The financial concept of real options has important consequences in areas of environmental and natural resources law where irreversible decisions are made in the face of uncertainty. This article argues that consideration of real options is necessary to maximize economic return from...

Green technological progress bears a strong potential to alleviate climate change, but its utilization is contingent on factors which are by nature impossible to anticipate or predict. Developing stochastic optimisation models, we explore how the decision to invest in research and development...

Employing a continuous-time real options modeling framework, this paper scrutinizes the incentives to invest in German offshore wind farms. The focus of the analysis is the mode of action of the German feed-in tariff system for offshore wind energy deployment. The numerical results reveal that...

Wind energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9,200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, northern Germany. Recently big hopes are particularly set on the offshore wind energy industry....

Offshore wind power is regarded as a crucial renewable energy technology to achieve the ambitious CO2 reduction targets of the EU. However, offshore wind power is not yet competitive with traditional electricity generation technologies, so its sustained development depends on national support...

The development of renewable energy as a major component of efforts to combat climate change serves as the impetus for the location of energy production facilities in coastal ocean space. Yet, while many coastal nations see offshore renewable energy development as an important way forward, the...

The objective of this study is to review international experience in offshore wind power development and draw on the lessons learned from the experience of different countries. To date, that experience has predominantly been limited to Europe. Significantly different regulatory and physical...