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Showing all content in Energy
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Blog post
The gateway to carbon pricing? Air pollution policy
Buying carbon is too cheap and easy. 'Gateway tax', focussing on air pollution, could be initial step. Outdoor air pollution causes 4 million deaths a year. When it comes to climate policies, of those available, the economist’s preferred tool tends to be the elusive carbon tax’. Despite notable successes, the implementation of carbon...
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Blog post
Ideas Matter: Sparking insights from the demand and supply side of electricity
Understanding of both the demand and supply side is crucial for ensuring the proper functioning of the electricity market and the provision of electricity. Approximately one billion people, mainly located in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, do not have access to electricity in their homes. This limits productive activities at the household level (prime example being...
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Blog post
World Environment Day: Championing clean energy post COVID-19
Combating climate change and ensuring clean air for all is an interdependent effort. As developing country governments electrify their populations, renewable energy offers a range of clean ways of doing so. The recent plunge in energy demand and oil prices, which threatens to reverse recent gains in renewables, should not act as a barrier to transitions towards clean energy...
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Blog post
Increasing tariffs to prevent another electricity crisis in Zambia
Zambia’s state-owned power utility company, ZESCO, is consistently struggling to meet demand, plunging Zambia into one electricity crisis after another. The Government of Zambia’s acceptance of ZESCO’s application to increase tariffs is a step in the right direction. Access to reliable power remains a problem across sub-Saharan Africa. The latest data from the World...
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Publication - Project Report
Electricity is not an entitlement: How social norms constrain access to electricity
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Blog post
The value of electricity reliability in India
India’s electricity distribution utilities face a debt trap that is common to electricity supply systems across the developing world. Highly subsidised residential electricity prices mean that utilities lose money on most kilowatt-hours they sell to households. These pricing policies leave utilities with neither the incentives nor the capital to improve reliability,...
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Project
The value of electricity reliability in India
In many low- and middle-income countries, frequent and prolonged power outages constrain energy access for large segments of the population connected to the electricity grid. For policymakers in these countries, the value of electricity reliability to customers is a central policy parametre for understanding the benefits of expanding energy access by reforming tariff design...
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Project
Emissions rating programme: Environmental impacts and firm behaviour
Several countries have used emissions rating programmes to incentivise industrial plants to comply with emissions standards and maintain low levels of pollution. Such programmes function by using regularly monitored emissions data from major industrial plants to rate firms from the least compliant to the most compliant. Besides making environmental performance more...
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Blog post
The social cost of electricity price increases in Zambia
The Zambian electricity sector has struggled with frequent power outages since 2016, largely due to declining generation capacity at the main hydropower stations at Kariba. With the worsening drought in recent months, the power deficits have increased, forcing the state power utility ZESCO to announce increased load shedding of up to 15 hours per day in most residential...
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Blog post
Pollution, climate change, and growth in India
To mark the 10-year anniversary of the IGC, a research conference on Evidence for Inclusive growth was organised in New Delhi on 10th September 2019, with a panel discussion titled “Pollution, climate change, and growth in India”. The panellists for the discussion were Michael Greenstone (Director, Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago; Research Programme...