Peak residential electricity demand and social practices: Deriving flexibility and greenhouse gas intensities from time use and locational data

Peak residential electricity demand takes place when people conduct simultaneous activities at specific times of the day. Social practices generate patterns of demand and can help understand why, where, with whom and when energy services are used at peak time. The aim of this work is to make use of recent UK time use and locational data to better understand: (i) how a set of component indices on synchronisation, variation, sharing and mobility indicate flexibility to shift demand; and (ii) the links between people’s activities and peaks in greenhouse gases’ intensities. The analysis is based on a recent UK time use dataset, providing 1 minute interval data from GPS devices and 10 minute data from diaries and questionnaires for 175 data days comprising 153 respondents. Findings show how greenhouse gases’ intensities and flexibility to shift activities vary throughout the day. Morning peaks are characterised by high levels of synchronisation, shared activities and occupancy, with low variation of activities. Evening peaks feature low synchronisation, and high spatial mobility variation of activities. From a network operator perspective, the results indicate that periods with lower flexibility may be prone to more significant local network loads due to the synchronization of electricity-demanding activities.

Consumer attitudes towards and willingness to pay for pesticide residue limit compliant 'safe' vegetables in Northeast Thailand

Pesticide residue in vegetables is a major food safety issue in Thailand. A range of vegetable products (organic/pesticide-free/ hydroponic) has emerged in Thai markets that guarantee compliance with maximum residue limits. The Government of Thailand is eager to extend the benefits of this suite of alternative vegetables to the entire population, particularly the semi-urban/rural segments that are often bypassed by such speciality products. However, little information is available to guide such an effort, particularly with regard to up-country consumer attitudes, shopping and consumption habits and willingness to pay premiums for such produce. This research aims to fill this gap in knowledge. It reports the results of a survey of vegetable consumption and shopping habits and attitudes of 608 consumers in northeast Thailand. Willingness to pay premiums for pesticide residue limit compliant vegetables is also assessed by using a contingent valuation method, and determinants of willingness to pay are examined using an ordered probit empirical model. Results indicate that, given adequate awareness of relative risks, even up-country consumers are willing to pay market premium levels for these products, and that inadequate availability, rather than lack of demand is the constraining factor. Willingness to pay is found to increase with income, age and supermarket sourcing of vegetables. We also discuss the challenge of improving availability at mainstream outlets.

Friction and inertia: business change, corporate real estate portfolios and the UK office market

It has been asserted that business reorganisation and new working practices are transforming the nature of demand for business space. Downsizing, delayering, business process reengineering and associated initiatives alter the amount, type and location of space required by firms. The literature has neglected the impact of real estate market structures on the ability of organisations to successfully implement these new organisational forms or contemporary working practices. Drawing from UK research, the paper demonstrates that, while new working practices are widespread, their impact on the corporate real estate portfolio is less dramatic than often supposed. In part, this is attributed to inflexibility in market structures which constrains the supply of appropriate space.

A vision for attaining food security

Food is fundamental to human wellbeing and development. Increased food production remains a cornerstone strategy in the effort to alleviate global food insecurity. But despite the fact that global food production over the past half century has kept ahead of demand, today around one billion people do not have enough to eat, and a further billion lack adequate nutrition. Food insecurity is facing mounting supply-side and demand-side pressures; key among these are climate change, urbanisation, globalisation, population increases, disease, as well as a number of other factors that are changing patterns of food consumption. Many of the challenges to equitable food access are concentrated in developing countries where environmental pressures including climate change, population growth and other socio-economic issues are concentrated. Together these factors impede people's access to sufficient, nutritious food; chiefly through affecting livelihoods, income and food prices. Food security and human development go hand in hand, and their outcomes are co-determined to a significant degree. The challenge of food security is multi-scalar and cross-sector in nature. Addressing it will require the work of diverse actors to bring sustained improvements inhuman development and to reduce pressure on the environment. Unless there is investment in future food systems that are similarly cross-level, cross-scale and cross-sector, sustained improvements in human wellbeing together with reduced environmental risks and scarcities will not be achieved. This paper reviews current thinking, and outlines these challenges. It suggests that essential elements in a successfully adaptive and proactive food system include: learning through connectivity between scales to local experience and technologies high levels of interaction between diverse actors and sectors ranging from primary producers to retailers and consumers, and use of frontier technologies.

Supply, demand and a failure of understanding: addressing the culture clash between archaeologists' expectations for training and employment in 'academia' versus 'practice

A university degree is effectively a prerequisite for entering the archaeological workforce in the UK. Archaeological employers consider that new entrants to the profession are insufficiently skilled, and hold university training to blame. But university archaeology departments do not consider it their responsibility to deliver fully formed archaeological professionals, but rather to provide an education that can then be applied in different workplaces, within and outside archaeology. The number of individuals studying archaeology at university exceeds the total number working in professional practice, with many more new graduates emerging than archaeological jobs advertised annually. Over-supply of practitioners is also a contributing factor to low pay in archaeology. Steps are being made to provide opportunities for vocational training, both within and outside the university system, but archaeological training and education within the universities and subsequently the archaeological labour market may be adversely impacted upon by the introduction of variable top-up student fees.

