Essays in environmental economics: assessing externalities from distributed infrastructure

随着向可持续能源系统的转变，分布式能源技术（如太阳能、风能、小型水力发电）变得更加普遍，对整体能源生产做出了重大贡献。虽然这些技术作为减少与当前驱动气候变化的化石燃料能源生产相关的负面外部性的手段获得了广泛的政治支持，但它们本身可能与其他（负面和正面）外部性有关。事实确实如此，因为可再生能源的部署不仅给能源格局带来了重大变化，而且确实改变了格局的面貌。传统的能源生产方法往往需要很少的设施，并以（相当）集中的方式发电，可再生能源技术不同，它需要大量的装置，而且往往分布得更广泛。同样，在许多国家，分布式能源已经达到了第一批涡轮机延长其使用寿命的阶段。实际上，这意味着它们将退役，要么被替换，要么被拆除。退役可能为推动可再生能源加速扩张的政策或微调政策提供机会，以确保支持机制有效（提高分配、效率）。本文将讨论与上述事态发展有关的两个核心问题，特别是与已经退役的国家有关的问题。首先。它将调查分布式能源的外部性，同时考虑退役和重新供电等后期问题。这将侧重于风力发电的外部性（以住宅房价和土地选择价值衡量）以及对当地就业结果的影响。其次，本文还将考虑当前可再生能源分配效率低下的问题。更准确地说，空间错配程度、异质投资者偏好的作用以及学习是否会随着所有者经验的增加而提高空间结果的效率。

With a move to a sustainable energy system distributed energy technologies (such as solar, wind, small hydro) have become much more common, contributing a significant amount to overall energy generation. While these technologies have gained wide political support as means to reduce negative externalities associated with the current fossil fuel-based energy production that is driving climate change they may themselves be associated with other (negative and positive) externalities. This is so, as the deployment of renewables not only brings grave changes to the energy landscape but also literally changed the face of the landscape. Different to traditional energy generation methods that tend to require few facilities and generate power in a (fairly) centralized manner, renewable technologies require a far larger number of installations that also tend to be distributed more widely. Equally, distributed energy has in many countries reached a stage where the first turbines have extended their useful lifetime. In practice this means that they will be decommissioned and either replaced or removed. Decommissioning may present opportunities for policies pushing accelerated expansion of renewables or to fine-tune policies to make sure support mechanisms are efficient (improve allocation, efficiency).This thesis will deal with two core issues related to the developments outlined above, in particular those pertaining to countries that have reached decommissioning. Firstly. It will investigate the externalities from distributed energy, considering also later stage issues such as decommissioning and repowering. This will focus on both the externalities from wind power as measured by residential house prices as well as the option value of land as well as impacts on local employment outcomes. Secondly, the thesis will also consider issues of inefficiency in the current allocation of renewables. More precisely, the degree of spatial misallocation, the role of heterogeneous investor preferences and whether learning improves the efficiency of spatial outcomes as owners experience increases over time.