Consumer surplus from energy transitions

Fouquet, Roger (2018) Consumer surplus from energy transitions. Energy Journal, 39 (3). pp. 167-188. ISSN 0195-6574

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Abstract

Energy transitions have led to major advances in human wellbeing. However, little evidence exists about the scale of the net benefits. By developing a new method for identifying the demand curve, this paper estimates the consumer surplus associated with heating, transport and lighting over more than two hundred years and identifies the gains from key energy transitions. For certain energy transitions, the increase was dramatic, reflecting the transformations in society 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 energy services, future technological developments and energy transitions may benefit consumers (though not necessarily society as a whole) less than those in the past.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/scope.aspx
Additional Information:	© 2018 IAEE
Divisions:	Grantham Research Institute
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2018 14:19
Last Modified:	29 Feb 2024 17:48
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/86502

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