Job Market Paper:
Empowering the community: Do renewable energy communities create local jobs? (with Joël Bühler) - Draft coming soon!
This paper explores the claim that the Renewable Energy Communities (RECs), not only contributing to the energy transition by organizing communities, but also creating local jobs. The case studies, and the reports published by the REC organizations suggest that RECs create even more local jobs than absentee-owned renewable plants. Considering the important role played by RECs in energy transition, and the recent political interest in the EU legal framework towards the topic, testing and quantifying the strong claim of the "double benefit" is highly policy relavent. To be able to conduct an empirical analysis, we created a new dataset of REC plants in the United Kingdom from open sources.
Working Papers:
Carbon pricing effects on renewables: evidence from California’s electricity market (with Jordi Teixidó and Mònica Serrano)
This paper studies California's carbon pricing policies in the context of the electricity market and looking at the renewable electricity capacity changes in California as well as in the neighboring states. The paper takes advantage of California's unique policy environment in the electricity market: Cap-and-trade system with a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). We found that California’s cap-and-trade policy has a positive effect on renewable electricity capacity at a county level, with an additional 143 megawatts on average; this equates to a 5.18 percentage point increase in the share of statewide renewable electricity capacity. Regarding the CBAM, we show novel ex-post evidence on the effects of the CBAM on California’s main trading partners in terms of new renewable capacity.
Potential effects of new ETS on industrial prices, household welfare, and income distribution (with Jordi Teixidó and Mònica Serrano)
This paper uses environmentally extended multiregional input output tables to quantify the potential effects of the EU ETS 2 policy that will come into force in 2027 and put a price on road transport and building emissions. We expect ETS 2 to increase overall inflation by less than 2 percentage point in all EU countries. The ETS 2 is slightly regressive in most of the EU countries and the regressivity is mostly due to households' direct heating expenditures. Some industries are more affected than others: Land transport, postal courier activities, rental and leasing activities. The most affected countries by the ETS 2 are also the ones that show more regressivity.
Work in Progress:
Do renewable energy communities reduce energy poverty in Germany (with Miriam Rehm and Martin Buchner)
Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) often claim that reducing energy poverty is one of their most important goals. In practice, RECs may invest directly in community-scale energy infrastructure—such as district heating systems or building insulation—to reduce energy bills. Others focus on deploying renewable energy installations, aiming to provide cheaper electricity, generate local income, and create employment. However, emerging evidence suggests that the ownership of “green capital” is socially unequal, raising concerns that RECs might sometimes function as clubs for the affluent rather than inclusive tools for energy justice. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we aim to empirically assess whether RECs in Germany contribute to reducing energy poverty. This question is highly relevant in the EU context, where energy poverty remains a pressing challenge: approximately 10% of households report difficulties in heating their homes adequately. Evaluating the impact of RECs on energy poverty has significant policy relevance, especially amid ongoing tensions between RECs and traditional electricity market actors. RECs frequently use existing distribution grid infrastructure—often at no additional cost—while reducing the customer base for utilities and distribution system operators (DSOs). Demonstrating measurable social benefits, such as alleviating energy poverty, could strengthen the political legitimacy of RECs within this contested space.