Investments In Renewable Energy Technologies Research Articles

RE in America: The Call for Phase II

The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) is promoting a new public policy framework called ‘Phase II’ for renewable energy in America. This is the first big break with the ‘research, development and demonstration’ program that was started in 1977 by then-President Jimmy Carter when he created the US Department of Energy. But far from saying that RD&D is over, ACORE is actually calling for RD&D budgets to increase by 3 or 4-fold, to handle the needed support for a ‘utilization’ strategy for the US, similar to what is occurring today in Germany and Japan. There is a wide array of technology now available to address the nation's energy challenges. It is time to declare success on America's 30-year, $14 billion investment in renewable energy technologies, and chart a new course for widespread deployment - real utilization of renewable energy in every corner of the American economy. Michael T. Eckhart reports

The Kyoto mechanisms and the prospects for renewable energy technologies

The Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Change Convention sets out legally binding emission targets and timetables for developed countries. In order to ease compliance, it allows countries to achieve their emission targets through the ‘Kyoto Mechanisms’. These mechanisms comprise International Emissions Trading (ET), Joint Implementation (JI), and a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This paper analyses the capacity of the proposed mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol to promote investment in renewable energy technologies (RETs). Analysis of abatement costing studies indicates that the increasing use of renewable energy tends to be a higher cost option compared with other greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement technologies. This finding, however, does not make RETs unattractive for GHG mitigation as such because, apart from their vast technical potential to reduce GHG emissions, RETs have great capacity to contribute to other aspects of sustainable development. The extent of investment into renewable energy induced by the Kyoto mechanisms will depend on whether the rules and guidelines that are to be developed in the coming years will explicitly support renewables. The Kyoto mechanisms could be instrumental in leading to significant investment into these resources if rules are defined appropriately.

Contingent Valuation and Real Economic Commitments: Evidence from Electric Utility Green Pricing Programmes

This paper presents the findings of two 'green pricing' studies conducted to evaluate public support of utilities' investments in renewable energy technologies. These studies compared hypothetical WTP statements with actual payment commitments. The results of these studies indicate that the CVM can be an accurate indicator of an individual's WTP, but that it is an unreliable predictor of which individuals will actually pay. This has important implications for aggregating mean WTP estimates of the value of environmental benefits. It also suggests that market simulations can be useful for predicting programme participation rates when voluntary donations are used as a payment vehicle.