This paper investigates the degree of integration of natural gas markets in Europe, North America and Japan in the time period between the early 1990s and 2004. The relationship between international gas market prices and their relation to the oil price are explored through principal components analysis and Johansen likelihood-based cointegration procedure. Both of them show a high level of natural gas market integration within Europe, between the European and Japanese markets as well as within the North American market. At the same time the obtained results suggest that the European (respectively, Japanese) and the North American markets were not integrated. D

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Abstract:Structural changes in the European natural gas market such as liberalization, increasing demand, and growing import dependency have triggered new attempts to model this market accurately. This paper presents a model of the European natural gas supply, GASMOD, which is structured as a two-stagegame of successive natural gas exports to Europe (upstream market) and wholesale trade within Europe (downstream market), and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities. We compare three possible market scenarios: Cournot competition on both markets, perfect competition on both markets, and perfect competition on the downstream with Cournot competition on the upstream market. We find that Cournot competition on both markets is the most realistic representation of today's European natural gas market, where suppliers at both stages generate a mark-up at the expense of the final customer (double marginalization). Our results yield a diversified supply portfolio with newly emerging (LNG) exporters gaining market shares. Enforcing perfect competition on the European downstream market would in positive welfare effects. The limited infrastructure strongly influences the results, and we identify bottlenecks mainly for intra-European trade relations whereas transport capacity on the upstream market is sufficient (with the exception of Norwegian exports) in the Cournot scenario. Zusammenfassung:Der

This paper develops a path for the global energy system up to 2050, presenting a new application of the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) to the community. It allows quite disaggregate energy and emission analysis: Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) uses a system of linear equations of the energy system to search for lowest-cost solutions for a secure energy supply, given externally defined constraints, mainly in terms of CO 2 -emissions. The general algebraic modeling system (GAMS) version of OSeMOSYS is updated to the newest version and, in addition, extended and enhanced to include e.g., a modal split for transport, an improved trading system, and changes to storages. The model can be scaled from small-scale applications, e.g., a company, to cover the global energy system. The paper also includes an application of GENeSYS-MOD to analyze decarbonization scenarios at the global level, broken down into 10 regions. Its main focus is on interdependencies between traditionally segregated sectors: electricity, transportation, and heating; which are all included in the model. Model calculations suggests that in order to achieve the 1.5-2 • C target, a combination of renewable energy sources provides the lowest-cost solution, solar photovoltaic being the dominant source. Average costs of electricity generation in 2050 are about 4 €cents/kWh (excluding infrastructure and transportation costs).

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Integrating large quantities of supply-driven renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns. We model the current methodology for controlling congestion at international borders and compare its results, under varying penetrations of wind power, with a model that simulates an integrated European network that utilises nodal/localised marginal pricing. The nodal pricing simulations illustrate that congestion -and price -patterns vary considerably between wind scenarios and within countries, and that a nodal price regime could make fuller use of existing EU network capacity, introducing substantial operational cost savings and reducing marginal power prices in the majority of European countries.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper applies parametric and non-parametric and parametric tests to assess the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in Germany. We address traditional issues in electricity sector benchmarking, such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size, as well as new evidence specific to the situation in Germany This paper applies parametric and non-parametric and parametric tests to asses the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in Germany. We use labor, capital, and peak load capacity as inputs, and units sold and the number of customers as output. The data covers 307 (out of 553) German electricity distribution utilities. We apply a data envelopment analysis (DEA) with constant returns to scale (CRS) as the main productivity analysis technique, whereas stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) with distance function is our verification method. The results suggest that returns to scale play a minor role; only very small utilities have a significant cost advantage. Low customer density is found to affect the efficiency score significantly in the lower third of all observations. Surprisingly, East German utilities feature a higher average efficiency than their West German counterparts. The correlation tests imply a high coherence of the results. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Classification: L51, L43, L94, C14

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