Thẻ: Energy system

From Omen to Opportunity: How Cheap Oil Is Accelerating Sustainable Energy Investment

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

An increasingly unprofitable global oil market is driving fuel prices to historic lows and hemorrhaging investment in conventional energy sources. Breaking with tradition, cheap oil no longer foretells disaster for renewable energy companies. On the contrary, disillusioned fossil fuel investors are seeking high-growth opportunities—just in time to ride the renewables wave in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate talks.

worldwatch – Crashing out in February at $27 per barrel, crude oil prices have reached their lowest point in over 13 years, since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Despite a modest recovery in March driven by expectations for reduced production, investors remain skeptical of underlying oil market fundamentals and are reducing their exposure. These selloffs have dragged down the stock prices of large conventional energy companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index by 13 percent and have cost investors more than $703 billion since the record-high oil prices of June 2014.

Responding to these selloffs, oil companies have tightened their belts, decommissioning two-thirds of their rigs and sharply cutting investment in oil field exploration and development, while an estimated 250,000 oil workers have lost their jobs. A Wood Mackenzie report identified 68 major oil and natural gas projects—representing a combined value of $380 billion and output of 2.9 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day—that have been put on hold since late 2014. Besides reducing operating costs, oil companies hope that these measures will have a stabilizing effect on the market by reducing productive capacity in the medium to long term. Tiếp tục đọc “From Omen to Opportunity: How Cheap Oil Is Accelerating Sustainable Energy Investment” →

Reforming Electricity Reforms? Empirical Evidence from Asian Economies

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Executive Summary

Anupama Sen* Rabindra Nepal** Tooraj Jamasb*** & Tooraj Jamasb

February 2016

After more than two decades of attempts at electricity sector reform, there is a strong case for assessing empirical evidence on its outcomes, particularly for developing countries. Electricity reform programmes , implemented through the ‘standard’ or ‘textbook’ model, have their foundations in standard microeconomic theory and are based on the rationale that restructuring towards greater competition can lead to higher efficiency, maximise economic welfare, and transfer surplus to consumers. In practice, this has not always been the case, even in the OECD economies which pioneered the standard model.

This paper investigates the outcomes of the standard model for developing countries, by applying instrumental variable regression techniques on an original and previously untested panel dataset covering 17 non – OECD developing Asian economies spanning 23 years. While there is some cross – country literature on the effects of electricity reforms in developed and developing economies, there has been no systematic attempt thus far to examine their technical, economic and welfare impacts whilst accounting for cross – country institutional differences, for non – OECD Asian developing economies.

This paper fills a gap in the literature in the following ways: First, to our knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically assess the impact of electricity reforms on non – OECD Asian countries as a whole. Second, it applies econometric techniques to a new panel data set on 17 non – OECD developing Asian economies, from 1990 – 2013, which allows for cross – country comparisons whilst controlling for differing institutional and political contexts. Third, it draws the link between electricity reform and sector (technical) performance, economic impacts, and welfare indicators, assuming a cumulative impact of reform. In contrast with the theoretical literature, our results show a tension between wider economic impacts and welfare impacts for consumers: namely, the variables that are associated with a positive effect on economic growth appear to be associated with a negative impact on welfare indicators. Tiếp tục đọc “Reforming Electricity Reforms? Empirical Evidence from Asian Economies” →