Effectiveness of policy measures in transforming the energy system

✍ Scribed by P.D. Lund

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 272 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0301-4215
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2006.01.008

✦ Synopsis

The effectiveness of public policy measures in creating energy impacts were investigated through 20 policy cases on renewable energy and efficient energy use. The policies were grouped into subsidy-type and catalyzing measures based on the use of the public financial resources. The policy cost of subsidies ranged from 1 h/MWh up to over 100 h/MWh, the feed-in tariffs being clearly the most expensive choice. The public measures that strive for catalyzing market breakthroughs lie in the range 0.1-1 h/MWh, but some business driven and procurement type measures could come down to even 0.01 h/MWh. The policy costs observed could decrease by 25-60% if accounting for lagging energy impacts. The better policy efficiency of catalytic measures is most likely due to a stronger market and business sensitiveness, understanding of market needs, and focusing more on the end-use sector with active stakeholder involvement. The magnitude of the energy impacts were in average larger from the subsidy instruments but a few end-use technologies linked to catalytic measures reached even higher effects due to the strong market penetration achieved.