The prospects are considered of deploying batteries and fuel cells in order to reduce the carbon emissions from various modes of transport. It is proposed that the government has not done enough to advance these technologies and that Britain is lagging behind other countries. The adequacy of Britain’s future supplies of energy is called into question.

Australia has one of the most ‘liberalised’ electricity sectors in the world. The sale of government-owned electricity companies has contributed to that liberalisation and a quarter of the proceeds of one of the world’s largest privatisation programmes. In 2014, the state governments of New South Wales and Queensland announced further electricity privatisations if re-elected. Advocates claim private ownership will mean more productive investment, lower costs leading to more efficient operations, lower prices for all consumers and better market functioning without government interference. Opponents contend that the true value of government businesses is not being realised at sale, retention can achieve returns greater than those from a sale, and that follow sale, prices will rise and jobs will be lost. This article demonstrates that the claims of either lower or higher prices, of job losses and of more efficient operations are tantamount to being myths of privatisation not borne out by reality.

Our research investigates the effects of residential energy efficiency audit programs on subsequent household electricity consumption. Here there is a one-time interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. Our research objective is to determine whether and to what extent the surveys lead to behavioral changes. We then examine how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. The main evaluation problem here is survey participants’ self-selection, which we address econometrically via several non-parametric estimators involving kernel-based propensity-score matching. In the first method we use difference-in-differences (DID) estimation. Our second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. Our evidence is that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by about 7%, on average compared to customers who had not yet participated in the survey. Considering the total number of high-usage households participating in the survey in 2009, we estimate that electricity consumption was reduced by an aggregate of 2 million kWh per year, which is approximately equal to the monthly consumption of 3500 typical households in California with an estimated 1527 metric tons less of carbon dioxide emissions. Because the energy audit program is inexpensive ($10–$20 per household) a key issue is that while the program is cost-effective, is it regressive? We find that as the quantiles of the outcome distribution increase, high-use households save proportionally less electricity than do low-use customers. Overall, our results imply that program designers can better target low-use and low-income households, because they are more likely to benefit from the programs through energy savings.

Because the literature of European economic history has paid little attention to traditional electricity systems, the interest in studying Fensa lies in analysing the different types of companies, which helped to shape the development of the Spanish electricity sector prior to its present oligopolistic structure. This case provides insight into two issues. First, we learn about the behaviour of the second-generation companies (those that based their production on a controlled hydropower regime), which, despite their limited size, made their commercial specialisation (supplying the dynamic industrial market of Guipúzcoa) their main comparative advantage. Second, we analyse the behaviour of those companies which at this time, as distribution companies and/or subsidiaries of the large Spanish companies (Iberduero), were an instrument of the policy of integrating regional markets.

This article analyses the origin of the persistently high level of electricity prices that hampered the expansion of electricity consumption during the interwar period in Porto. Initially, the rent-seeking behaviour of both the supply firm and the City Hall at the local level affected the expansion of the local electricity market. During the 1930s, this collusion at municipal level coincided with unpredictable energy policies at state level. This circumstance impeded the indispensable increase of scale and the building of a regional market of electricity in north Portugal. The literature on regulation and institutional analysis has proved very useful. Finally, though equally important, primary sources from company archives and institutional bodies were also employed.

Latin America participated in the electric revolution which profoundly transformed the most developed Western economies between 1880 and 1930. The qualitative empirical evidence shows that Latin American electrification began with little delay compared to those economies. This article provides new quantitative evidence consisting of annual series about a reliable indicator of the degree of electrification of the Latin American nations. The database built shows that towards 1930 electricity consumption per inhabitant in Latin America was far below that of most advanced economies, and only Latin American leaders in the electrification process had reached power consumption levels similar to the European late comers. Unlike other newly industrializing economies, the region was not able to quickly incorporate new technology to overcome their backwardness.

Over the past two decades it has been questioned whether the electric utility industry is a natural monopoly. Electricity generation is no longer considered a natural monopoly and the topic is debated in relation to electricity distribution. This article explores the main contributions in this field in order to apply their findings to the Spanish Electric Utility Industry in the inter-war period. The study focuses on one of the major Spanish companies, Sociedad Hidroeléctrica Española, and shows that generation, transmission and distribution of electricity were. natural monopolies. The results indicate that the monopolistic structure which the inter-war electric utility industry exhibited was the optimal form of organisation.

This paper studies duration of inter-firm contracts in a transaction cost perspective. The aim of the paper is to test the propositions that can be derived from a transaction-cost framework. We built a non-truncated database representing the entire contractual relationships of Electricité de France (EDF) with its coal carriers and coal unloaders over the period 1977–1997. Section I explores factors that can explain the choice of contract duration. Section II describes the relationships between EDF and its suppliers. In Section III, we test and confirm most propositions derived from transaction-cost theory that relate contract duration to transaction characteristics. We believe this study to be the first attempt (1) to confirm transaction cost economics propositions using French data and (2) to endogenize asset specificity level at stake in transactions.