Nevenka Hrovatin

Efficiency and regulation of the Slovenian electricity distribution companies

Energy demand, and in particular electricity demand in India has been growing at a very rapid rate over the last decade. Given, current trends in population growth, industrialisation, urbanisation, modernisation and income growth, electricity consumption is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades as well. Tariff reforms could play a potentially important role as a demand side management tool in India. However, the effects of any price revisions on consumption will depend on the price elasticity of demand for electricity. In the past, electricity demand studies for India published in international journals have been based on aggregate macro data at the country or sub-national/ state level. In this paper, price and income elasticities of electricity demand in the residential sector of all urban areas of India are estimated for the first time using disaggregate level survey data for over thirty thousand households. Three electricity demand functions have been estimated using monthly data for the following seasons: winter, monsoon and summer. The results show electricity demand is income and price inelastic in all three seasons, and that household, demographic and geographical variables are important in determining electricity demand, something that is not possible to determine using aggregate macro models alone.

Implementing the European Commission's water pricing communication: cross-country perspectives

Abstract The European Commission recently made recommendations for water pricing policies in EU member states and accession countries. Those recommendations emphasise the contribution of economic instruments in environmental policies to provide incentives for the sustainable use of water resources. The Commission argues that water and sewerage providers should base their pricing policies on an explicit assessment of costs and benefits of water use, the former relating not just to financial costs but also to environmental and resource costs. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of the factors constraining implementation of the Commission’s proposals and considers how their implementation could be further facilitated.

Gas Distribution Benchmarking of Utilities from Slovenia, the Netherlands and the UK: an Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Gas Distribution Benchmarking of Utilities from Slovenia, the Netherlands and the UK: an Application of Data Envelopment Analysis This paper carries out non-parametric relative efficiency comparisons using an international sample of gas distribution utilities from two old and one new EU members, namely the Netherlands, the UK, and Slovenia. By conducting DEA on a cross-sectional sample of gas utilities, we discover that, on average, Slovenian utilities perform less efficiently than UK and Dutch utilities. To a large extent, this is due to the less extensive regulation of the Slovenian gas industry as seen in the past. The incentive-based price-cap regulation recently introduced in Slovenia could help close this efficiency gap over time. The authors also find out that different model specifications lead to very similar efficiency scores and rankings, implying that benchmarking can be employed as a useful complementary instrument for monitoring utility performance. In this way, the informational asymmetry between distribution utilities and regulatory authorities can be significantly mitigated. For the wider and more successful implementation of international benchmarking in the future, it is also important that coherent regional and international data is made available to regulators.

Determinants of residential heating preferences in Slovenia

Slovenian National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP, 2008) proposes a set of measures in order to achieve the efficient use of energy, which is seen as an important component of sustainable economic development. As one of the adopted instruments aims at promoting the installation of energy-efficient heating systems, this paper investigates the factors that influence the residential heating preferences of Slovenian households. We found that the choice of residential heating type can be well explained by the location and dwelling characteristics. To somewhat lesser extent, preferences for certain heating type are also influenced by several socio-demographic and economic characteristics of households. In the future the introduction of financial incentives followed by awareness-raising campaigns and provision of relevant information could play an important role in stimulating sustainable energy use of Slovenian households.

Reconciling the Economic Sustainability of Radio Broadcasters in Slovenia with Pluralism and Diversity

The generous licensing policy for terrestrial radio in Slovenia led to an overcrowded market with limited geographical coverage, creating a situation whereby the advertising revenues of a large number of operators were insufficient for them to break even. Small regional broadcasting operators are not only economically inefficient since they cannot exploit economies of scale, but also do not fulfil the social goal of media policy in terms of pluralism and diversity. Therefore, consolidation through mergers and networking could improve their economic viability, while the social goals of media policy could be achieved by other means, such as a public interest test and the co-existence of public broadcasters and radio stations of a community type whose economic survival would be supported by public and other non-profit funds. Such a media policy would require a relaxation of the ownership rules and strengthening of the role of regulation and regulatory institutions which should monitor the fulfilment of economic, social and public policy goals.