Conference Agenda

Despite the need for technologies to address the intermittency problem of renewable energy sources, innovation in energy storage technologies has received little attention in the literature and among policymakers. We analyze the role of innovation in energy storage technologies to decarbonize energy production. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we document that although green innovation has collapsed since 2010, innovation in energy storage is on the rise. Furthermore, this occurred despite the poor public support for storage R$\&$D and is not driven by electric vehicles. Second, we expand current models of endogenous technical change to accommodate innovation in energy storage. Our main finding is that neglecting energy storage in climate policy can cause a delay in the clean energy transition. Numerical simulations show a substantial reduction in the share of clean energy by the end of the century in the absence of public support of energy storage innovation. These results highlight the relevance of implementing policies targeting energy storage innovation to achieve current climate goals.

Transitioning to a low carbon economy requires ambitious climate action to reduce

fossil fuel consumption as well as production. However, delayed policy

implementation undermines governments’ credibility, leading oil producers to continue investing heavily in new facilities and overproducing in existing ones. This paper examines the implications of a delayed implementation of a carbon tax on emissions reductions in the oil producing sector, with a specific focus on the concept of carbon lock-in. Two scenarios are compared: a baseline scenario where a carbon tax aligned with the 2°C objective is implemented in 2016, and an alternative scenario with a delayed implementation of the tax until 2030. Results suggest that the delay induces an overshooting of the corresponding oil carbon budget by 36.5% (131GtCO2eq), of which 59% occurs at the intensive margin and 41% at the extensive margin. The robustness of these findings is confirmed through testing various investor anticipations. To estimate the cost of carbon lock-in, I identify committed emissions from investments that would not be made in the presence of the tax but become locked-in once producing facilities are built. I find that these overcommitted emissions represent half (47GtCO2eq) of total committed emissions during the 2016-2029 period. The distribution of these overcommitted emissions exhibits large heterogeneity, with a significant concentration in certain offshore projects, particularly deepwater ones. I derive from these results policy recommendations arguing that locally-routed policies can achieve large carbon abatement and favour the progressive ramp up of supply-side policies to larger scales.

This paper explores the interaction between market power and the energy transition in the global upstream oil industry. To align with the Paris Agreement's global warming target, a significant portion of world oil reserves needs to remain untapped. At the same time, the cartel in the global crude oil market exercises market power by strategically slowing down production to inflate prices. I build a dynamic structural model of global oil production during an energy transition where oil producers face a trade off between exercising market power (slowing down production), and avoiding unexploited reserves (speeding up production), relying on detailed micro-level data on global oil production costs and reserves. My counterfactual analysis reveals that the welfare effects of environmental regulation are twofold: they can importantly erode strategic incentives and can prevent environmentally damaging production. My results suggest that phasing out oil in accordance with the Paris Agreement goals could reduce welfare loss from production misallocation in the market by about 16%, on top of the environmental welfare gains.

Electric vehicles (EVs) provide not only a mobility service but also an energy storage service. While the EV is primarily used as a means of transport, the EV battery can be used for electricity storage – mobile and stationary. The effectiveness of an EV battery for transport reduces after 5-8 years, rendering it inefficient for mobility. However, the battery itself may still be used for stationary energy storage purposes.

This paper aims to focus on the stationary storage use of an EV battery, as second-hand backup for household. The household is equipped with rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) and requires storage systems to optimise electricity consumption. In the existing literature, there is a lack of simulated and experimental research which looks at household-level decision making on electricity storage consumption with the presence of both solar PVs and EVs.

The PV-EV optimisation model is extended to consider re-purposing an EV battery as second life application, which becomes stationary storage for the household. The storage capability of an EV battery shows increased welfare for a household. Furthermore, this additional second life delays discarding the battery, invoking circular economy principles and reducing immediate e-waste.

Two situations will be considered, depending on whether the possibility of re-use is considered by the holder of the EV when it is acquired, explicitly (they intend to use it themselves) or implicitly (the value addition by sale to grid). The model will be calibrated against existing data for solar generation to compare willingness to pay with the cost of an EV. Based on the savings, this paper assess the optimal switching point for when the EV battery becomes stationary storage. This paper aims to assess whether existing incentives for EV adoption are sufficient to ensure their appeal to households, considering the predicted value addition by battery re-purpose.