May 1, 2024
Updated November 14, 2026
17 minute read
Navigating the World of Energy Economics
Energy economics is a specialized field within economics that examines the production, distribution, and consumption of energy. It applies economic principles and tools to understand the complex energy sector, analyzing how individuals, businesses, and governments make decisions about energy resources. This discipline also investigates the economic impacts of energy policies, the behavior of energy markets, and the transition towards sustainable energy systems. If you've ever wondered about the forces that determine your electricity bill, the price of gasoline, or the global push towards renewable energy, then energy economics holds the answers.
Working in energy economics can be particularly engaging due to its direct relevance to some of the world's most pressing challenges. Professionals in this field often find themselves at the intersection of technology, policy, and global markets, contributing to solutions for issues like climate change, energy security, and economic development. The dynamic nature of energy markets, influenced by technological innovations and geopolitical events, ensures that the work is constantly evolving and intellectually stimulating. Furthermore, the growing global focus on sustainability and decarbonization means that energy economists play a crucial role in shaping a more sustainable future.
Introduction to Energy Economics
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Find a path to becoming a Energy Economics. Learn more at:
OpenCourser.com/topic/jjtsrh/energy
Reading list
We've selected 17 books
that we think will supplement your
learning. Use these to
develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a
deeper understanding of the topics covered in
Energy Economics.
IEEE Press's definitive treatise by Steven Stoft bridges electrical engineering constraints with microeconomic market design—explaining locational marginal pricing (LMP), capacity markets, congestion rents, ancillary services, and generator market power.
Co-authored by Daniel Kirschen and Goran Strbac, the updated second edition explains spot electricity auctions, bilateral trading, transmission nodal pricing, grid investment economics, and the market integration of variable wind and solar generation.
Pulitzer Prize-winning economic history by Daniel Yergin traces how petroleum cartels, OPEC supply shocks, sovereign resource nationalism, and futures markets shaped modern global macroeconomics and geopolitics.
Analyzing the economic disruption wrought by the US shale revolution, liquefied natural gas (LNG) spot trade, solar/battery cost curves, and net-zero transition policies, Daniel Yergin maps contemporary global energy markets.
Demonstrating how high-frequency smart-grid telemetry, satellite imagery of oil storage, and econometric machine learning transform load forecasting, electricity price prediction, and carbon market trading.
Edited by Lester C. Hunt, this foundational collection examines utility deregulation, natural monopoly unbundling, North Sea oil taxation, and competitive wholesale electricity and gas market design.
Comprehensive Springer graduate textbook by Subhes Bhattacharyya covers energy demand econometric modeling, Hotelling exhaustible resource depletion theory, levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), refining economics, and energy poverty.
Updated second-edition Routledge textbook by Peter Schwarz applies microeconomic supply-and-demand principles to oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewable electricity, energy efficiency rebound effects, and climate externalities.
Colorado School of Mines professor Carol Dahl teaches international energy market structures—covering cartel game theory, futures and options hedging on NYMEX/ICE, pipeline tariff regulation, and sovereign production-sharing contracts.
Focusing on physical loop-flow physics, security-constrained economic dispatch, financial transmission rights (FTRs), and hedging derivatives in wholesale power pools, Darryl Biggar and Mohammad Reza Hesamzadeh bridge grid operations and financial economics.
Juan Morales and Henrik Madsen apply stochastic programming and market-clearing optimization to integrate variable wind and solar generation into competitive wholesale electricity markets.
Fred Denny and David Dismukes connect power-system engineering constraints—unit commitment, congestion, and ancillary services—directly to wholesale electricity pricing and market settlements.
Quantifying power density, energy return on investment (EROI), and prime movers from draft animals and waterwheels to steam turbines and photovoltaics, Vaclav Smil grounds economic growth in thermodynamic reality.
Brett Christophers dissects why wholesale electricity price cannibalization, merchant power risk, and volatile capital returns deter unsubsidized renewable energy investment without public market design.
Angeliki Menegaki curates contemporary scholarship across fossil-fuel pricing, renewable auctions, energy security, carbon markets, and macroeconomic decarbonization policy in a comprehensive reference.
Jinsoo Kim, Soo-Il Kim, and Bongseok Choi quantify macroeconomic trade-offs, industrial competitiveness, and labor reallocation costs of national net-zero energy transition pathways.
Since capital-intensive renewable, nuclear, and LNG infrastructure projects live or die by the cost of capital and discount rates, Edward Chancellor's history of interest rates illuminates the financial macro-cycles driving energy investment.
For more information about how these books relate to this course, visit:
OpenCourser.com/topic/jjtsrh/energy
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