Blazquez, Jorge

21 May 2020

Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-largest holder of proved oil reserves and the second-largest producer of petroleum liquids. The country is the largest exporter of crude oil, with a share of 16% of total crude oil exports in 2017. Saudi Arabia’s economy is heavily oil dependent. 

20 April 2020

rojects as a first step toward diversifying its electricity generation mix, currently based almost entirely on crude oil, refined oil products and natural gas. The Saudi National Renewable Energy Program aims to substantially increase the share of renewable energy in the King...y 2023. 

23 December 2019

The increasing availability of data from technologies such as mobile phones, satellites and connected devices means that there are many new possible sources of economic data. This study analyzes the potential use of nighttime light images from satellites to provide a regional distrib...

26 November 2018

In this paper, we propose a market mechanism that may ameliorate this potential distortion based on the creation of a market for risk. Utilities would provide reliability insurance services to households to protect them against the failure of their own DER systems. Creating such an i...

25 March 2018

What is the value of saving a barrel of oil that would otherwise had been consumed domestically? This study explores the question, taking a long-run perspective into a general equilibrium approach. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the difference between the domestic price of oil and the ...

15 June 2017

The ambitious environmental objectives of the Paris Agreement imply that, in order to curb carbon emissions, all cost-effective policy options should be considered. These options include carbon taxes, probably the most popular fiscal tool for curbing emissions, and various other taxe...

05 October 2016

Understanding how the composition of a country’s energy mix is formed in an environment where greater government involvement is anticipated due to climate change obligations is critical. This paper is part of a project analyzing drivers of the mix and the transition to a future energ...

08 September 2016

One major avenue for policymakers to meet climate targets is by decarbonizing the power sector, one component of which is raising the share of renewable energy sources (renewables) in electricity generation. However, promoting renewables in liberalized power markets creates a paradox...

16 June 2016

Policymakers have a variety of financial tools to foster the deployment of renewables. Our study explores how these policy instruments impact a private investor’s behavior, and the resulting differences in the adoption of renewable technology as well as costs to taxpayers and ratepay...

01 June 2016

Part of the policy strategy to avert the worst outcomes of global climate change is a transition to low carbon energy on an unprecedented scale. In particular, strong incentives are in place to promote the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, stimulate their rapid uptake...

24 December 2015

Policies to support wind energy development are most effective when they deliver power at the lowest cost per unit of added capacity and per unit of delivered electricity. Our analysis uses real Spanish onshore wind project data to identify which approaches deliver the lowest cost to...

06 March 2015

It is common for decision makers and media to conflate the oil price with the price of energy. High crude oil prices are taken as signals of energy scarcity. By contrast, and perhaps misleadingly, low crude oil prices are perceived as evidence of energy abundance.

06 October 2014

For the past two to three decades, and particularly in the wake of the Great Recession, clean energy transitions have been sold as a three-for-the-price-ofone policy: creating “green collar” jobs to get the unemployed back to work, using domestic resources to reduce dependence on imp...