The reform of the electricity supply industry is gathering pace in many countries. Independent regulatory agencies and other regulatory bodies have been created, and regulatory responsibilities redefined. This book reviews the evolving institutional structures to regulate the electricity supply industry in IEA member countries.
. . . this volume comes across as one of the most profound sources on the specifics of European electricity market restructuring. Competition and Regulation in Network Industries The SESSA study on the Internal Energy Market was an important and influential contribution towards the Commission s proposal for a third package of proposals, intending to bring more effective competition and better security of supply to Europe s energy markets. This volume, based on the results of the study is an important and welcome contribution to the ongoing debate on these proposals. Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Energy at the European Commission The chapters in this book are written by the leading European scholars who have studied the structure, behavior and performance of liberalised electricity markets in many European countries as well as in other regions of the world. Both the analyses and the policy recommendations contained in this volume are well worth careful consideration by policymakers in Europe, as well as by policymakers in other countries that are seeking to adopt successful electricity sector liberalisation programs. From the foreword by Paul L. Joskow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US Dynamism or dissipation? Competition or national champions? Will enlargement promote or delay reform? Energy economists contemplate the challenges posed by the restless and discontent European Commission. Stephen Littlechild, University of Birmingham and Judge Institute for Management Studies, University of Cambridge, UK The challenge of European electricity reform is being met, although gradually, delays notwithstanding. This book provides precious help in spotting where the necessary further efforts should be directed. In the US mistakes and delays have occurred, no less than in Europe, but an aggressive federal regulator (absent in Europe) is working to overcome them. Electricity markets do not happen, they have to be built. Here are suggestions for a workable European market design. No ideology, just competence and wisdom from both theory and experience. Will Europe learn? Pippo Ranci, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy The realisation of a European internal market for energy is still a work in progress. Written by leading European scholars and discussed with major energy stakeholders, this book presents a thorough analysis of the motives and methods needed to achieve a single European energy market. The authors discuss the critical issues surrounding an internal European energy market including: market design, competition and market power, sustainable energy versus the market, regulation and harmonisation, benchmarking and indicators, modelling of competition, market prices and energy forecasts. They provide a multi-disciplinary assessment of the best way to build the market base of a future European energy policy. Electricity Reform in Europe will be of great interest to decision makers and managers in the energy industry or business sector as they will be able to see the whole European energy policy picture beyond their own corporate interests. The book will also appeal to national and European energy administrations, regulatory bodies and policy makers providing a synthesis of all relevant policy issues.
Regulation of the Power Sector is a unified, consistent and comprehensive treatment of the theories and practicalities of regulation in modern power-supply systems. The need for generation to occur at the time of use occasioned by the impracticality of large-scale electricity storage coupled with constant and often unpredictable changes in demand make electricity-supply systems large, dynamic and complex and their regulation a daunting task. Arranged in four parts, this book addresses both traditional regulatory frameworks and also liberalized and re-regulated environments. First, an introduction gives a full characterization of power supply including engineering, economic and regulatory viewpoints. The second part presents the fundamentals of regulation and the third looks at the regulation of particular components of the power sector in detail. Advanced topics and subjects still open or subject to dispute form the content of Part IV. In a sector where regulatory design is the key driver of both the industry efficiency and the returns on investment, Regulation of the Power Sector is directed at regulators, policy decision makers, business managers and researchers. It is a pragmatic text, well-tested by the authors’ quarter-century of experience of power systems from around the world. Power system professionals and students at all levels will derive much benefit from the authors’ wealth of blended theory and real-world-derived know-how.
The reform of the electricity supply industry is gathering pace in many countries. Independent regulatory agencies and other regulatory bodies have been created, and regulatory responsibilities redefined. This book reviews the evolving institutional structures to regulate the electricity supply industry in IEA member countries.
