Consumer surplus from energy transitions

Roger Fouquet

No 277, GRI Working Papers from Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

Abstract: Energy transitions have led to major advances in human wellbeing. How- ever, little evidence exists about the scale of the net benefits. By developing a new method for identifying the demand curve, and by using a unique, his- torical data set, this paper estimates the consumer surplus associated with heating, transport and lighting over more than two hundred years and iden- tifies the gains from a number of key energy transitions. For certain energy transitions, the increase was dramatic, re ecting the transformations in soci- ety and lifestyles that mobility and illumination provided in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, the net benefits related to heating technologies only rose modestly. Finally, due to saturation effects of the demand for en- ergy services, future technological developments and energy transitions may benefit consumers (though not necessarily society as a whole) less than those in the past.

Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-ene, nep-his, nep-mkt and nep-reg
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Related works:
Journal Article: Consumer Surplus from Energy Transitions (2018)
Journal Article: Consumer Surplus from Energy Transitions (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp277

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