Paul Twomey

A Review of the Monitoring of Market Power: The Possible Roles of TSOs in Monitoring for Market Power Issues in Congested Transmission Systems

The paper surveys the literature and publicly available information on market power monitoring in electricity wholesale markets. After briefly reviewing definitions, strategies and methods of mitigating market power we examine the various methods of detecting market power that have been employed by academics and market monitors/regulators. These techniques include structural and behavioural indices and analysis as well as various simulation approaches. The applications of these tools range from spot market mitigation and congestion management through to long-term market design assessment and merger decisions. Various market-power monitoring units already track market behaviour and produce indices. Our survey shows that these units collect a large amount of data from various market participants and we identify the crucial role of the transmission system operators with their access to dispatch and system information. Easily accessible and comprehensive data supports effective market power monitoring and facilitates market design evaluation. The discretion required for effective market monitoring is facilitated by institutional independence.

Rationales for Additional Climate Policy Instruments under a Carbon Price

The plan to introduce a carbon pricing scheme in Australia has focused attention on the future relevance and necessity of using other policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions. Significant reports, including the Wilkins Review and reports by the Productivity Commission, have argued using the standard neoclassical economics framework that once a carbon price is established, it should be (almost) the only instrument needed to tackle climate change mitigation in Australia. With a small number of exceptions for complementary instruments to address some market failures, the use of other climate policy instruments, it is argued, will result only in unnecessary duplication and potential distortions. The aim of this article is to show that there are, in fact, a significant number of rationales for implementing several climate policy instruments in combination with a carbon price, and we should not be too quick to dismiss certain climate policy instrument combinations.

Market Power and Technological Bias: The Case of Electricity Generation

It is difficult to elminated all market power in electricity markets and it is therefore frequently suggested that some market power should be tolerated: extra revenues contribute to fixed cost recovery, facilitate investment and increase security of supply. This suggestion implicitly assumes all generation technologies benefit equally from market power. We assess a mixture of conventional and intermittent generation, eg coal plants and wind power. If all output is sold in the spot market, then intermittent generation benefits less from market power than conventional generation. Forward contracts or option contracts reduce the level of market power but bias against intermittent generators persists.

Achieving additional emission reductions under a cap-and-trade scheme

Over the last decade, cap-and-trade emissions schemes have emerged as one of the favoured policy instruments for reducing GHG emissions. An inherent design feature of cap-and-trade schemes is that, once the cap on emissions has been set, no additional reductions beyond this level can be provided by the actions of those individuals, organizations and governments within the covered sectors. Thus, the emissions cap constitutes an emissions floor. This feature has been claimed by some to have undesirable implications, in that it discourages ethically motivated mitigation actions and preempts the possibility that local, state and national governments can take additional mitigation action in the context of weak national or regional targets. These criticisms have become prominent in Australia and the US within the public debate regarding the adoption of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). These criticisms and their potential solutions are reviewed. A set-aside reserve is proposed to automatically retire ETS permits, which would correspond to verified and additional emissions reductions. This minimizes the possibility that ethically motivated mitigation actions are discouraged, allows for additional action by other levels of government, while providing transparency to other market participants on the level of permit retirements.

Carbon markets: Inherent limitations and complementary policies

Over the last two decades, carbon pricing - particularly the use of carbon markets - has become a prominent environmental policy option for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Orthodox economic theory suggests that carbon markets are the least-cost method of achieving emission reductions, and governments in Europe, New Zealand, and now Australia have introduced carbon pricing schemes with faith that this will transform their economies and meet global emission targets. A number of other states and countries are also considering or developing their own national schemes including California, China, Japan, South Korea and Brazil.