Regulatory conflict? Environmental and economic regulation of electricity generation

✍ Scribed by Acutt, Melinda ;Elliott, Caroline

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 205 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0961-0405
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0976(199907/08)9:4<135::aid-eet197>3.0.co;2-b

✦ Synopsis

Implementation of policies aimed at reducing atmospheric emissions has drawn attention to the need to integrate policies aimed at protection of the environment into other policy areas such as energy. In this paper we are concerned with the interaction of environmental policies aimed at reducing pollution, and economic policies aimed at reducing market power, in the electricity generation industry. While our analysis focuses on the post-privatization experiences in England and Wales, the analysis is intended to be of wider applicability. In a theoretical model we find that there are welfare gains to be made from a move from the current non-cooperative regulatory regime to cooperative regulation between the environmental and economic regulators -a result that holds for the alternative environmental policies of a technology standard and an emissions tax.