This paper analyses the determinants of household electricity demand with a panel data, partial adjustment model of Spanish regions in the 1998-2009 period. The results show that electricity demand responds positively and significantly to electricity demand in the previous year, income, temperature range, penetration of electric water heating in households and the number of heating and cooling degree days. It is significantly and negatively related to electricity prices, gas prices, penetration of electric heating in households and whether households have at least one member being 64 years or older. Price elasticities in the preferred model are -0.26 (short-term) and -0.37 (long-term). Income elasticities are 0.31 (short-term) and 0.43 (long-term). Several implications for electricity-efficiency policies are derived from the results of the analysis.

Policy combinations and interactions have received a considerable attention in the energy policy realm. The aim of our working paper is to provide insight on the cost- effectiveness of combinations of deployment instruments for the same technology. A financial model is developed for this purpose, whereby feed-in tariffs (FITs) and premiums (FIPs) are combined with investment subsidies and soft loans. The results show that combining deployment instruments is not a cost-containment strategy. However, combinations may lead to different inter-temporal distributions of the same amount of policy costs which can affect the social acceptability and political feasibility of renewable energy support.

This paper provides insight in the time-varying relation between electricity futures prices and fundamentals in the form of prices of contracts for fossil fuels. As supply curves are not constant and different producers have different marginal costs of production, we argue that the relation between electricity futures prices and futures prices of underlying fundamentals such as natural gas, coal and emission rights are not constant and vary over time. We test this view by applying a model that linearly relates electricity futures prices to the marginal costs of production and calculate the log-likelihood of different time-varying and constant specifications of the coefficients. To do so, we formulate the model in state-space form and apply the Kalman Filter to observe the dynamics of the coefficients. We analyse historical prices of futures contracts with different delivery periods (calendar year and seasons, peak and off-peak) from Germany and the U.K. The results indicate that analysts should choose a time-varying specification to relate the futures price of power to prices of underlying fundamentals.

This paper uses the possibilities provided by the regression-based inequality decomposition (Fields, 2003) to explore the contribution of different explanatory factors to international inequality in CO2 emissions per capita. In contrast to previous emissions inequality decompositions, which were based on identity relationships (Duro and Padilla, 2006), this methodology does not impose any a priori specific relationship. Thus, it allows an assessment of the contribution to inequality of different relevant variables. In short, the paper appraises the relative contributions of affluence, sectoral composition, demographic factors and climate. The analysis is applied to selected years of the period 1993–2007. The results show the important (though decreasing) share of the contribution of demographic factors, as well as a significant contribution of affluence and sectoral composition..

We investigate the effect of energy liberalizations on policies that support renewable energy in a long panel of OECD countries. We estimate this effect accounting for the endogeneity of liberalization related to joint decisions within a country’s energy strategy. Using regulation in other industries as instruments, we find that energy liberalization increases the public support to renewable energy. The effect of liberalization is the second largest after the effect of per-capita income and is fully driven by reductions in entry barriers, while the effect of privatization is negative. Finally, our results are robust to dynamic specifications and various policy indicators.

This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) within their innovation objectives. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on reaching the objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a probit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants to those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use a panel data coming from CIS (Community Innovation Survey) for the period 2008-2011 that includes 4,458 manufacturing firms. Among firm characteristics, the empirical results underline the importance of size in facilitating the adoption of technology that improves energy efficiency; while among the factors related to companies’ behavior, the favorable influence of organizational innovations and innovations related with the reduction of environmental impacts stand out as the main factors in carrying out innovations with the objective of increasing energy efficiency.