A preliminary list of regulatory barriers that restrain the commercialization of technologies that would reduce the carbon content of energy services consumed in the United States.
At the request of the Kauffman Foundation, PESD director Frank Wolak compiled a list of state and local regulatory barriers that restrain the commercialization of technologies that would reduce the carbon content of energy services consumed in the United States.
The state-owned company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is India's largest company devoted to exploration and production (E&P). This paper attempts to unpack the dynamic of the government-ONGC relationship. Focusing specifically on how government ownership and control has influenced ONGC's performance and strategy, this paper makes four main arguments.
First, ONGC exists, just as with national oil companies in many other countries, because of a legacy of suspicion about outsiders. It performed well when it was tasked with things that were not that difficult and when it had help for the more difficult ventures, such as frontier E&P and development.
Second, ONGC has run into trouble as it matured, and the roots of its troubles are mainly in its interactions with the GoI and secondarily in its management.
Third, a slew of reforms instituted since the mid 1990s have fundamentally changed the landscape of the E&P sector in India and the dynamic of government-ONGC relationship. Targeted at improving corporate governance, enhancing competition in E&P, and eliminating price controls, those reforms have had a mixed impact on ONGC's performance and strategy. They also highlight the difficulties the government has had in encouraging higher efficiencies in ONGC and the oil and gas sector.
Fourth, given the deep interconnects of the oil and gas sector with India's political economy, fixing the oil and gas sector essentially entails fixing the larger political economy within which the sector is embedded.
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Patrick R. P. Heller is a Legal Analyst at the Revenue Watch Institute, where he conducts research and provides policy analysis on legal and contractual regimes governing oil and mineral revenue. He has worked in the developing world for ten years, for organizations including the U.S. State Department, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. At Revenue Watch, Patrick focuses on governance and oversight of oil sectors, the role of National Oil Companies, transparency, and the promotion of government-citizen dialogue. He has worked and conducted research in more than 15 developing countries, including Angola, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Peru, and Lebanon. He has worked extensively with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University, where he is a contributing author to an upcoming book on the strategy and performance of National Oil Companies. He holds a law degree from Stanford University and a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
The state-owned company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is India's largest company devoted to exploration and production (E&P). This paper attempts to unpack the dynamic of the government-ONGC relationship. Focusing specifically on how government ownership and control has influenced ONGC's performance and strategy, this paper makes four main arguments.
First, ONGC exists, just as with national oil companies in many other countries, because of a legacy of suspicion about outsiders. It performed well when it was tasked with things that were not that difficult and when it had help for the more difficult ventures, such as frontier E&P and development.
Second, ONGC has run into trouble as it matured, and the roots of its troubles are mainly in its interactions with the GoI and secondarily in its management.
Third, a slew of reforms instituted since the mid 1990s have fundamentally changed the landscape of the E&P sector in India and the dynamic of government-ONGC relationship. Targeted at improving corporate governance, enhancing competition in E&P, and eliminating price controls, those reforms have had a mixed impact on ONGC's performance and strategy. They also highlight the difficulties the government has had in encouraging higher efficiencies in ONGC and the oil and gas sector.
Fourth, given the deep interconnects of the oil and gas sector with India's political economy, fixing the oil and gas sector essentially entails fixing the larger political economy within which the sector is embedded.
On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School hosted a special conference on Climate Policy Instruments in the Real World.
This conference featured presentations by leading researchers on the political, economic, and regulatory challenges associated with major climate policy instruments. The goal of this conference was to transfer the state-of-the-art in policy-relevant academic research on key aspects of climate policy design and analysis to the business, regulatory and policymaking communities. Each presentation was followed by comments from two discussants that develop the practical implications of the research results presented for decision-makers in industry and government.
Topics our experts explored included: setting a price for carbon, engaging the developing world in climate change mitigation, the role of renewable energy sources in climate change mitigation, mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases from the transportation sector, managing intermittency in the electricity sector, and mechanisms for adapting to climate change.
