Katheline Schubert

The Problem of Intermittency

The electricity mix needs to be designed in such a way that the problems of the variability and intermittency of renewable energies can be solved. During her visit to Ifo, Katheline Schubert will be working on this issue. Together with Aude Pommeret, she will study in a dynamic setting the optimal electricity mix with intermittent renewable sources and contrast it to the mix chosen by agents in a decentralised economy where the retailing price of electricity does not vary with its availability. The objective is first to assess whether intermittency constitutes a serious obstacle to energy transition and second to examine the properties of different public policies and their impacts on renewable penetration in the electricity mix: carbon tax, feed-in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards and demand-side management policies.

Ms Schubert’s current research project concerns the economic analysis of energy transition. Focusing on electricity generation, she is also interested in the role of shale gas in energy transition and whether it is the perfect bridge between the high-carbon present and the low-carbon future. Her research areas are environmental and natural resources economics, dynamic macroeconomics, growth theory and taxation as well as macroeconomics, macroeconomic modelling and computable general equilibrium models.

Katheline Schuber is Professor at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Research Fellow at the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne. She is Associate Chair of the Paris School of Economics and past President of the French Economic Association. She also serves as Associate Editor of Resource and Energy Economics. Her publications include articles in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Economic Theory and The Energy Journal.