The Stability Reserve in EU Carbon Emission Trading: Does it Deliver What it Promises?

In recent years the Europe Unions emission trading system (EU ETS) has experienced very low prices. This has triggered a political discussion about stabilising the EU ETS and improving incentives for investing in CO2 abatement. As a result of this discussion, the EU parliament accepted a proposal of the EU commission on the backloading of EU...

Understanding power plant investment decision processes

In order to understand how companies make investment decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty, we interviewed a number of actors in the Dutch electricity sector. Most of the economic literature that is devoted to this question is prescriptive in nature, describing rational methods to the investment decision process (such as real options...

Impacts of the introduction of CO2 price floors in a two-country electricity maket model

The recent low of CO2 prices in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme have triggered a renewed discussion, whether the introduction of a CO2 price oor would lower investor uncertainty and thus trigger more investment in low-carbon electricity generation. We compare the effects of a CO2 price floor on the dynamic investment pathway of an...