Publications

Households’ Demand Response to Changes in Electricity Prices: A Microeconomic-Physical Approach

Walid Matar

Energy economists are interested in how a change in electricity prices prompts a response by way of end-user power demand. It is difficult to estimate price elasticities statistically if historical prices are low and change infrequently, especially in the short…

Matar, Walid

Data Insight: Electricity Tariff Changes in Saudi Arabia

Abeer AlGhamdi

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s households account for around 50% of national power consumption, with more than 7 million residential customers in 2017. The majority of this power is used for air conditioning and cooling systems due to the climate…

AlGhamdi, Abeer

KAPSARC Quarterly Issue 8

The research summaries in this issue are grouped into four themes: climate change; oil and gas; electricity; and Asia. Opening with an overview of KAPSARC’s most recent work on climate change, we also highlight our latest research on global oil…

China’s Policy Drivers of Future Energy Demand

The recent slowdown in China’s energy demand, primarily driven by decelerating economic growth and structural changes to its economy, has opened a window of opportunity for reforms aiming to establish a more sustainable energy sector and to increase the role…

The Economics of Renewable Energy in the Gulf

Hisham Akhonbay, Imtenan Al-Mubarak, Sylvain Côté, Amro Elshurafa, Walid Matar, Shreekar Pradhan, David Wogan, Lama Yaseen

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) has been at the epicenter of global energy markets because of its substantial endowment of hydrocarbons. Yet countries in the region have also stated their intent to be global…

Akhonbay, Hisham

Al-Mubarak, Imtenan

Côté, Sylvain

Elshurafa, Amro

Matar, Walid

Pradhan, Shreekar

Wogan, David

Yaseen, Lama

Assessment of the Political Feasibility of Developing a GCC Power Market

Paul Mollet, Imtenan Al-Mubarak, Brian Efird, Saleh Al Muhanna, Omar Al-Ubayli

Countries in the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, commonly known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), established a regional power grid to support member countries’ high voltage networks in 2001 but, to date, the system has remained underutilized.…

Mollet, Paul

Al-Mubarak, Imtenan

Efird, Brian

Al Muhanna, Saleh

Al-Ubayli, Omar

Electricity Market Integration in the GCC and MENA: Imperatives and Challenges

Rising electricity demand and growing fiscal constraints have encouraged governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions to consider more cooperative approaches to delivering reliable and affordable electricity services. The development of an…

The Costs and Gains of Coordinating Electricity Generation in the Gulf Cooperation Council Utilizing the Interconnector

David Wogan, Frederic Murphy, Axel Pierru

Countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have installed a network of high-voltage transmission lines, known as the GCC Interconnector, which links the member states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Interconnector…

Wogan, David

Murphy, Frederic

Pierru, Axel

Potential Effects of Trade Liberalization on China’s Imports of Plastics From the GCC

Philipp Galkin, Carlo Andrea Bollino, Rami Shabaneh

Petrochemical products, particularly plastics, contribute to a significant share of expanding and increasingly diverse trade flows between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and China. The petrochemical sector could benefit from a preferential bilateral trade regime between China and the…

Galkin, Philipp

Bollino, Carlo Andrea

Shabaneh, Rami

The Economic Impact of Price Controls on China’s Natural Gas Supply Chain

Bertrand Rioux, Philipp Galkin, Frederic Murphy, Axel Pierru, Kang Wu

Despite significant progress made by China in liberalizing its natural gas market, certain key areas such as market access and pricing mechanisms remain heavily monopolized or controlled by the government. To assess how such distortions impact the market, we developed…

Rioux, Bertrand

Galkin, Philipp

Murphy, Frederic

Pierru, Axel

Wu, Kang

The Effect of Preferential Trade Agreements on Energy Trade from Chinese and Exporters’ Perspectives

Philipp Galkin, Carlo Andrea Bollino

During periods of supply abundance that lead to lower prices, commodity exporters strive to secure their market share with major importing economies. This paper seeks to cast light on what drives an exporter’s share of Chinese imports of oil, gas…

Galkin, Philipp

Bollino, Carlo Andrea

Coal and Renewables in India: Complementarity, Competition and Challenges

Coal and renewables are seen as the cornerstone of India’s energy strategy to meet its growing electricity demand. These two energy resources are at different stages of legislative, policy, regulatory and institutional reform.

Energy Relations and Policy Making in Asia

Ziyad Alfawzan, Sadeem Alhosain, Nader AlKathiri, Shahad Alarenan, Brian Efird

Trade between the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and North East Asia (NEA) reached $471 billion in 2013, based almost entirely on oil and gas. The GCC sends 44 percent of its exports to NEA, which depends on…

Alfawzan, Ziyad

Alhosain, Sadeem

AlKathiri, Nader

Alarenan, Shahad

Efird, Brian

Step by Step: The Reform of China’s Energy Economy

China has become a regional powerhouse, a middle-income country and home to the world’s largest middle class. Its GDP has grown from $400 billion in 1971 to more than $13 trillion in 2012 (purchasing power parity, 2005 US$). The government…

Energy Relations and Policy Making in Asia

Leo Lester

This volume goes beyond a conventional analysis of Asia’s energy relationships and explores the premise that energy relations in Asia in the 21st century should reinforce mutual interdependence. Conventional analyses of international energy relations stress the asymmetric nature of the…

Lester, Leo

Multidimensional Bargaining Using KTAB

Brian Efird, Imtenan Al-Mubarak, Ben Wise, Lama Yaseen

This paper (Multidimensional KTAB) is a technical discussion paper designed as a follow on to An Introduction to the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis using one-dimensional spatial models (Unidimensional KTAB). It extends the original framework of KTAB to explain the…

Efird, Brian

Al-Mubarak, Imtenan

Wise, Ben

Yaseen, Lama

Economic Impacts of Debottlenecking Congestion in the Chinese Coal Supply Chain

Philipp Galkin, Frederic Murphy, Axel Pierru, Bertrand Rioux

China’s coal industry grew at unprecedented rates during the first decade of the 2000s in order to support equally unprecedented economic growth. In that type of environment, it is impossible for the capacities of every link in the supply chain…

Galkin, Philipp

Murphy, Frederic

Pierru, Axel

Rioux, Bertrand

Beyond the ‘Green Economy’: China’s Path to Sustainability

While developed economies plan their transition from a ‘brown economy’ to a ‘green economy’, China is embarking on its journey directly to the ‘golden economy’—a future in which energy, water and land use are harmonized with social and economic needs,…

Reforming the Role of State-Owned Enterprise in China’s Energy Sector: An Analysis of Collective Decision-Making Processes Using the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB)

Brian Efird, Imtenan Al-Mubarak, Ben Wise, Lama Yaseen

What are the prospects for reform of the Chinese energy sector? This question is the subject of much debate both inside and outside China. Since coming to power in November 2012, China’s new government has issued a series of statements…

Efird, Brian

Al-Mubarak, Imtenan

Wise, Ben

Yaseen, Lama

China’s Sustainable Fuel Strategies

KAPSARC’s China Research Project is investigating the policy-economic nexus that underpins the growth and evolution of China’s energy economy. This workshop investigated one of the major emerging trends of China’s energy transformation: the development of sustainable fuel use.