Barriers to investment in utility-scale variable renewable electricity (VRE) generation projects

Insufficient Incentives for Investment in Electricity Generation

In theory, competitive electricity markets can provide incentives for efficient investment in generating capacity. We show that if consumers and investors are risk averse, investment is efficient only if investors in generating capacity can sign long-term contracts with consumers. Otherwise the uncovered price risk increases financing costs, reduces equilibrium investment levels, distorts techn...

Evaluating Policies to Increase Electricity Generation from Renewable Energy*

Building on a review of experience in the United States and the European Union, this article advances four main propositions concerning policies aimed at increasing electricity generation from renewable energy. First, who bears the short-run costs of programs to subsidize the generation of electricity from renewable sources varies with the organization of the electric power industry, and this v...

Successful integration of renewable electricity generation in the Gulf region

Promotion Systems for Electricity Generation from Renewable Energy Sources Revisited

To increase the share of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) different strategies are implemented in various countries. The core objective of this paper is to extract lessons learned from promotion schemes in Europe and to derive resulting recommendations for future. The major results are: (i) The success stories of RES-E in Europe in recent years has been triggered by FITs; A wel...

A Review of Large-scale Renewable Electricity Integration Studies

As a result of state renewable portfolio standards and federal tax credits, there is growing interest and investment in renewable sources of electricity in the United States and worldwide. Wind and solar energy are the fastest growing renewable sources of electric energy with U.S. wind power capacity increasing from 8.7 GW in 2005 to 33.5 GW 2009 and solar increasing from 211 MW to 603 MW over ...