Climate Policy and Strategic Operations in a Hydro-Thermal Power System
研究北欧水电火电混合系统中，水电企业如何利用气候政策（碳价100欧元/吨、可再生能源容量翻倍）带来的灵活性需求增加，通过跨季节转移发电来行使市场势力，并发现气候政策可能增强水电企业的战略杠杆。
Decarbonisation of the Nordic power sector entails substantial variable renewable energy (VRE) adoption. While Nordic hydropower reservoirs can mitigate VRE output’s intermittency, strategic hydro producers may leverage increased flexibility requirements to exert market power. Using a Nash-Cournot model, we find that even the current Nordic power system could yield modest gains from strategic reservoir operations regardless of a prohibition on “spilling” water to increase prices. Instead, strategic hydro producers could shift generation from peak to offpeak seasons. Such temporal arbitrage becomes more attractive under a climate package with a €100/t CO2 price and doubled VRE capacity. Since the package increases generation variability, lowers average prices, and makes fossil-fuelled plants unprofitable, strategic hydro producers face lower opportunity costs in shifting output from peak to off-peak seasons and encounter muted responses from price-taking fossil-fuelled plants. Hence, a climate package that curtails CO2 emissions may also bolster strategic hydro producers’ leverage.