Policies for the development of RES in the European Union - The Sustainability of Renewable Energy in Europe - page 62

Chapter 3
Policies for the development of RES
in the European Union

In recent years, the renewable energy sources (RES) have grown in importance in
the energy system of the EU and in the world; it is expected they will grow more
and more in importance in the near future. Since the costs of RES technologies
are still higher than the technologies derived from fossil fuels, RES are in need of
regulatory intervention. There is still uncertainty on the part of political authorities
in relation to the type of policy to better manage the evolution of technologies in
the RES market. The support mechanism for RES can be divided into price oriented
and market oriented. The focus of this chapter is to analyze the RES support mecha-
nisms among the new EU guidelines on state aid for environmental protection and
energy 2014-2020 and in particular the transition from some tools (i.e., feed-in
tariffs) to others (i.e., feed-in premium) in order to spur the development of RES.
We evaluate the “success” of such instruments in relation to adaptation to the times:
while feed-in tariffs can fulfill a variety of policy goals, feed-in premium can reach
other objectives. We evaluate the effect of RES support mechanisms in relation to
the market structure.

3.1 Learning Curves and RES

To allow an actual success of the European energy market, it is essential that bar-
riers that hinder development be known. In particular, the structural barriers are
a major obstacle, since they are related to the actual physical structure of power
grids in the individual countries of the EU. Directive 77/ 2001 /EC has intervened to
establish an obligation for member states to minimize the obstacles of any kind in
order to accelerate the deployment of RES, streamline and accelerate administrative
procedures and arrangements to ensure objective, transparent, and nondiscrimina-
tory in the face of unfavorable conditions (European Commission 2001 ).
Regarding other barriers to the development of RES, they can be divided into
four categories: