system demand and supply. We then show how locational marginal network taris can be designed to implement the ecient outcome for intermittent renewable generation unit location decisions. We demonstrate the practical applicability of this approach by applying our theory to obtain quantitative results for the California electricity market.

Electricity tariff reforms will be an essential part of the clean energy transition. Existing tariffs rely on average cost pricing and often set a price per unit that exceeds marginal cost. The higher price encourages over-adoption of residential solar panels and under-adoption of electric alternatives to fossil fuels. However, an efficient tariff based on fixed charges and marginal cost pricing may harm low-income households. We propose an alternative methodology for setting fixed charges based on the predicted willingness-to-pay of each household. Using household data from Colombia, we show the fiscal burden and economic inefficiency of the existing tariffs. We then show how our new tariff methodology could improve economic efficiency and create incentives for the adoption of clean energy technologies, while still leaving low-income households better off.

We investigate the relationship between accumulated experience completing wind power projects and the cost of installing wind projects in the U.S. from 2001-2015. Our modeling framework disentangles accumulated experience from input price changes, scale economies, and exogenous technical change; and accounts for both firm-specific and industry-wide accumulated experience. We find evidence consistent with cost-reducing benefits from firm-specific experience for that firm’s cost of future wind power projects, but no evidence of industry-wide learning from the experience of other participants in the industry. Further, our experience measure rapidly depreciates across time and distance, suggesting a stable industry trajectory would lower project costs.

This paper identifies the key features of successful electricity market designs that are particularly relevant to the experience of low-income countries. Important features include: (1) the match between the short-term market used to dispatch generation units and the physical operation of the electricity network, (2) effective regulatory and market mechanisms to ensure long-term generation resource adequacy, (3) appropriate mechanisms to mitigate local market power, and (4) mechanisms to allow the active involvement of final demand in a short-term market. The paper provides a recommended baseline market design that reflects the experience of the past 25 years
with electricity restructuring processes. It then suggests a simplified version of this market design ideally suited to the proposed East and Western Sub-Sahara Africa regional wholesale market that is likely to realise a substantial amount of the economic benefits from forming a regional market with minimal implementation cost and regulatory burden. Recommendations are also provided for modifying the Southern African Power Pool to increase the economic benefits realised from its formation. How this market design supports the cost-effective integration of renewables is discussed and future enhancements are proposed that support the integration of a greater share
of intermittent renewables. The paper closes with proposed directions for future research in the area of electricity market design in developing countries.

Significant political barriers to implementing na- tional climate policies exist in both the US and China. Successful linkage of regional climate policies in the two countries can help overcome these impediments. Each country can be seen as willing to cooperate with the other to address the global climate challenge, which can help each national government overcome the resistance to formulating its own national climate policy.

Solving the climate challenge involves many years of sustained actions coordinated across the major emitting countries. Like any long journey, it begins with︎ a first step. Coordinating regional policies is such a step.

This report provides recommendations on the six topic areas in the transformation and modernization theme “Competition, participation and structure of the electricity market.” These are: (1) investment, reliability charges, and contracts; (2) generation diversification, of Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Sources (NCRES) and greater number of agents; (3) new services and agents: storage systems and aggregators; (4) restrictions, nodal prices and infrastructure; (5) market structure; and (6) pathways to de-carbonization and implications for market design. These recommendations are aimed at enhancing the efficiency of the short-term electricity market design and the long-term resource adequacy process in Colombia. They also provide policy pathways for the government of Colombia to support the deployment of NCRES, the entry of new market participants and technologies, and the active participation of final consumers in the wholesale market in manner that increase the competitiveness of wholesale and retail market outcomes.