Diversifying the Brazilian electricity mix: Income level, the endowment effect, and governance capacity

Solange Kileber and Virginia Parente

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, vol. 49, issue C, 1180-1189

Abstract: Low and middle income countries are usually trapped by their natural resource abundance, and thus have little opportunity to diversify their electricity matrix. On the other hand, in high income countries, new electricity sources have been growing faster, regardless of their resource endowments. As income grows, countries should have more opportunities to develop new technologies. Thus, the evolution of technologies to generate electricity should lead to a new mix of fuel consumption along the steps of an imaginary electricity ladder, from the more traditional to the more advanced and cleaner technologies. Notwithstanding the income effect, the endowment effect could hinder the diversity of electricity sources. In this context, we examine whether or not Brazil has been able to diversify its electricity mix with respect to income growth, by breaking what we called the “endowment trap”. Based on an economic model developed in this research, we found evidence that Brazil has succeeded in breaking its hydroelectric dependency, but has not eliminated the polluting sources.

Keywords: Endowment trap; Energy ladder; Economic development; Electricity; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032115003792
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:49:y:2015:i:c:p:1180-1189

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.04.109

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().