Mannheim Energy Conference

On 19-20 May 2016, Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI) hosted the  5^th Mannheim Energy Conference.   Discussions at the conference focused mainly on:

• the unification of the European energy market,
• optimal policy of subsidizing renewable energy sources,
• improving energy allocation in time using systems based on the compression entrusted,
• energy efficiency of the buildings,
• consumers’ propensity to change energy suppliers.

Some presented results are highly interesting

Starting with energy poverty, David Deller (University of East England) pointed to the difficulties in creating and using single definition of energy poverty and unified policy for the whole European Union said. Maciej Lis (IBS) delivered a presentation on the elasticity of fuel poverty measures in respect to changes in the structure of buildings, energy prices and household income.   Gerhard Kussel (RWI Essen and Ruhe-University Bochum) showed that, despite the considerable potential savings only 20% of consumers change energy supplier. Additionally, Andreas Gerster (RWI Essen) pointed out that the obligation to indicate the energy efficiency of buildings in the sale advertisements lowered housing prices with poor energy efficiency by 5%.   Niels-Henrik M. Von Der Fehr (University of Oslo) and Christophe Gence-Creux (ACER) from various perspectives characterized the technical, organizational and political difficulties in construction of the unified European electricity market. Thomas-Olivier Leautier (Toulouse School of Economics) showed that subsidizing the wind energy will not be able to expire in the UK. Furthermore, priority granted  to the wind energy causes the displacement of the least flexible energy source i.e. nuclear power plants. Finally, Michael Waterson (University of Warwick) pointed out the economic rationale for introducing the warehouses for storing energy to balance both the daily fluctuations in the demand for energy, as well as the fluctuations of supply generated by wind turbines.

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