Carbon Lock-Out: Advancing Renewable Energy Policy in Europe

By P. Lehmann, Felix Creutzig, M. Ehlers, N. Friedrichsen, Clemens Heuson, Lion Hirth, R. Pietzcker. 2012

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As part of its climate strategy, the EU aims at increasing the share of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) in overall electricity generation. Attaining this target poses a considerable challenge as the electricity sector is “locked” into a carbon-intensive system, which hampers the adoption of RES-E technologies. Electricity generation, transmission and distribution grids as well as storage and demand response are subject to important path dependences, which put existing, non-renewable energy sources at an advantage. This paper examines how an EU framework for RES-E support policies should be designed to facilitate a carbon lock-out. For this purpose, we specify the major technological, economic and institutional barriers to RES-E. For each of the barriers, a policy review is carried out which assesses the performance of existing policy instruments and identifies needs for reform. The review reveals several shortcomings: while policies targeting generation are widely in place, measures to address barriers associated with electricity grids, storage and demand are still in their infancy and have to be extended. Moreover, the implementation of policies has been fragmented across EU Member States. In this respect, national policies should be embedded into an integrated EU-wide planning of the RES-E system with overarching energy scenarios and partially harmonized policy rules.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Pollution, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d61fc60c6b17ef60e477c91975ac401017737583

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Citations in the corpus

Avoiding Carbon Lock-In: Policy Options for Advancing Structural Change (2015, background): “Both empirical evidence and theoretical argument suggest that an obstacle to this transformation is the possibility of a carbon lock-in (Unruh, 2000; Schmidt &Marschinski, 2009; Davis et al., 2010; Lehmann et al., 2012): the economy remains in an equilibrium in which carbon-intensive (“dirty”) techn”
Using the sun to decarbonize the power sector: The economic potential of photovoltaics and concentrating solar power ☆ (2014, background): “Also, the scalability enables local ownership, which can be a more decisive factor for technology choice than pure cost advantage [51], especially if residential PV electricity is valued at retail instead of wholesale electricity costs (“grid parity” or “socket parity”, [52], [53]).”
Do natural resources impede renewable energy production in the EU? A mixed-methods analysis (2019, unknown): “In addition, they supply critical goods to the economy, provide employment, and can be major actors in infrastructure provision (Harvey and Pilgrim, 2014; Lehmann et al., 2012).”
Undesired reinforcement of harmful ‘self-evident truths’ concerning the implementation of wind power (2012, background): “Analysis and change of institutions is crucial in overcoming deadlocks in the development of new systems, known as ‘institutional lock-in’ in innovation theory (Unruh, 2002; Lehmann et al., 2012).”