Below you will find the research projects currently undertaken by CSEI.
Project Title: TYNDP 2020 Joint Scenarios Methodology – A CSEI Assessment
Principal Investigator: Tooraj Jamasb
Period: December 2020 – April 2021
Short Description:
CSEI was commissioned by the European Commission to assess the TYNDP 2020 scenarios with a particular focus on the identification of methodological aspects and provide recommendations to improve these on the basis of independent and academic energy economics research.
Project Title: Essays on Energy Systems Integration
Principal Investigator: Alexandra Lüth
Period: October 2019 – September 2022
Short Description:
Energy Systems Integration is well-mentioned in energy discussions and by public institutions working on policies to support a green transition. Nonetheless, research has not intensively enough worked on the economic argumentation to persuade energy stakeholders and policymakers into action. This project will pick up recent issues on energy systems integration and use economic approaches and thinking to give directions to tackle these challenges. Combining different energy systems with several thousands of actors certainly needs elaborated pathways for policy adjustments and their implementation.
Project Title: Consumer Behaviour in the Energy Sector: A Microeconomic Approach
Principal Investigator: Ida Damsgaard
Period: February 2020 – January 2023
Short Description:
The aim of the project is to contribute to and help modernize the branch of energy economics concerned with energy demand. This will be done by studying behavioural patterns and systematic trends in the energy sector through micro-econometric and experimental strategies. Recent literature highlights the need to further investigate the drivers behind electricity demand, which remains an important gap in the economic literature (Bager and Mundaca, 2017). This project will take steps to better understand behaviour in the energy sector, fill knowledge gaps to support predictions of future developments, and inform policy and investment decisions.
Project Title: NRGcitizen
Principal Investigator: Jens Weibezahn
Period: January 2022 – December 2023
Short Description:
The European Commission, with its “Clean Energy for all Europeans” package, calls for stronger participation of residential electricity consumers—individually or through communities—in the energy value chain, that is, production and sharing as well as flexible and responsive demand. While the associated pilot projects show promising results for the technical and economic feasibility of energy communities in Europe, the impact of widespread implementation remains unclear and they are still in an early stage, especially in regard to regulatory and economic frameworks. Consequently, there is a mismatch between developed market designs and their feasibility in the current regulatory framework. Thus, the research project will seek to investigate the advantages of a decentralized energy transformation from a system perspective, market designs for a 100% renewable energy transformation, and business models for energy communities.
Project Title: Sustainable Energy and Carbon Markets for Clean Growth in China
Principal Investigator: Chenyan Lyu
Period: October 2019 – September 2022
Short Description:
In September 2020, China announced ambitious goals for sustainable energy and carbon neutrality by 2060, and to curb peak carbon emissions by 2030. In the past, China has mostly relied on administrative tools to reduce carbon emissions. Achieving carbon neutrality through administrative means is effective but also costly and inefficient. “The National Development and Reform Commission of China” is aware of this dilemma, as reflected in the plan to launch the regional and national emission trading schemes. However, there are differences in natural resources and climatic features among these five jurisdictions, as well as significant differences in economic development, energy market structure, and residents’ willingness to offset carbon emissions. Consequently, disjoint regional markets have caused market inefficiency, increasing the difficulty of linking to the national market. Therefore, this project assesses the dynamic fluctuations in terms of lead-lag relationships) of the emerging regional carbon markets in China, which are essential to examine which regional ETS pilot’s market design most suits China’s socio-economic needs.