IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-12-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Modeling the Electricity Sector: A Summary of Recent Analyses of New EPA Regulations

Author

Listed:
  • Beasley, Blair

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Morris, Daniel

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

Several different economic models have been applied to try to understand how new regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could impact coal-fired generation in the United States as well as the electricity system as a whole. This paper provides an overview of many of the key studies and the models used to analyze the potential impacts of EPA’s rules. The regulations surveyed include the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), the proposed Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 316(b) rule, and the proposed Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) rule. The models generally agree that these regulations will result in coal plant retirements, though there is far less agreement on how much generation may retire. Assumptions about the price of natural gas and the expected stringency of regulations play a key role in determining modeling results. The models provide useful guidance for policymakers when considering the potential impact of EPA regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Beasley, Blair & Morris, Daniel, 2012. "Modeling the Electricity Sector: A Summary of Recent Analyses of New EPA Regulations," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-52, Resources for the Future.
  • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-12-52
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-12-52.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen & Paul, Anthony & Beasley, Blair & Woerman, Matt, 2013. "Reliability in the U.S. electricity industry under new environmental regulations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1078-1091.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beasley, Blair & Woerman, Matt & Paul, Anthony & Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen, 2013. "Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Analysis Deconstructed: Changing Assumptions, Changing Results," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-10, Resources for the Future.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bielen, David A., 2018. "Do differentiated performance standards help coal? CO2 policy in the U.S. electricity sector," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 79-100.
    2. Beasley, Blair & Woerman, Matt & Paul, Anthony & Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen, 2013. "Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Analysis Deconstructed: Changing Assumptions, Changing Results," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-10, Resources for the Future.
    3. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen & Paul, Anthony & Woerman, Matt, 2012. "Secular Trends, Environmental Regulation, and Electricity Markets," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-15, Resources for the Future.
    4. Anthony Paul & Karen Palmer & Matthew Woerman, 2015. "Incentives, Margins, And Cost Effectiveness In Comprehensive Climate Policy For The Power Sector," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(04), pages 1-27, November.
    5. Burtraw, Dallas & Woerman, Matt, 2013. "Economic ideas for a complex climate policy regime," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 24-31.
    6. Kantamneni, Abhilash & Winkler, Richelle & Gauchia, Lucia & Pearce, Joshua M., 2016. "Emerging economic viability of grid defection in a northern climate using solar hybrid systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 378-389.
    7. Gençer, Emre & Agrawal, Rakesh, 2016. "A commentary on the US policies for efficient large scale renewable energy storage systems: Focus on carbon storage cycles," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 477-484.
    8. Paul, Anthony & Beasley, Blair & Palmer, Karen, 2013. "Taxing Electricity Sector Carbon Emissions at Social Cost," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-23-rev, Resources for the Future.
    9. Hayibo, Koami Soulemane & Pearce, Joshua M., 2021. "A review of the value of solar methodology with a case study of the U.S. VOS," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    10. Harker Steele, Amanda J. & Burnett, J. Wesley & Bergstrom, John C., 2021. "The impact of variable renewable energy resources on power system reliability," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Clean Air Act; electricity; EPA regulation; modeling; power plant retirement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C69 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Other
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • Q47 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy Forecasting
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-12-52. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.