on RES-E growth.

This assessment is concerned with the effects of electricity market liberalisation on the use of renewable energy sources for electricity production in the EU. Electricity liberalisation is understood in broad terms, including the creation of the single market for electricity2, as well as the liberalisations of RES-E promotion mechanisms that have taken place at the national level, sometimes in direct conjunction with electricity liberalisation, sometimes as a separate initiative.3 As RES-E technologies are mostly not cost-competitive against traditional technologies for electricity production, liberalisation might be expected to be less favourable to RES-E technologies than to traditional technologies. Indeed, in a completely liberal market, little new RES-E might be produced at all, except for consumers with special taste for green electricity. Member states have a strong tradition, however, of promoting RES-E. Both before and after liberalisation, member states have chosen to give RES-E some kind of favourable treatment. Instruments are available for this purpose in regulated as well as liberal regimes, so the transition from one regime to the other need not be detrimental to RES-E deployment