The seasonal forecast of electricity demand: A hierarchical Bayesian model with climatological weather generator

In this paper we focus on the one year ahead prediction of the electricity peak-demand daily trajectory during the winter season in Central England and Wales. We define a Bayesian hierarchical model for predicting the winter trajectories and present results based on the past observed weather. Thanks to the flexibility of the Bayesian approach, we are able to produce the marginal posterior distributions of all the predictands of interest. This is a fundamental progress with respect to the classical methods. The results are encouraging in both skill and representation of uncertainty. Further extensions are straightforward at least in principle. The main two of those consist in conditioning the weather generator model with respect to additional information like the knowledge of the first part of the winter and/or the seasonal weather forecast. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Comparative advantage in demand: Experimental evidence of preferences for genetically modified food in the United States and European Union

The United States (US) exports more than US$6 billion in agricultural commodities to the European Union (EU) each year, but one issue carries the potential to diminish this trade: use of biotechnology in food production. The EU has adopted more stringent policies towards biotechnology than the US. Understanding differences in European and American policies towards genetically modified (GM) foods requires a greater understanding of consumers' attitudes and preferences. This paper reports results from the first large-scale, cross-Atlantic study to analyse consumer demand for genetically modified food in a non-hypothetical market environment. We strongly reject the frequent if convenient assumption in trade theory that consumer preferences are identical across countries: the median level of compensation demanded by English and French consumers to consume a GM food is found to be more than twice that in any of the US locations. Results have important implications for trade theory, which typically focusses on differences in specialization, comparative advantage and factor endowments across countries, and for on-going trade disputes at the World Trade Organization.

Time patterns in UK demand for alcohol and tobacco: an application of the EM algorithm

Capturing the pattern of structural change is a relevant task in applied demand analysis, as consumer preferences may vary significantly over time. Filtering and smoothing techniques have recently played an increasingly relevant role. A dynamic Almost Ideal Demand System with random walk parameters is estimated in order to detect modifications in consumer habits and preferences, as well as changes in the behavioural response to prices and income. Systemwise estimation, consistent with the underlying constraints from economic theory, is achieved through the EM algorithm. The proposed model is applied to UK aggregate consumption of alcohol and tobacco, using quarterly data from 1963 to 2003. Increased alcohol consumption is explained by a preference shift, addictive behaviour and a lower price elasticity. The dynamic and time-varying specification is consistent with the theoretical requirements imposed at each sample point. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Inclusion of nonlinear demand-supply relationships within large-scale partial equilibrium linear programming models

This paper presents a new method for the inclusion of nonlinear demand and supply relationships within a linear programming model. An existing method for this purpose is described first and its shortcomings are pointed out before showing how the new approach overcomes those difficulties and how it provides a more accurate and 'smooth' (rather than a kinked) approximation of the nonlinear functions as well as dealing with equilibrium under perfect competition instead of handling just the monopolistic situation. The workings of the proposed method are illustrated by extending a previously available sectoral model for the UK agriculture.

The seasonal forecast of electricity demand: A hierarchical Bayesian model with climatological weather generator

In this paper we focus on the one year ahead prediction of the electricity peak-demand daily trajectory during the winter season in Central England and Wales. We define a Bayesian hierarchical model for predicting the winter trajectories and present results based on the past observed weather. Thanks to the flexibility of the Bayesian approach, we are able to produce the marginal posterior distributions of all the predictands of interest. This is a fundamental progress with respect to the classical methods. The results are encouraging in both skill and representation of uncertainty. Further extensions are straightforward at least in principle. The main two of those consist in conditioning the weather generator model with respect to additional information like the knowledge of the first part of the winter and/or the seasonal weather forecast. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The demand for a healthy diet: estimating the almost ideal demand system with infrequency of purchase

A Bayesian method of estimating multivariate sample selection models is introduced and applied to the estimation of a demand system for food in the UK to account for censoring arising from infrequency of purchase. We show how it is possible to impose identifying restrictions on the sample selection equations and that, unlike a maximum likelihood framework, the imposition of adding up at both latent and observed levels is straightforward. Our results emphasise the role played by low incomes and socio-economic circumstances in leading to poor diets and also indicate that the presence of children in a household has a negative impact on dietary quality.

Making the least active pay: a simulation of rewards and penalties under Demand Side Participation programs

The orthodox approach for incentivising Demand Side Participation (DSP) programs is that utility losses from capital, installation and planning costs should be recovered under financial incentive mechanisms which aim to ensure that utilities have the right incentives to implement DSP activities. The recent national smart metering roll-out in the UK implies that this approach needs to be reassessed since utilities will recover the capital costs associated with DSP technology through bills. This paper introduces a reward and penalty mechanism focusing on residential users. DSP planning costs are recovered through payments from those consumers who do not react to peak signals. Those consumers who do react are rewarded by paying lower bills. Because real-time incentives to residential consumers tend to fail due to the negligible amounts associated with net gains (and losses) or individual users, in the proposed mechanism the regulator determines benchmarks which are matched against responses to signals and caps the level of rewards/penalties to avoid market distortions. The paper presents an overview of existing financial incentive mechanisms for DSP; introduces the reward/penalty mechanism aimed at fostering DSP under the hypothesis of smart metering roll-out; considers the costs faced by utilities for DSP programs; assesses linear rate effects and value changes; introduces compensatory weights for those consumers who have physical or financial impediments; and shows findings based on simulation runs on three discrete levels of elasticity.