The importance of comprehensiveness in renewable electricity and energy-efficiency policy

By Benjamin Sovacool. 2009

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Based on extensive research interviews and supplemented with a review of the academic literature, this article assesses the best way to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. It begins by briefly laying out why government intervention is needed, and then details the four most favored policy mechanisms identified by participants: eliminating subsidies for conventional and mature electricity technologies, pricing electricity accurately, passing a national feed-in tariff, and implementing a nationwide systems benefit fund to raise public awareness, protect lower income households, and administer demand side management programs. Drawing mostly from case studies in the United States, the article also discusses why these policy mechanisms must be implemented comprehensively, not individually, if the barriers to renewables and energy efficiency are to be overcome.

Subfields: Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0889a95df1b0cdd24490859b8ee95e7ab07d6a5

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In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

How do policies mobilize private finance for renewable energy?—A systematic review with an investor perspective (2019, background): “Grid codes and grid preference, one of the design features of other instruments such as FITs, have proven to be important for reducing risks [27,85,137].”
The need for comprehensive and well targeted instrument mixes to stimulate energy transitions: The case of energy efficiency policy (2017, unknown): “The comprehensiveness of policies has long been argued to be a relevant success factor of environmental and energy policies (Sovacool 2009; Walls and Palmer 2001).”
Do policy mix characteristics matter for low-carbon innovation? A survey-based exploration of renewable power generation technologies in Germany (2018, background): “Perhaps comprehensiveness is more important for adoption decisions than for innovation decisions (Reichardt and Rogge, 2016; Sovacool, 2009).”
Reducing energy demand through low carbon innovation: A sociotechnical transitions perspective and thirteen research debates (2018, background): “We agree with Sovacool [163] and Kivimaa and Kern [164] about the need for comprehensive policies rather than individual, isolated mechanisms that tend to operate in a non-predictable and non-synergetic matter.”
Conceptualizing the acceptance of wind and solar electricity (2012, background): “Over the course of 2006 to 2009, one of the authors conducted 109 research interviews, 58 in the United States as part of the author’s dissertation, another 23 as part of a fact finding mission to Denmark, and 28 on a similar fact finding mission to Germany [4–6].”
Policy packaging or policy patching? The development of complex energy efficiency policy mixes (2017, background): “Given the identified energy efficiency gap, a range of policy instruments have been introduced in many countries to help increase energy efficiency [64].”
Policy mixes for sustainability transitions: An extended concept and framework for analysis (2016, background): “The comprehensiveness of this instrument mix is determined by the degree to which the instrument mix addresses all market, system and institutional failures, including barriers and bottlenecks (Lehmann, 2012; Sorrell, 2004; Sovacool, 2009; Weber and Rohracher, 2012).”