Renewable Electricity in the EU: Are We Meeting the Targets?

Abstract

This paper analyses differences in the degree to which European Union countries have achieved the renewable electricity (RES-E) targets set by the European Commission for each Member State for 2010. After defining an RES-E target achievement (TA) indicator, both conventional and novel techniques are used to examine the main features of its distribution, including the degree of inequality, external shape and intra-distribution dynamics, for the 1996–2006 time period. The analysis demonstrates that disparities in TA have been strongly reduced and that intra-distribution mobility was very high.

Notes

Following the EU enlargement to 25 countries in 2004, national targets for new Member States (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia) were specified in an Amending Act entered into force on 1 May 2004.

Given the importance of reducing consumption of energy in transport and increasing energy efficiency, Directive 2009/28/EC also establishes a 10% minimum target to be achieved by all Member States for the share of biofuels in transport petrol and diesel consumption.

Although less extended, other promotion schemes include tenders and energy tax exemptions. For further details, see Coenraads and Voogt (2006) and Reiche and Bechberger (2004).

It has to be pointed out that the analysis of potential perverse effects of guaranteed prices, such as a lack of incentives to work cost-efficiently and distortion of pricing competition among different electricity sources, is a topic that has attracted a lot of attention (see, for instance, Geller, 2003; Lipp, 2007).

Further growth of RES-E has been hindered in some European countries, such as Spain, Portugal and the UK, by the fact that local grids need to be strengthened (Reiche & Bechberger, 2004)

To do that, the bandwidth is chosen following Silverman's rule of thumb (Silverman, 1986).

For a thorough analysis of the differences between the conventional approaches and the one used in this paper, see Maza et al. (2010).

Regarding this issue, the impact of technical change on the diffusion of various emerging renewable energy technologies is examined by Kumbaroğlu et al. (2008).