Starting in the late 1980s many nations began to reform their electric power markets away from state-dominated systems to those with a greater role for market forces. In developing countries, especially, these reforms have proved challenging. Successful reform requires a complex set of institutions and complementary reforms, such as in public finance and corporate governance. State-dominated systems typically create their own powerful constituencies that block or redirect the reform process. In an earlier detailed study of reform in five key developing countries, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) found that the result of these pressures, in most cases, is a “hybrid” outcome—an electric power system that is partly reformed and partly dominated by the state 2. Almost always the first step in hybrid reform is the encouragement of private investors to build independent power projects (IPPs)—generators that are hooked to the main power system and, typically, supply electricity according to long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs).

The study traces the pattern of development of the electricity sector in India through a case study of the state of Andhra Pradesh. The main objective of the study is to assess the impact of reforms on the electricity generation industry at the state level. The state is selected as a unit of study to bring out the regional variances that may not be captured at a more aggregate or country level study. The study finds that there has been a steady improvement in the efficiency of generation from coal and gas. However, generation from clean sources like hydro has been declining. This changing generation mix has led to a steady increase in emission intensities. The carbon intensities so obtained is used for construction of a baseline for the state. The study reports an increase in the baseline intensity and explores the causes for such an increase.

Techno-economic energy models consistently project world gas demand to rise sharply in the coming decades. The most recent World Energy Outlook envisions that global gas consumption will double by 2030 and other major energy scenarios anticipate similar increases in gas demand. In the areas of highest expected demand-North America, Europe, China, and South and East Asia-the projected consumption of gas is expected to far outstrip indigenous supplies. These regions could import gas from regions where there is large surplus, but those are geographically distant. Indeed, surplus gas supplies-that is, reserves in excess of expected demand growth-are concentrated in a wide band stretching from the Middle East north to Siberia. Nearly half of the world's proven gas reserves are located in two countries-Russia and Iran-and three quarters of projected gas resources are located in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia. Delivering gas from these sources to the future demand centers will require a major expansion of inter-regional natural gas pipelines and LNG trains, in addition to significant intra-regional, cross-border gas transport infrastructures. The joint Stanford-Rice University study on the "Geopolitics of Gas" looks forward to this hypothesized gas-intensive world and explores a series of tightly interrelated questions.