Storing Power: Market Structure Matters

Natalia Fabra
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
October 4, 2021 – 05:00 – 06:15 PM (CET)
Live virtual event: please register for this talk via Zoom

 

Seminar Abstract
We assess how firms' incentives to operate and invest in energy storage depend on the market structure. For this purpose, we characterize equilibrium market outcomes allowing for market power in storage and/or production, as well as for vertical integration between storage and production. Market power reduces overall efficiency through two channels: it induces an ineffecient use of the storage facilities, and it distorts investment incentives. The worst outcome for consumers and total welfare occurs under vertical integration. The results are key to understanding how to regulate energy storage, an issue which is critical for the deployment of renewables.

 

Speaker Bio
Natalia Fabra is Professor of Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She is Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, Associate Member of the Toulouse School of Economics and Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group. She belongs to the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy (EAGCP) of the European Commission. She obtained her PhD in 2001 at the European University Institute (Florence), under the supervision of Prof. Massimo Motta.

Natalia works in the field of Industrial Organization, with emphasis in Energy and Environmental Economics and Regulation and Competition Policy. Her research papers are published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Management Science, The Rand Journal of Economics, The Economic Journal, Energy Economics, The Journal of Industrial Economics, and the International Journal of Industrial Organization, among others. Natalia is Associate Editor at the Economic Journal and the Journal of Industrial Economics.

Natalia Fabra has received two distinguished awards as Spanish Best Young Economist (one awarded by the Banco Sabadell Foundation, and the other by the Madrid regional government). In 2017, she has been awarded with an ERC Consolidator grant “Current Tools and Policy Challenges in Electricity Markets” for the period 2018–2023.

Natalia has been Research Visiting Fellow at several institutions, including the University of California Energy Institute (Berkeley), Nuffield College (Oxford), the Toulouse School of Economics, Northwestern University (Chicago), and the Energy Policy Research Group (Cambridge), among others.

 

Admission information
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