Autor: Romero Gómez Exequiel*, Mercatante Juan**
Institución: (*)UBA - CONICET-UBA - IIEP, (**)UBA - Paris School of Economics, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Año: 2025
JEL: D5, L9
Resumen:
Renewable energy technologies offer a pathway to decarbonize power systems but face challenges due to their intermittent nature. Energy storage can mitigate this issue by shifting supply across time, thereby stabilizing markets and enhancing system efficiency. This paper studies the economic and environmental impacts of deploying energy storage in Argentina, using a two-step approach: an optimal electricity dispatch model to estimate efficiency gains, and a recursive general equilibrium model to evaluate macroeconomic, sectoral, and distributional effects. We estimate that a storage capacity of 10 GW—equivalent to 22% of Argentina’s installed power capacity—reduces average electricity costs by up to 3.6%. More conservative scenarios with 2–4 GW of storage still yield efficiency gains of 2%. In a low risk scenario, these gains translate into a GDP increases by 1.1 to 2.17 percentage points over a decade, while fiscal revenue rises, and welfare improves across all income groups, particularly among lower-income households. however, electrification effects associated with energy storage may moderate the increase in fiscal revenues and the decrease in unemployment. GHG emissions fall by 2.8–5.6 percentage points, though electrification partially offsets these gains due to the existing fossil-based electricity mix. Sectoral analysis reports that Construction, Machinery, and Non-Metallic Minerals benefit the most, while fossil fuel and primary sectors lose competitiveness. Risky environments preserves the qualitative results but presents lower magnitudes.