We would like to thank everybody for their participation on September 7, 2010.
For more conference information, please visit:
http://www.certain.com/system/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x1992925e31&varPage=home
Bechtel Conference Center
Stanford University
Economics Department
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Website: https://fawolak.org/
Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.
About the talk:
Since 2008, the Republic of Korea has pursued a "Green Growth" policy as a way of addressing climate change and at the same time achieving economic growth. As a result, various green infrastructure projects have been taking place not only at the central government levels but also city levels.
Seoul Metropolitan City and Incheon City, for example, have already made significant progress by transforming themselves into Smart Green Cities. While current developments are being driven by the city governments, it is expected there will be ample opportunities for investments from the private sector, particularly in the fields of both energy technologies and information technologies.
Particular focus will be given to the areas of transportation, buildings, and water and waste management where the combination of "green" and IT technologies will be numerous.
About the speaker:
Suh-Yong Chung is Associate Professor in the Division of International Studies at Korea University and is an international expert on sustainable development law and policy. His research covers various emerging issues in the environment and sustainable development including climate change both at global and regional level. His most recent works focus on internationalization of Green Growth policy, post-2010 climate change regime formation, and regional environmental institution building in Northeast Asia.
He is a member of the Compliance Committee of the UN Basel Convention, and has participated in various activities of various international organizations. He has also advised for the Korean Government on the issues of climate change and sustainable development. In 2009, he advised for the Seoul Metropolitan City government on the C40 (Climate 40) Summit Meeting.
Professor Chung holds degrees in law and international relations from Seoul National University, the London School of Economics and Stanford Law School. He was a researcher at Shorenstein APARC and has continuously been involved in its activities as the Secretary General of the Stanford APARC Forum in Korea.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the leading international carbon market and a driving force for sustainable development globally. But the eruption of controversy over offsets from Chinese wind power has exposed cracks at the core of how carbon credits are verified in developing economies. It has become almost impossible to determine whether offsets from Chinese wind are "additional" and that they in fact represent "real" reductions beyond business as usual. Unless this problem can be resolved, it threatens to spread beyond wind in China and could threaten the ability of carbon markets to deliver the mitigation demanded by international climate policy.
In 2009 the CDM Executive Board (EB) shocked the carbon market by forcing an unprecedented review of whether multiple Chinese wind projects satisfied UNFCCC additionality requirements. CDM investors reeled as the safest CDM bet became the riskiest; the Chinese government publicly criticized the UN's oversight of carbon markets; and the CDM EB prepared itself for an unprecedented fight over how carbon offsets could be verified in the world's largest CDM market.
At the center of the controversy is the Chinese power tariff for wind.
When the EB observed decreases over time in power tariffs granted by China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to wind projects, it became concerned that China might be manipulating power tariffs in order to guarantee additionality and subsidize its domestic wind development with international finance. If the Chinese government were controlling additionality, then the CDM's ability to validate carbon offsets would be dealt a near‐lethal blow because the problems posed by Chinese wind extend to nearly all power sector projects in almost every developing country. If offsets cannot be credibly verified, then the integrity of emissions caps set by the Kyoto Protocol is directly threatened.
The Chinese wind controversy therefore has direct implications for the design and negotiation of any successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Despite largely failed negotiations in Copenhagen, the design of reliable, efficient carbon markets remains the world's most serious prospect for international cooperation. The developed world has committed USD 30 billion in climate aid by 2012, but the majority of these funds will likely have to be private capital delivered through markets. In order for carbon markets to avoid controversy and function effectively, the lessons from the Chinese wind controversy must be used to implement key reforms.
This report examines the application of additionality in the Chinese wind power market and draws implications for the design of effective global carbon offset policy. It demonstrates the causes of the wind power controversy, highlights underlying structural flaws in how additionality is applied in China, and charts a reform path that can strengthen the credibility of global carbon markets.
