Editorial

Citation

Bhattacharyya, S.C. and Dey, P.K. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 1 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijesm.2007.32801daa.001

Editorial

The fourth and last issue of the first year contains five papers and a commentary. At the end of the first year of existence, we owe a great deal of gratitude to the reviewers of the journal who have provided their candid opinion on the papers submitted to the journal. Without their support, it would not be possible to maintain any credible quality of the journal.

In the first research paper of this issue, Saksa et al., analyse the governance choices of electricity distribution network firms for their network business. Using an extended transaction cost economics framework focusing on net benefits and relying on in-depth interviews, they examine which activities could be outsourced. They find that the nature and the strategic importance of the activity as well as potential long-term efficiency effects influence the governance choice. Their study presents a framework that supports the decision-making by opening up the set of relevant factors having an effect on the long-term development of electricity companies.

The second paper by Tishler and Woo examines the deregulation of the Israeli regulated electricity sector using an analytical model and shows the inherent difficulty in replacing regulation with deregulation. They find a deregulated market is likely to yield smaller net benefits than a regulated market, and certainly a smaller consumer surplus. The authors caution against undertaking such reforms in other countries having similar backgrounds.

In the third paper, Bertsch et al., highlight the role of multi-criteria decision analysis in nuclear emergency and recovery management. Their paper facilitates the preference modelling process by considering the impact of the preferential uncertainties on the results of the decision analysis. They propose a new sensitivity analysis approach allowing to consistently link the uncertainties in the results to the uncertainties in the different preference parameters.

The fourth paper by Ralf Boscheck focuses on the role of national oil companies in the governance of global oil supply. The paper attempts to offer an integrative approach by:

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  introducing the language of institutional economics to broadly structure a review of NOC governance; and

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  by linking that discussion to an assessment of the macro-economic imperatives to which the NOC and its governance may need to respond.

The final result offers an audit trail for assessing cases in their particular institutional, cultural and physical conditions.

The fifth and last paper by Di Silvio et al., considers the issue of electricity supply contract renewal in a liberalized market where the eligible consumers are allowed to choose their suppliers. The paper analyses the supplier choice issue for an Italian industry whose cost of production is greatly influenced by the cost of electricity purchase. The authors present a methodology for the evaluation of heterogeneous proposals from different bidders for the supply contract renewal.

In the commentary section, Bhattacharyya critically reviews the recently published UK White Paper on Energy Policy and questions whether the policy statements would be sufficient to meet the goals.

Subhes C. Bhattacharyya and Prasanta K. Dey