EUROPE TAKES THE CHALLENGE – THE WAY FORWARD IN PROMOTING RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY

Energy policy is the main driver for the enhanced deployment of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) as observed in several countries worldwide. Now, to the first time in Europe, binding targets for renewable energy sources (RES), regardless the energy sector, have been set – 20 % RES up to 2020 indicates a huge future challenge for upcoming years. Despite, efforts have to be taken in all three energy sectors, the electricity sector will play a major role in achieving the overall target. Hereby, efficient and effective support measures have to be implemented in order to accompany a strong increase in the share of RES-E with low transfer costs for the society. Several policy options will be discussed with respect to their effectiveness – the development of RES-E – and their efficiency – the associated costs to the development of RES-E1. Besides the Feed-In Tariffs and the quota systems based on Tradable Green Certificates (TGC), some flexibility mechanism are needed in order to support Member States with moderate RES potentials achieving their RES targets up to 2020. Since all these promotion schemes show different reaction in terms of RES deployment as well as the associated costs, the core objective of this paper is to depict the pros and cons of these policy design options with respect to their impact on future growth of RES and the corresponding costs, and finally draw recommendations for policy makers. METHOD