Understanding how household practices with regard to energy usage change and how to most effectively encourage the adoption of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources at the residential scale are important issues for addressing the environmental impacts of energy use. Here, the social...

As the world’s third leading economy and a major importer of fuels, the choice of future energy paths and policies that Japan makes in the next few years will have a significant influence on the energy security of the world as a whole, and of the Northeast Asia region in particular. In this...

This article evaluates the status of current RES deployment, policies and barriers in the EU-27 member states and compares it to the required to meet the 2020 targets. The evaluation relies strongly on the quantitative deployment status and policy effectiveness indicators. European RES...

China׳s 12th Five-Year Plan addresses new challenges and sets new goals in the country׳s power sector. The structure of power generation development is to be optimised to properly balance coal transportation and power transmission. The controversy over the direction of grid transmission and...

Offshore wind power is regarded as a crucial renewable energy technology to achieve the ambitious CO2 reduction targets of the EU. However, offshore wind power is not yet competitive with traditional electricity generation technologies, so its sustained development depends on national support...

Renewable energy sources of heat offer the substantial economic, environmental and social benefits associated with renewable electricity but policy to support their expansion is considerably less advanced. The potential for applying various support instruments to renewable heat is considered...

This paper sets out to analyze Japanese renewable energy policy. A default expectation is that countries with unsolved energy problems will have more ambitious renewable energy policies (including energy efficiency). The Japanese case only partially conforms. The theoretical proposition made...

With the share of renewable energies within the electricity sector rising, improving their market and system integration is of increasing importance. By offering plant operators a premium on top of the electricity market price, premium schemes represent an option to increase the alignment of...

Many advanced industrialized countries have, in recent years, experienced a significant expansion of electricity production from renewables. Yet we know quite little about the dynamics of the underlying policychoices in this area. Using new data on adoptions and changes in feed-in tariff and...