Assessing the effectiveness of renewable-specific policies on global renewable capacities

Many countries have enacted recent laws and regulations designed to stimulate production of electricity capacity from renewables within their borders. While early policy adopters were mostly developed countries, the number of developing countries adopting renewable-specific policies has expanded dramatically in the past decade. Given that the increase in future energy demand will be driven by the developing world, knowing what predicts policy adoption and whether these policies actually increase renewable capacity is crucial to understanding the future global energy mix and its emissions. Literature investigating the effectiveness of policies on renewable energy production primarily focuses on the United States and Europe. Little empirical analysis exists on the effect of policies on renewable energies in a global context. The goals of this thesis are twofold: first, to determine the characteristics of countries that predict the decision to adopt renewable-specific policies; second, to estimate the impact of feed-in tariffs and renewable portfolio standards on global renewable energy capacities. The renewables studied include biomass, geothermal, hydro (>10 MW), small hydro (