This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany's Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany's support scheme subsidizes renewable energy...

Recent research suggests that households increase their electricity consumption in the aftermath of installing photovoltaic (PV) panels, a behavioral change commonly referred to as the solar rebound. Drawing on panel data originating from the German Residential Energy Consumption Survey (GRECS),...

Using detailed data originating from several hundred households of the German Residential Energy Survey (GRECS), this paper empirically investigates the returns on investment in home-equipped photovoltaics (PV) installations. We find that these returns were particularly high in the years 2009 to...

Recent research suggests that households would increase their electricity consumption in the aftermath of installing photovoltaics (PV) panels, a behavioral change commonly referred to as the solar rebound. Drawing on panel data originating from the German Residential Energy Consumption Survey...

This article demonstrates that the large feed-in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in Germany constitute a subsidization regime that, if extended to 2020, threatens to reach a level comparable to that of German hard coal production, a notoriously outstanding example of misguided...