CERE’s Andrius Kazukauskas provides us with an article of Christmas past from a Swedish electricity point of view. Who does pay for our colorful Christmas lighting? Happy Holiday’s!
I have the brightest memories about Christmas time from my childhood. For me Christmas Eve was a very special day. At that time Christmas was associated with miracles and things for free, such as Christmas presents delivered by a mystical Santa Claus. This was a time for candies, oranges, nuts and other things. Luckily for me, Santa Claus was not associated with any budget constraints.
On one such night, the midnight of 25th of December 2015 to be precise, a miraculous gift was given to all of us living in Sweden. In one hour that night, electricity was sold for almost 0 €/MWh on the Nordpool day-ahead market (electricity wholesale market). Electricity for free! This is the lowest price on record during the last five years (maybe ever, I did not check the older data). As I am not a naïve child anymore, I wonder where this “present” came from. And a very low price of electricity around Christmas time is not a random coincidence since the electricity price tend to be low the last week of the year. Figure 1 depicts the average wholesale prices of electricity from week 48 till week 9 (winter season). Thus, a relevant question arises: who pays for our colorful Christmas lighting decorations? (click on headline to read more)
Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis is the premier organization for practitioners and all those who are interested in cost-benefit analysis. It is based in the US and has its own journal. The society organizes several important meetings and events throughout the year. Bengt Kriström has been elected to the Board of Directors 2018-2021.
Land-use changes, political conflict, wildlife conflicts, population growth and climate change are some of the issues pastoralists in Kenya are faced with. CERE researcher Göran Bostedt returns to Kenya for a workshop on land tenure reform and focus group meetings with pastoralists. (click on headline to read more)
In many places, notably in rural areas in countries in economic transition, wood is the only affordable source of energy for heating and cooking. Despite its importance, wood energy is often under-used or misused, resulting in air pollution and the degradation of forest resources.
CERE’s Runar Brännlund comments on the report “Greenwash - An analysis of the efficiency of Swedish environmental taxes”. Since the report was released in Swedish it has frequently been used in debate articles around Sweden and it is now available in English. Main conclusions from the report show that developed forceful and effective tools for reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases are already in place. Runar therefore finds it somewhat of a mystery why relatively complicated and obvious ineffective additional instruments are put into place, read his comment.
