Reducing the carbon intensity of energy production requires the decentralization of energy infrastructures. Most of the technologies available for low-carbon energy production are small-scaled, geographically distributed, and involve local actors in decision-making. The costs and benefits of these technologies remain poorly documented and vary greatly depending on their nature and the context of their development. More research is thus needed to better identify the net costs of decentralized energy infrastructures and to study the effectiveness of public policy instruments used to facilitate their development. I contribute to this topic with three independent works.The first chapter compares the effectiveness of investments in district heating networks versus energy efficiency retrofits from the perspective of a city (Bristol, UK) and in the context of rising energy prices. The energy price shock following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has significant implications for the mitigation costs of both measures. Many cities across Europe have developed climate action plans that, among others, include the two investments considered in this study. Robust economic evaluations are thus necessary to help them choosing the most cost-effective actions in an uncertain context. In my case study, adopting price trajectories aligned with the energy price shock in an ex-ante cost-benefit analysis can reverse the optimal sequence for implementing the measures, prioritizing investments in the district heating network due to its insurance value for consumers. The second chapter quantifies the dynamic misallocation of investments in solar photovoltaic (PV) energy. Substantial literature has examined the spatial variation in the gross benefits of solar energy. However, there is also significant variation in the costs between solar production units, due to economies of scale and the diversity of installation configurations. This heterogeneity is particularly important when considering costs variation over time within and between different types of installations. Support policies, such as feed-in-tariffs and public auctions, do not necessarily take this heterogeneity into account when they are designed. We propose a methodology to estimate a lower bound for the dynamic misallocation of investments. To do so, we compare a realized sequence of solar investments with a counterfactual sequence that replicates the same solar energy production each year but minimizes the total costs. We apply this methodology to the case of France from 2005–2021 and find that the realized trajectory was far from its cost-efficient frontier. The third examines the French administrative “mille-feuille” for authorizing the installation of ground-mounted solar power plants. While the effectiveness of spatial planning policies for the deployment of wind power has been studied in the literature, the deployment of ground-mounted solar has received scant attention. The spatial deployment of solar follows a specific regulation in France. Land-use planning at the local level is used to define at the national level eligibility criteria for the development of ground-mounted solar installations. However, the diversity of land-use planning frameworks – established at the municipality or inter-municipality level –creates discrepancies across jurisdictions in the application of national regulation. Using a quasi-experimental approach, I study how this interaction impacts the amount of land allocated to ground-mounted solar. I find that land-use planning frameworks with more detailed land-use categories enable better targeting of land for solar. I also find that recently updated land-use planning and the ones integrated at the inter-municipality level hinder the allocation of land to solar, as they must integrate other environmental objectives related to land conservation.
Nicolas Hatem (Tue,) studied this question.