Michelle Hallack

Building Competitive Gas Markets in the EU

This highly unique book focuses on market design issues common to most EU gas markets, particularly in the context of closer integration. It explores in detail the characteristics and requirements of national gas markets in Europe which are constructed as virtual hubs based on entry/exit schemes as a requirement of European law.

Gas Network and Market: À La Carte?

The institutional setting of open gas networks and markets is revealing considerably diverse and diverging roads taken by the US, the EU or Australia. We will show that this is explained by key choices made in the liberalization process. This liberalization is based on a redefinition of the property rights associated with transmission grid usage. That leads to different systems for the transmission services, as well as for the gas commodity trade, which in turn depends on the network services to get any market deal actually implemented. Not only do those choices depend on the physical architecture of the network, but also the perceived difficulties and costs to coordinate the actual transmission services through certain market arrangements.

Who decides the rules for network use? A ‘common pool’ analysis of gas network regulation

Gas sector liberalization is based on opening networks to different players, so they become common pool resources. Different players using the same resources can give rise to “commons’ dilemmas†. To avoid them, rules must be established to constrain players’ use of the network. We build on the concept of commons pool resources to analyze the logic for and consequences of different institutional settings governing the use of gas pipelines. We show that rules based on regulation imply ex ante decisions that preclude players to choose the preferred output. This limitation may be removed by rules designed by market players. We also show that the mechanism to define the rules is based on the definition of network use property rights. The practical implications of our approach are stressed by comparing the US mechanism (negotiated rules) and the EU mechanism (regulated rules).

The Role of Regulatory Learning in Energy Transition: The Case of Solar PV in Brazil

The analysis of institutional and technological dynamics is frequently tackled by defining several levels of nested decision�?making processes. Those representations typically deal with institutions and technology practice separately. In this paper, we use the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to study the coevolution between regulatory institutions and technology practice. Specifically, we use the IAD to show that technological routines are designed to fit into regulatory institutions (‘rules shape technology’), but also that regulatory institutions adapt to changing technological routines (‘technology shapes rules’). We use the electricity sector to illustrate this process. In the IAD, the main drivers to change rules (in our case, regulatory institutions) are the ‘evaluative criteria’ applied to outcomes. To that end, we model the evolution of an electricity sector in the process of introducing decentralized production where regulators apply three kinds of evaluative criteria: i) whether electricity is produced by the cheapest available technology nowadays; ii) whether new technology is introduced by niche markets; and iii) whether adapting institutions is necessary to avoid technological lock�?in. Our simulations of a realistic power system show that, if evaluative criteria do not consider the dynamics of decentralized production, the electricity sector may be locked in to centralized technologies.

Gas network and market diversity in the US, the EU and Australia : a story of network access rights

The institutional setting of open gas networks and markets is revealing considerably diverse and diverging roads taken by the US, the EU and Australia. We will show that this is explained by key choices made in the primary liberalization process. This primary liberalization is based on a definition of network access rights, which leads to different regimes for the transmission services, as well as for the gas commodity trade, as commodity trade depends on the network services to get any market deal actually implemented. Not only do those choices depend on the physical architecture of the network, but also the perceived difficulties and institutional costs of coordinating the actual transmission services through certain market arrangements.