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- ItemSecurity of supply in european electricity markets-determinants of investment decisions and the European Energy Union(Basel : MDPI, 2015) Ellenbeck, Saskia; Beneking, Andreas; Ceglarz, Andrzej; Schmidt, Peter; Battaglini, AntonellaThe European Union and its Member States are seeking to decarbonize their energy systems, including the electricity sector and, at the same time, pursue market integration. However, renewable energy (RE) deployment and the liberalization of the energy-only market have raised concerns at the national level about the security of electricity supplies in the future. Some actors consider the lack of sufficient investments in generation capacities a threat to supply security. As a consequence, it was proposed that capacity markets solve these problems. The underlying assumption is that the market design is the only determining factor for investments in security of supply options. In this article, we question this narrow view and identify further determinants of the investment decisions of electricity market participants. Based on the insights of institutional sociology and economics, we understand the market to be a social institution that structures the behavioural expectations of market participants. Derived from the theoretical conceptualization and based on qualitative literature review and own work, we find four determinants for investment behaviour beyond the formal market design: Material opportunities, strategic actor behavior and identity, focusing events and discursive expectations about the future. With this perspective, we discuss the introduction of a European Energy Union as a possible tool that might have a great impact on the more informal determinants such as expectations about the future and the construction of a European energy narrative.
- ItemHow modelers construct energy costs: Discursive elements in Energy System and Integrated Assessment Models(Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier, 2019) Ellenbeck, Saskia; Lilliestam, JohanEnergy system and integrated assessment models (IAMs) are widely used techniques for knowledge production to assess costs of future energy pathways and economic effects of energy/climate policies. With their increased use for policy assessment and increasing dominance in energy policy science, such models attract increasing criticism. In the last years, such models – especially the highly complex IAMs, have been accused of being arbitrary. We challenge this view and argue that the models and their assumptions are not arbitrary, but they are normative and reflect the modelers’ understanding of the functioning of the society, the environment-societal relations and respective appropriate scientific tools and theories – in short: models are shaped by discursive structures, reproducing and reinforcing particular societal discourses. We identify 9 distinct paths, all relating to crucial model decisions, via which discourses enter models: for each of these decisions, there are multiple “correct” answers, in the sense that they can be justified within a particular discourse. We conclude that decisions of modelers about the structure and about assumptions in energy modeling are not arbitrary but contingent to the discursive context the modeler is related to. This has two implications. First, modelers and consumers of model output must reflect on what a model and its assumptions represent, and not only whether are they correct. Second, models hardly need to add more (mathematical) complexity, but rather be reduced and simplified so that they can continue to fulfill their main function as formalized and powerful instruments for thought experiments about future energy pathways.