Renewable electricity in Western Balkans: Support policies and current state

Abstract

The use of renewable energy sources for electricity generation in the Western Balkan countries is analyzed in this review paper. Since those countries are part of EU or intend to be, data for Western Balkan are also compared with data for EU-28. The first part of the paper presents a brief overview of main promotion mechanism for electricity generation from renewable energy sources. As a dominant support policy, the feed-in tariff is more elaborated as an incentive measure and a de?tailed overview of the amount of tariffs and quotas for dominant technologies in the Western Balkan countries is presented. Furthermore, the current state of installed capacities and annual productions of three particular renewable electricity technologies (small hydro power, wind power, and solar photovoltaic) are analyzed in detailes. Based on presented data, there is a discussion and consideration of the impact of incentive measures on the electricity market and power production from renewable sources.