The Energy Transition in Political Equilibrium

化石燃料的消耗造成了严重的环境问题。人们对中国经济向不依赖化石燃料的“能源转型”寄予厚望。转型的主要组成部分是：(1)通过税收、排放上限和其他手段的政府监管来减少化石燃料的需求；(2)增加能源公司对可再生能源产能的投资；(3)加速可再生能源技术的技术进步，因为对这些技术的更高需求的预期增加了研究和开发。虽然能源转型将解决一个大规模的社会问题，但它也造成了净输家，即与化石燃料互补的资产所有者——例如燃煤发电厂。因此，可以预期他们的利益集团会抵制监管。然而，目前尚不清楚是什么决定了这种政治抵抗的成功及其发展。当现有的能源公司利用他们的专业知识和财政资源投资可再生能源并为技术发展做出贡献时，是否会有永久的反对？基于资源和能源经济学、政治经济学等不同文献的见解，该研究项目旨在利用分析经济模型（包括博弈论和动态优化）回答这些问题。该项目通过分析投资决策与利益集团形成之间的相互作用，扩展了现有文献，从而分析了在哪些条件下能源政策不仅是福利最大化，而且在政治上是可行的。该项目的目标是开发一种易于分析的模型，使其能够理解政治发展，并可作为经验应用的基础。

Fossil-fuel consumption causes severe environmental problems. High hopes rest on an "energy transition" towards an economy that does not rely on fossil fuels. The transition's main components are (1) reduction of fossil-fuel demand via governmental regulation with taxes, emission caps, and other instruments, (2) increased investment of energy firms in renewable-energy capacity, (3) an acceleration of technological progress in renewable-energy technologies as the expectation of higher demand for these technologies increases research and development. While the energy transition would solve a large-scale societal problem, it also creates net losers, namely, the owners of assets that are complementary to fossil fuel - for example, coal-fired power plants. Therefore, their interest groups can be expected to resist regulation. It is unclear, however, what determines the success of this political resistance and its development. Will there be a permanent opposition - or does resistance fade out while incumbent energy firms use their know-how and their financial resources to invest in renewables and contribute to technological development? Building on insights from different strands of literature including resource and energy economics and political economy, the research project aims at answering these questions using analytical economic models, including game theory and dynamic optimization. The project extends the current literature by analyzing the interaction between investment decisions and interest-group formation, and thus analyzes under which conditions energy policy is not only welfare-maximizing, but also politically feasible. The goal of the project is to develop an analytically tractable model that allows to understand political developments and that can serve as a basis for empirical applications.