A unique and thorough investigation of the shift towards Europe-wide energy regulation, markets and business strategies, and the extent to which energy systems have become more liberalised over this period. Reshaping of European Gas and Electricity Industries analyses the key issues facing the European energy industry, from a regulatory, market, and business perspective. Current challenges within the field are also reviewed, including competitive and environmental issues. Liberalization: Delivers timely insights into the changes facing the European energy industry in the face of deregulation Competition: A direct look at business and marketing strategies in response to the influx of competition from across the globe Environment: Provides powerful [insights] into the way environmentally-based legislation has now become a key driver of the energy industry in Europe
With regulation seeking to foster competition at the same time as also having to protect essential services, the authors investigate regulatory styles, costs of new regulatory functions and how firms in the new regulatory landscape access and influence regulatory authorities. The authors consider how EU pressures may hinder or help the functioning of new regulatory markets and the establishment of business-regulator relationships, as well as the broader policy implications for these new regulatory environments. The book also determines how regulatory authorities emerge and evolve under different state traditions and assesses, over time, the degree to which there is potential for convergence, divergence and continued differences as regulatory functions mature.
"The general motivation of this research is to explore the effects of the coexistence of public and private companies on the allocative efficiency of the supply of electricity. In particular, this thesis investigates from an empirical perspective to what extent the distinction between private and public companies is relevant to understand the competition in the wholesale electricity generation markets. I apply several econometric techniques and theory advances in industrial organization branch on data of the firms of the Colombian market. The case of the Colombian electricity market is suitable to study this issues for four reasons: i) It is an oligopoly in which private and public companies compete under the same rules. ii) The most important firms in the Colombian electricity sector are mature organizations, with a conventional business vision. In fact, many of these companies belong to transnational capital that carry out activities in several continents. iii) The market setting have a conventional design similar to other liberalized electricity markets. It operates as a multi-unit uniform-price auction. iv) There is available information with daily and even hourly resolution of the generation market variables. I consider that these are key elements for justifying the external validity of the results. This thesis presents three essays that aim to answer three questions related to the interaction between competition in electricity markets and their ownership structure. Chapter 1 addresses the question: Do the switch from public to private management have impacts in the bidding strategy of specific generation assets? Chapter 2 explores the question: Do public and private generation companies respond the same to the incentives to relax competition? Chapter 3 focuses on the question: Do private companies have a greater propensity to establish coordination relationships in comparison to public firms? In the first chapter of this thesis I evaluate the impact of privatization on the bidding of electricity units participating in a liberalized wholesale electricity market. The results of this evaluation contribute to better understand whether privatization is the right decision in an environment of imperfect competition. In this essay I adopt a policy evaluation approach to estimate the impact of changes from public to private management on the bidding prices of electricity generation units. I use information of bidding prices of the Colombian wholesale electricity market and exploit the changes of management of generation units documented in the period 2006 - 2018. The methodologies and results presented in this thesis contributes to the literature of mixed oligopoly because they place special emphasis on the behavioral differences between private and public companies and studies a field experience in which they compete in the same relevant market. The empirical evidence resultant from the policy evaluation method is aligned with the theoretical predictions of comparative statics arising from the behavioral differences of mixed oligopoly models. The second chapter of this dissertation proposes a methodology in order to find differences between the reactions of private and public firms when they face incentives to exercises unilateral market power. Several common events in the electricity industry such as transmission restrictions, the concentration of generation property within specific areas, the non-storage capacity of electricity and the low elasticity of demand, provide opportunities to exert market power. That is why this issue has been widely studied and discussed theoretically and empirically. The novel element of this essay in relation to this strand of the literature is accounting for the distinction between private and public companies regarding competitive behavior. Chapter 3 investigates from an empirical perspective the role of disclosure information in the stability of informal coordination agreements. Particularly, this chapter focuses in the economic effects of the announcement and the put into effect of a non-transparency policy implemented in the Colombian wholesale electricity market in 2009. We propose an identification strategy for isolating the effect of a coordinating relation from the confusion factors related with unilateral market power. The characteristics of the reform of the transparency policy allow to link the simple announcement of the policy change with the collapse of a coordinated strategy of private firms in a repeated interaction context. We use several empirical tools to assess the impact of the simple announcement of a modification in the transparency conditions on the average bidding price of private firms. We present an empirical analysis of the average bidding price data over August 2008 - July 2009. Overall, the evidence presented in the three essays of this dissertation indicates that the distinction between public and private companies may be a relevant aspect for explaining the functioning of competition in liberalized industries." -- TDX.
