Cost of renewable energies have dropped, approaching wholesale power price levels. As a result, the role of renewable energy policy design is shifting - from covering incremental costs towards facilitating risk-hedging. An analytical model of the financing structure of renewable investment...

Power systems with increasing shares of wind and solar power generation have higher capital and lower operational costs than traditional technologies. This increases the importance of the cost of finance for total system cost. We quantify how renewable policy design can influence cost of finance...

Germany changed renewable remuneration for wind power from a fixed Feed-In Tariff (FIT) to a floating Market Premium Scheme (MPS) in 2012. One aim of this adjustment was to better align the supply of generated wind electricity with the demand for it, e.g. through more system-friendly wind...

With the expansion of onshore wind power, countries increasingly consider the introduction of minimum distance regulations between wind turbines to nearby residential areas, to increase public acceptance. In 2014, the German federal state of Bavaria introduced a minimum distance regulation that...

The transition towards low-carbon economies requires massive investments into renewable energies, which are commonly supported through regulatory frameworks. Yet, governments can have incentives - and the ability - to deviate from previously-announced support once those investments have been...

Several countries and regions have introduced mandatory minimum distances of wind turbines to nearby residential areas, in order to increase public acceptance of wind power. Germany’s largest federal state Bavaria introduced such separation distances of ten times the height of new wind...

EU Member States increase deployment of intermittent renewable energy sources to deliver the 20% renewable target formulated in the European Renewables Directive of 2008. To incorporate these intermittent sources, a power market needs to be flexible enough to accommodate short-term forecasts and...

In the Copenhagen Accord of December 2009, developed countries agreed to provide start-up finance for adaptation in developing countries and expressed the ambition to scale this up to $100 billion per year by 2020. The financial mechanisms to deliver this support have to be tailored to country...

In the European Emission Trading scheme the supply of allowances exceeds emissions - cumulating, according to our estimates, in a surplus of 2.7 billion tonnes by 2013/2014. We find that initially the surplus was acquired by power companies so as to hedge future carbon costs. As the surplus...

Integrating large quantities of supply-driven renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the...