Research

Assessing the Cost of Industrial Decarbonization
G. Glenk, R. Meier, and S. Reichelstein, 2024.
Companies in various industries are under growing pressure to assess the costs of decarbonizing their operations. This paper develops a generic abatement cost concept to identify the cost-efficient combination of technological and operational changes firms would need to implement to drastically reduce emissions from current production processes. 

Decision-Useful Carbon Information
G. Glenk, 2024.
Current carbon accounting practices often obscure firms' actual emissions and abatement progress. This paper builds on financial accounting standards to propose how to characterize the quality of reported emissions and how companies should account for their emissions to achieve a certain reporting quality.

Corporate Carbon Accounting: Current Practices and Opportunities for Research
G. Glenk. Foundations and Trends in Accounting, forthcoming.
This article reviews current practices in corporate carbon accounting and highlights opportunities for future research.

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency
G. Glenk, P. Holler, and S. Reichelstein. Energy & Environmental Science, 2023, 16, 6058-6070.
This paper examines the cost and efficiency dynamics of three prevalent Power-to-Gas technologies. Our results suggest that electrolytic hydrogen production costs will approach but not reach the $1.0/kg cost target set by the U.S. Department of Energy for 2030.

Reversible Power-to-Gas Systems for Energy Conversion and Storage
G. Glenk and S. Reichelstein. Nature Communications, 2022, 13, 2010.
Reversible Power-to-Gas systems can convert electricity to hydrogen during ample and inexpensive power supply and operate in reverse to supply electricity when power is relatively scarce. We show that such systems can already be economically viable relative to current hydrogen prices in the context of the German and Texas electricity markets.

The Economic Dynamics of Competing Power Generation Sources
G. Glenk and S. Reichelstein. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022, 168, 112758.
Competing power generation sources have experienced considerable shifts in both their revenue potential and their costs in recent years. Here we introduce the concept of Levelized Profit Margins (LPM) to capture the changing unit economics of both intermittent and dispatchable generation technologies.

Cost Dynamics of Clean Energy Technologies
G. Glenk, R. Meier, and S. Reichelstein. Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, 2021, 73, 179-206, solicited.
The pace of the global decarbonization process is widely believed to hinge on the rate of cost improvements for clean energy technologies. This paper adopts the classical learning-by-doing framework of Wright (1936) to examine the learning curves for solar photovoltaic modules, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries, and electrolyzers. 

Transitioning to Clean Energy Transportation Services: Life-cycle Cost Analysis for Vehicle Fleets
S. Comello, G. Glenk, and S. Reichelstein. Applied Energy, 2021, 285, 116408.
Comprehensive global decarbonization requires that transportation services cease to rely on fossil fuels for power generation. This paper develops a generic, time-driven life-cycle cost model for mobility services to assess the emergence of clean energy transportation services.

Synergistic Value in Vertically Integrated Power-to-Gas Energy Systems
G. Glenk and S. Reichelstein. Production and Operations Management, 2020, 29(3), pp. 526-546.
This study analyzes vertically integrated energy systems, focusing on the trade-off between operational gains and capacity investment costs under price and output volatility of intermediate products. Calibrating the model for Germany and Texas, we find that synergistic investment value can emerge in systems combining wind energy with Power-to-Gas hydrogen production, where vertical integration offsets individual subsystem losses when optimally sized.

Economics of Converting Renewable Power to Hydrogen
G. Glenk and S. Reichelstein, Nature Energy, 2019, 4, pp. 216-222.
The recent sharp decline in the cost of renewable energy suggests that producing hydrogen from renewable power might become more economical. Here we examine this alternative from the perspective of an investor who considers a hybrid energy system that combines renewable power with an efficiently sized power-to-gas facility.