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Begin New Search Topic Energy Policy Author Gregor Semieniuk

1. Inequality in Energy Consumption: Statistical Equilibrium or a Question of Accounting Conventions?

Author:
Gregor Semieniuk and Isabella Weber
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Mitigating climate change requires information about the inequality in energy consumption. Recent contributions (Banerjee and Yakovenko, 2010; Lawrence et al., 2013; Yakovenko, 2010, 2013) have studied energy inequality through the lens of maximum entropy. They claim a weighted international distribution of total primary energy demand should approach a Boltzmann-Gibbs maximum entropy equilibrium distribution in the form of an exponential distribution, implying convergence to a Gini coefficient of 0.5 from above. The present paper challenges the validity of this claim and critically discusses the applicability of statistical equilibrium reasoning to economics from the viewpoint of social accounting. It is shown that the exponential distribution is only a robust candidate for a statistical equilibrium of energy inequality when employing one particular accounting convention for energy flows, the substitution method. But this method has become problematic with a higher renewable share in the international energy mix, and no other accounting method supports the claim of a convergence to a 0.5 Gini. We conclude that the findings based on maximum entropy reasoning are sensitive to accounting conventions and critically discuss the epistemological implications of this sensitivity for the use of maximum entropy approaches in social sciences.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Inequality, Maximum Entropy, and Social Accounting
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Neither Crowing in nor Out: Public Direct Investment Mobilising Private Investment Into Renewable Electricity Projects

Author:
Matteo Deleidi, Mariana Mazzucato, and Gregor Semieniuk
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
Rapid structural change towards a low-carbon energy supply requires significant additional investments into innovative but high-risk low-carbon technologies. Mobilising greater private investments requires applying the right policy instruments, but while fiscal measures and regulation have been well researched, systematic quantitative evidence about the effect of public direct investment is lacking. Absent empirical evidence, contradictory theoretical arguments claim that such public (co- )investments either ‘crowd out’ or ‘crowd in’ private investors. In this paper we show that the macroeconomic concept of crowding out/in is inapplicable to sectoral studies such as of renewable electricity. Instead, both neoclassical microeconomics and evolutionary economics suggest public direct investment to have a positive effect due to either externalities or market creation effects. We also provide the first quantitative estimate of the effect of public direct investment on private investment into renewable electricity technologies for 17 countries in the period 2004-2014. Using FGLS and static and dynamic GMM estimators, we find that public investments not only have a positive but also consistently the largest effect on private investment flows relative to feed-in tariffs, taxes and renewable portfolio standards in general, and for wind and solar technologies separately. Implications for policy aimed at accelerating the low- carbon transition are discussed.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Green Technology, Investment, Electricity, Renewable Energy, and Public Investment
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Inequality in Energy Consumption: Statistical Equilibrium or a Question of Accounting Conventions?

Author:
Gregor Semieniuk and Isabella M. Weber
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
Mitigating climate change requires information about the inequality in energy consumption. Recent contributions (Banerjee and Yakovenko, 2010; Lawrence et al., 2013; Yakovenko, 2010, 2013) have studied energy inequality through the lens of maximum entropy. They claim a weighted international distribution of total primary energy demand should approach a Boltzmann-Gibbs maximum entropy equilibrium distribution in the form of an exponential distribution, implying convergence to a Gini coefficient of 0.5 from above. The present paper challenges the validity of this claim and critically discusses the applicability of statistical equilibrium reasoning to economics from the viewpoint of social accounting. It is shown that the exponential distribution is only a robust candidate for a statistical equilibrium of energy inequality when employing one particular accounting convention for energy flows, the substitution method. But this method has become problematic with a higher renewable share in the international energy mix, and no other accounting method supports the claim of a convergence to a 0.5 Gini. We conclude that the findings based on maximum entropy reasoning are sensitive to accounting conventions and critically discuss the epistemological implications of this sensitivity for the use of maximum entropy approaches in social sciences.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, International Cooperation, and Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Energy in Economic Growth: Is Faster Growth Greener?

Author:
Gregor Semieniuk
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
An influential theoretical hypothesis holds that if aggregate productivity growth accelerates, then so does the decline in energy intensity. Whether faster growth is greener in this sense is crucial for modeling future growth and climate change mitigation, but empirical evidence is lacking. This paper characterizes the global, long-run historical relationship between changes in energy intensity and labor pro- ductivity growth rates. Basing estimates on an unbalanced panel of 180 countries for the period 1950-2014 and the world as a whole, it captures a significantly larger historical window than previous studies. The paper finds a stylized fact whereby the rate at which energy intensity changes is constant or even increases as labor productivity accelerates. Faster growth is not greener. This provides important new information for calibrating integrated assessment models, many of which make a green growth assumption in near term projections.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, Economic Growth, Green Technology, and Renewable Energy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Financing Green Growth

Author:
Gregor Semieniuk and Mariana Mazzucato
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This paper surveys the current state of financing green growth in the energy sector, based on the insight that there are different qualities of finance. In past transformational changes in other sectors, public monies played a key role across the innovation landscape. Public financing was central also in a number of past national energy transitions, as reviewed here for Iceland (from fossil to geothermal energy), Norway (from mainly non-electricity energy to hydroelectricity), France (from oil to nuclear) and the United States (from conventional to shale gas). In the current transition to low-carbon energy supplies, there is much public activity, most directed and concerted in China, but also reasons to doubt it is enough and applied in the right places to be able to finance the transition to a low carbon sector on time scales consistent with current climate change mitigation targets. A discussion of opportunities and challenges to a more central role for public financing concludes, drawing also on insights from the recent mission-oriented innovation literature.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Finance, Green Technology, and Renewable Energy
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, France, North America, Iceland, and United States of America