No abstract

Growing self-generation and storage are expected to cause significant changes in residential electricity utilization patterns. Commonly applied volumetric network tariffs may induce imbalance between different groups of households and their respective contribution to recovering the operating costs of the grid. Understanding consumer behaviour and appliance usage together with socio-economic factors can help regulatory authorities to adapt network tariffs to new circumstances in a fair way. We assess the effects of eleven 1 network tariff scenarios on household budgets using real load profiles from 765 households. Thus we explore the possibly disruptive impact of applying peak-load-based tariffs on the budgets of households when they have been mainly charged for consumed volumes before. Our analysis estimates the change in household network expenditure for different combinations of energy, peak, and fixed charges and can help to design tariffs that recover the costs needed for the sustainable operation of the grid.

Low social acceptance to new energy infrastructure may hinder achieving the European Union's goal that 32% of energy consumption come from renewable sources. A vast literature is available on the social acceptance of specific renewable energy technologies, but existing research lacks assessments regarding comprehensive transformations to local energy systems. Moreover, the promising energy storage technology power-togas has not yet been addressed in acceptance studies. This paper fills these gaps in the acceptance literature by analysing data from a choice experiment survey with 2,000 respondents across four nations (Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland). Results from the analysis show that solar farms and power-togas infrastructure increase acceptance of local energy communities, while wind farms have an ambiguous effect, and gas power plants and power lines decrease acceptance. The derived willingness to pay estimates can be used by energy policymakers to ensure acceptable price changes accompany local energy system changes. Additionally, we investigate whether stated support from political opinion leaders at the local, national, and EU levels can increase the acceptance of renewable energy systems. Results suggest that Italian choices are influenced by the opinions of EU and national governmental bodies, and that Swiss choices are sensitive to the opinions of local politicians.

The current European Union vision for a low carbon electricity system requires a large-scale expansion of overhead transmission lines to integrate renewable energy sources and ensure a secure electricity supply for the future. Recently, new installations of overhead transmission lines across Europe have been stymied by local opposition, which causes long delays in project completion and occasional cancellations. This study presents and analyzes data from an unprecedented survey on the social acceptance of transmission lines that was conducted in the EU-27. We find that auxiliary information regarding the positive effects of a grid development project can have a substantial impact in decreasing the opposition of local stakeholders. In particular, emphasizing any long-term carbon reduction potential or economic benefit of a particular project will, on average, decrease the likelihood that a local resident is strongly opposed to the project by 10-11%.

In hedonic valuation studies the policy-relevant environmental quality attribute of interest is often costly to measure, especially under pronounced spatial and temporal variability. However, in many cases this attribute affects home prices and consumer preferences solely through its impact on a readily observable, spatially delineated, and time-invariant feature of the physical landscape. We label such a feature a "translating amenity." We show that under certain conditions changes in the marginal effect of such amenities on home values over time can be used to draw inference on the implicit price of the unobserved environmental quality of interest. We illustrate this approach in the context of a repeat-sales model and the recently intensified outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle in the Colorado Front Range.