{"title":"边际定价与能源危机:我们该何去何从?","authors":"Ibrahim Abada, Andreas Ehrenmann, Yves Smeers","doi":"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108716","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The fundamental principle of marginal pricing in electricity markets has been challenged following the recent European energy crisis. A main criticism targets the incapacity of current markets to drive investments, as spot prices provide only short-term information about supply, demand, and costs. This paper revisits the seminal work of Boiteux (1960) in the context of the recent energy crisis to discuss the fundamental assumption of <ce:italic>adapted capacity</ce:italic>, which underpins the equality between long-term and short-term marginal costs in the theory of marginal pricing. We argue that capacity is no longer adapted to current economic conditions in Europe. We then leverage mathematical programming techniques to generalize the results of Boiteux (1960) and propose a market-clearing mechanism that preserves the efficiency of current short-term marginal pricing to drive optimal plant operations while also providing a long-term investment signal when capacities are not necessarily adapted to current economic conditions. Through an analysis of captured margins, our proposal, which differs only marginally from the current market-clearing mechanism, identifies plants that should remain in the current mix and those that are no longer economical. We also discuss possible extensions of our proposal to accommodate capacity markets and price caps. Finally, we implement our models with the French power mix and demonstrate their advantages over the current market-clearing mechanism using a realistic case study.","PeriodicalId":11665,"journal":{"name":"Energy Economics","volume":"665 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":13.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Marginal pricing and the energy crisis: Where should we go?\",\"authors\":\"Ibrahim Abada, Andreas Ehrenmann, Yves Smeers\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108716\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"The fundamental principle of marginal pricing in electricity markets has been challenged following the recent European energy crisis. A main criticism targets the incapacity of current markets to drive investments, as spot prices provide only short-term information about supply, demand, and costs. This paper revisits the seminal work of Boiteux (1960) in the context of the recent energy crisis to discuss the fundamental assumption of <ce:italic>adapted capacity</ce:italic>, which underpins the equality between long-term and short-term marginal costs in the theory of marginal pricing. We argue that capacity is no longer adapted to current economic conditions in Europe. We then leverage mathematical programming techniques to generalize the results of Boiteux (1960) and propose a market-clearing mechanism that preserves the efficiency of current short-term marginal pricing to drive optimal plant operations while also providing a long-term investment signal when capacities are not necessarily adapted to current economic conditions. Through an analysis of captured margins, our proposal, which differs only marginally from the current market-clearing mechanism, identifies plants that should remain in the current mix and those that are no longer economical. We also discuss possible extensions of our proposal to accommodate capacity markets and price caps. Finally, we implement our models with the French power mix and demonstrate their advantages over the current market-clearing mechanism using a realistic case study.\",\"PeriodicalId\":11665,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Energy Economics\",\"volume\":\"665 1\",\"pages\":\"\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":13.6000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-07-17\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Energy Economics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"96\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108716\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"经济学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"ECONOMICS\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Energy Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108716","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
Marginal pricing and the energy crisis: Where should we go?
The fundamental principle of marginal pricing in electricity markets has been challenged following the recent European energy crisis. A main criticism targets the incapacity of current markets to drive investments, as spot prices provide only short-term information about supply, demand, and costs. This paper revisits the seminal work of Boiteux (1960) in the context of the recent energy crisis to discuss the fundamental assumption of adapted capacity, which underpins the equality between long-term and short-term marginal costs in the theory of marginal pricing. We argue that capacity is no longer adapted to current economic conditions in Europe. We then leverage mathematical programming techniques to generalize the results of Boiteux (1960) and propose a market-clearing mechanism that preserves the efficiency of current short-term marginal pricing to drive optimal plant operations while also providing a long-term investment signal when capacities are not necessarily adapted to current economic conditions. Through an analysis of captured margins, our proposal, which differs only marginally from the current market-clearing mechanism, identifies plants that should remain in the current mix and those that are no longer economical. We also discuss possible extensions of our proposal to accommodate capacity markets and price caps. Finally, we implement our models with the French power mix and demonstrate their advantages over the current market-clearing mechanism using a realistic case study.
期刊介绍:
Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.