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CenSES annual report 2015
RA 3 consists of three work packages:
• WP1 Electricity market design and economic incentives
• WP2 National policy: Regulation, incentives and
efficiency
• WP3 Regional economic implications of energy policies
The three work packages of RA 3 Economic Analysis,
all proceeded well in 2015. WP1 Electricity market
design and economic incentives, and INTREPED
(Intermittent Renewables, Balancing Power and Electricity
Market Design) did a joined efforts. Some activities
are also further pursued as sole CenSES activities.
InWP2, work on sectors such as transport and energy are still
proceeding. In WP3 models with Regional Dimensions, work
on urban, renewables, forestry, and transport has reached
fruition, and new activities are initiated.
A major undertaking for NHH/SNF as a CenSES partner and
for the RA 3 team, is the international conference of the
International Association of Energy Economics, from June
19th to the 22nd 2016, consisting of both workshops and
summer schools.
RA 3 Economic Analysis
Research in 2015
Postdoc Johannes Mauritzen’s position was completed at
the end of 2015. Mauritzen is a true product of CenSES and
ENE at NHH, first as a PhD, then as a postdoc, and he is now
established as a reputed and well-published researcher. He
writes op-eds in newspapers and publishes in international
refereed journals on topics such as energy, climate change
and policy.
Victoria Gribovskaya, Sahar Babri and Tunc Durmaz also
finished their PhDs in 2015. Gribovskaya and Babri have
both published on transport and logistics, and Durmaz has
written papers about energy technology and change on the
economy wide level, on energy storage and intermittency,
and on environmental policy.
Among ongoing PhDs are Shiyu Yan, who is working on
policy instruments and changes of the Norwegian vehicle
stock. Lisa Assmann works on maritime shipping and
emissions, Evangelos Kyritsis works on energy markets and
Yuanming Ni on forestry and natural resources. She had also
a paper published in 2015 about global carbon storage in
forestry.
The domination of road transport in different country’s energy use
One highly motivating finding, based on IEA data,
is that domestic transport represents as much as
a quarter of countries’ energy use (see table 1).
Road transport dominates in the domestic transport’s
share in different country’s energy use. Countries with a
high percentage of the population living in poverty and/or
countries with coastlines, also use more energy because of it.
Likewise was the situation if the population lived in more
wealthy conditions; the energy use for aviation rose.
Countries whowere small, poor and/or agricultural had lower
energy use. Transnational transport would add a couple of
percentage points for aviation and maritime globally, where
aviation was important for passenger movements, maritime
transport important for goods (especially bulk commodities
such as oil, coal, ore, grains, and more valuable cargo in
container vessels).
Eskeland and Lindstads findings emphasize that in the
broader picture of transport and environment, it is not
only alternative technologies, such as fuels and filters
that matter: it also helps when goods and passengers
are transported in larger ‘vehicles’, such as buses, trucks,
vessels, trains and planes. Higher capacity utilization
(fuller trucks, buses, etc), and slower speeds in more
slender hulls – especially at sea, also contributes.
These broader aspects of environmentally friendly responses
– broader than brought about by emission standards, for
instance – lend support to the role of policy instruments
such as fuel taxes, vehicle taxes, differentiated toll rings. For
co2 emission reductions (see table 2 ) it will be important
to bring transport from air to surface, from road to rail and
from rail to sea. In maritime shipping, where much reliance
presently is on standards for new vessels, one risk to do little
with the size distribution, little to slow down transport, and
in addition one risks to slow down vessel renovation and
modernization. Low emission technologies and initiatives
which are reasonable in costs and meet market needs can
be more important to reduce emissions than more radical
changes, since environmental contributions to a great extent
will depend on commercial success.