We report on an economic experiment that compares outcomes in electricity markets subject to carbon-tax and cap-and-trade policies. Under conditions of uncertainty, price-based and quantity-based policy instruments cannot be truly equivalent, so we compared three matched carbon-tax/cap-and-trade pairs with equivalent emissions targets, mean emissions, and mean carbon prices, respectively. Across these matched pairs, the cap-and-trade mechanism produced much higher wholesale electricity prices (38.5% to 52.6% higher) and lower total electricity production (2.5% to 4.0% lower) than the \equivalent" carbon tax, without any lower carbon emissions. Market participants who forecast a lower price of carbon in the cap-and-trade games ran their units more than those who forecast a higher price of carbon, which caused emissions from the dirtiest generating units (Coal and Gas Peakers) to be signicantly higher (15.2% to 33.0%) than in the carbon tax games. These merit order \mistakes" in the cap-and-trade games suggest an important advantage of the carbon tax as policy: namely, that the cost of carbon can treated by rms as a known input to production.

To maximize environmental benefits from the rollout of its cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, California should focus on achieving a positive demonstration effect from the program by doing as little as possible to harm the state's economy, as transparently as possible and as fast as possible.

If regulators and utilities want to avoid future consumer backlash from smart grid investments, they should adopt retail pricing policies best suited to maximizing the consumer benefits from smart grid technologies.

Unconventional natural gas and the technologies developed to extract it in the U.S. point to a possible lower carbon energy future for China that can be facilitated through international cooperation between them, improving China's reliance on domestically produced coal, and creating economic and environmental benefits for both countries as well as the rest of the world.

The desire to "reboot" the New Zealand electricity supply industry is understandable, but it is almost certainly not the best course of action. As a participant in many electricity industry restructuring processes around the world, one important lesson that I have learned is that all reforms start with significant unintended defects that can only be eliminated through a rigorous ongoing analysis of market outcomes and targeted regulatory reforms.  

Many features of the current industry are consistent with international best-practice and a number of positive changes have been implemented since I completed my report for the Commerce Commission in 2009.

Continuing these efforts to identify and fix flaws in the existing market is likely to provide greater long-term benefits than undertaking a major restructuring of the industry.

Last week, Stanford's Board of Trustees announced that the university would not directly invest funds from its endowment in coal mining companies.  Even the strongest advocates of this action acknowledge that it is a symbolic gesture with little direct effect on the coal industry or global greenhouse gas emissions.  But if a university administration wants to take symbolic (or real) action on climate change, is coal investment a wise choice?

This paper identifies the major political and economic constraints that impact the demandside of electricity industry re-structuring processes. It then describes how these constraints have been addressed and how this has harmed market efficiency and system reliability. Finally, the paper proposes demand-side regulatory interventions to manage these constraints in a manner that limits the harm to wholesale market efficiency.

This report points out a number of aspects of the existing electricity market design in Colombia that could be contributing to the periods of high short-term prices observed several times since early December of 2008. These issues are classified into four broad categories: (1) system-wide market power issues, (2) local market power issues, (3) market monitoring issues, and (4) broader electricity market issues.