The Economic and Climate Value of Flexibility in Green Energy Markets
研究了空间、时间和监管三个维度的灵活性如何降低高比例风能和太阳能并网的经济成本与二氧化碳排放，发现适当组合灵活性可降低成本最高13.8%、减排最高51.2%，但收益分布不均。
Abstract This paper examines how enhanced flexibility across space, time, and a regulatory dimension affects the economic costs and CO $$_2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> emissions of integrating large shares of intermittent renewable energy from wind and solar. We develop a numerical model which resolves hourly dispatch and investment choices among heterogeneous energy technologies and natural resources in interconnected wholesale electricity markets, cross-country trade (spatial flexibility), energy storage (temporal flexibility), and tradable green quotas (regulatory flexibility). Taking the model to the data for the case of Europe’s system of interconnected electricity markets, we find that the appropriate combination of flexibility can bring about substantial gains in economic efficiency, reduce costs (up to 13.8%) and lower CO $$_2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> emissions (up to 51.2%). Regulatory flexibility is necessary to realize most of the maximum possible benefits. We also find that gains from increased flexibility are unevenly distributed and that some countries incur welfare losses.