مقررات زدایی در بازار انرژی و تاثیر آن بر تحقیق و توسعه برای فن آوری انرژی گاز با کربن پایین

This paper analyzes the impact of deregulation in an energy market on R&D activities for new energy technology when climate policy is implemented. A model of growth with vertical innovation is modified by including an oligopolistic energy supply sector for demonstrating to what extent deregulation in the energy supply sector will affect R&D activities for low-carbon energy technology, provided that carbon taxation is implemented. The analysis shows that, when the elasticity of substitution between input factors is less than unity, deregulation will drive energy R&D activities and reduce CO2 accumulation if the energy market is highly concentrated in the beginning.

This paper analyzes the impact of deregulation in an energy market on R&D activities for new energy technology when carbon taxation is implemented. A model of growth through creative destruction (Aghion and Howitt, 1992) is modified by including an oligopolistic energy supply sector, which demonstrates to what extent deregulation in the energy sector will affect R&D activities for low-carbon energy technology. In this analysis, when the elasticity of substitution between energy and labor is less than unity, deregulation will drive such R&D activities and reduce CO2 accumulation if initially the energy market is highly concentrated. Imperfections in energy resource markets have been considerably discussed ever since the 1970’s oil shock period. Existing articles such as Dasgupta and Heal (1979) and Stiglitz and Dasgupta (1982) examine the extent to which market structures have an impact on an optimal depletion schedule of natural resources. Currently, deregulating energy supply sectors and enhancing market competition are one of the prevalent issues of public policy in developed countries for increasing efficiency of economies. In Europe, for instance, the markets of electricity and natural gas have been deregulated for the last decade. Power lines as well as gas pipelines are networked through all of Europe, and not only firms in a single market but also those in both markets compete with each other. In the U.S., deregulation in the power industry has been accelerated, although the effort has been hampered possibly by a failure in the deregulation process. In Japan, the deregulation of both electricity and natural gas markets is underway and progressing gradually. However, what kind of consequences deregulation would have on R&D activities for new energy technology has not been intensively discussed so far. With regard to the technological aspect for tackling climate change issues, technologies decreasing “carbon intensity,” i.e., the amount of carbon emitted per unit of energy consumed, as well as those increasing “energy efficiency,” that is, the amount of energy consumed per unit of output, are essential for balancing economic growth and the mitigation of the problem. While a number of theoretical analyses shed light on the role of endogenous technological change for increasing energy efficiency,1 this analysis focuses on improvements in carbon intensity, such as the development of photovoltaic technology. In the meantime, the impact of environmental taxation on R&D activities in general has been extensively examined by such as Verdier, 1995, Elbasha and Roe, 1996, Grimaud, 1999 and Ricci, 2002 and Nakada (2004).2 Therefore, the paper pays more attention to the impact of deregulation than the role of environmental policy on R&D activities for energy technology, although the implementation of appropriate climate policy or alternative energy policy is prerequisite for the analysis. Whether deregulating energy markets by increasing the number of energy suppliers affects R&D activities for new energy technology negatively or positively is analyzed, provided that a carbon emission tax is implemented. On the one hand, deregulation may have an adverse impact on technological development. As the new growth theory Romer, 1990, Grossman and Helpman, 1991 and Aghion and Howitt, 1992 describes, monopolistic rent from product markets is the main source of technological progress. Thus, enhanced market competition negatively affects technological progress (Xie, 2000). A number of empirical studies, Scherer (1967) for instance, have displayed that firms with higher market shares tend to have higher rates of R&D and innovate more. In the context of energy market, the argument implies that enhanced competition reduces the rate of mark-up of energy suppliers and may, therefore, reduce an incentive to carry out R&D activities in new energy technology. On the other hand, deregulation may have a positive impact on R&D activities. Smulders and van de Klundert (1995) mention that, if R&D is an in-house activity and the structure of the product market is imperfect, excessive concentration depresses innovation because large monopoly power induces firms to aim at higher prices rather than at innovation. Several empirical analyses such as Williamson (1965) have shown that market competition positively affects the rate of R&D. Blundell et al. (1995) suggest that the market concentration has both positive and negative impacts because, while firms with higher market shares innovate more, firms with large shares depress the aggregate level of innovative activity. Levin et al. (1985) indicate an inverted-U shaped relationship between market competition and R&D behavior. According to their analysis, R&D activities are first driven by market competition; however, beyond a critical level of concentration, innovative effort is discouraged. This paper investigates the degree to which enhanced market competition in an energy supply sector affects R&D activities for clean energy technology and CO2 accumulation when a carbon tax is implemented. The model has a competitive final good sector and an oligopolistic energy sector as well as an energy R&D sector. The representative final producer generates its output by employing energy and labor as factors of input. Following the law of the conservation of energy, the energy input is assumed to be essential for production, that is, the elasticity of substitution between energy and labor is no more than unity (Dasgupta and Heal, 1974). This assumption is based on the fact that energy conservation by substituting other input factors for energy is not necessarily smooth. Energy conservation is achieved by substituting capital for energy in general; instead, in this analysis, the substitution possibility between energy and labor is considered for the simplicity of the analysis. In the energy supply sector, following the method employed in Xie (2000), the government requires that the energy is supplied by M-independent symmetric energy firms. The government imposes a carbon tax on upstream energy suppliers at rates proportional to the carbon content of each energy source. In turn, it employs the revenues to provide a subsidy for R&D activities. In the energy R&D sector, research firms carry out R&D activities for energy technology. There are two types of energy technology; an ordinary energy technology and a low-carbon technology. Without carbon taxation, energy research firms produce an ordinary energy technology if successful. However, with taxation, the firms are assumed to generate a low-carbon energy technology (Hart, 2004). Under this setting, deregulation in the energy market, that is, the increase in the number of energy suppliers by the government, does not necessarily discourage R&D activities for energy technology. Provided that the energy market is highly concentrated in the beginning, deregulation increases an incentive for R&D activities for clean technology if the elasticity of substitution between energy and labor is less than unity because it will raise the rate of mark-up of energy suppliers. A critical level of deregulation will be determined below which deregulation encourages R&D activities for new energy technology. However, if the number is beyond that level, deregulating the market will discourage them. Similarly, the analysis demonstrates that deregulation decreases CO2 accumulation below the critical level due to the improved clean technology. In the next two sections, a macroeconomic model with an oligopolistic energy supply sector is constructed and the steady-state equilibrium is determined. Next, the impact of deregulating the energy market on R&D activities is analyzed. After the impact of deregulation on the CO2 accumulation is analyzed, a tentative conclusion will be provided.

