Conference Agenda

The transition to decarbonised economies is essential for economic development in developing economies and it opens venues for developed countries to think strategically about energy and foreign policy in a changing geopolitical context in which energy security and climate targets need to go hand in hand. Analysing how bilateral aid for renewable energy projects is allocated is crucial to understand if donor countries prioritize social and environmental goals or if their motives are less altruistic and focused on their own economic and strategic benefits in the context of the geopolitics of the energy transition. To examine how official development aid for renewable energy projects (RE ODA) is allocated across countries we pay attention to donor and recipient characteristics and interactions but also to donor-donor strategic relationships. We use an estimation strategy that combines quantitative social network analysis and panel data models (pplmhdfe, Heckman selection and an IV strategy) to examine the technical, economic or geopolitical motives determining the allocation of bilateral aid for projects on non-emitting energy sources from 2009 to 2018 with OECD-CRS data. Using the degree centrality of the recipient, the Herfindahl index and the market share of the donors’ RE ODA on the recipients to measure the concentration of RE ODA and, therefore, the importance of a donor within the recipient’s network, we analyse the motivations behind the strategic donations of countries. We find that both political and strategic trade interests connected to the access to critical minerals, energy resources and policy drivers are behind the factors affecting the amount of ODA received by low-and-middle income countries while, generally, recipients’ needs not are relevant factors driving the reception of RE ODA.

What happens to the merit order of electricity markets when all electricity is supplied by intermittent renewable energy sources coupled with large-scale electricity storage? With near-zero marginal cost of production, will there still be a role for an energy-only electricity market? We answer these questions both analytically and empirically for electricity markets in Texas and Germany. What emerges in market equilibrium is the "new merit order". Our work demonstrates that as long as free entry and competition ensure effective price setting, an efficient new merit order emerges in electricity markets even when the grid is completely powered by intermittent sources with near-zero marginal costs. We find that energy-only markets remain viable and functional.

Renewable power generation is the key to decarbonizing the electricity system. Wind power is the fastest growing renewable source of electricity in the United States. However, expanding wind capacity often faces local opposition, partly due to a perceived visual disamenity from large wind turbines. Here, we provide a first-of-its-kind US-wide assessment of the externality costs of wind power generation through the visibility impact on property values. To this end, wecreate a database on wind turbine visibility, combining informationon the site and height of each utility-scale turbine having fed power into the U.S. grid, with a high-resolution elevation map to account for the underlying topography of the landscape. Building on hedonic valuation theory, we statistically estimate the impact of wind turbine visibility on home values, informed by data from the majority of home sales in the U.S. since 1997. We find that on average wind turbine visibility negatively affects home values in an economically and statistically significant way in close proximity (<5 miles/8 km). However, the effect is indistinguishable from zero for larger distances, substantially smaller for wind turbines that were installed more recently, and diminishes significantly over time following the installation of

turbines.

The transition towards renewable energy could play a key role in the local economic development of peripheral and lagging-behind regions, where the natural resources needed for the generation of green renewable energy are usually located. This could allow many peripheral regions across developed countries, once dependent on mature declining industries, to regenerate their local economies by sustainably transitioning towards new higher added-value green industries.

This is the first study providing robust evidence at a granular level analysing investment in offshore wind energy in the UK. By applying an instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity, modelling the probability of wind farms’ locations based on offshore natural characteristics, we identify the causal impact of offshore wind farms on the economic development of local onshore coastal communities in the UK, linked through the location of infrastructures servicing these farms. We find positive effects of investment in offshore wind energy capacity both on employment (+10%) and on firm entry (+20%), with stronger effects in local labour markets around key infrastructure servicing offshore wind farms. This is mainly driven by service and high-productivity industries related to the offshore wind energy industry, with positive effects also for lagging-behind places, but not for the most deprived areas.