In this paper, the impact of deregulating the energy market on energy R&D activities and that on CO2 accumulation have been analyzed when carbon taxation is implemented. A growth model with vertical innovation (Aghion and Howitt, 1992), modified by including an oligopolistic energy sector, has been examined for demonstrating to what extent deregulation in the energy sector affects R&D activities for low-carbon energy technology. In this analysis, when the elasticity of substitution between energy and labor is less than unity, deregulation drives such R&D activities if the energy market is highly concentrated in the beginning. The impact of deregulation depends on the number of energy suppliers in the economy. The analysis determines the critical level of deregulation below which deregulation encourages R&D activities for new energy technology. On the contrary, if the number is beyond that level, deregulating the market discourages R&D. The paper also demonstrates that deregulation decreased the steady-state CO2 accumulation if the initial number of energy suppliers are small. The analysis has obvious limits, because the above results would not be relevant if the energy conservation is relatively easy, or if no appropriate climate policy is implemented. Furthermore, the technology index of carbon intensity is proportional to the productivity index and has not been internalized. Therefore, it can be tentatively concluded that, if the energy conservation is difficult and new energy R&D activities are insufficient even with climate policy, a certain degree of deregulation in the market may have a positive impact on such R&D activities. However, it should be noted that excessive competition adversely affects them.