RE policy in Europe

Abstract

European Member States have made positive steps towards addressing climate change since the implementation of a renewable electricity directive in 2001. Individual countries have adopted different approaches towards meeting the RE targets arising from the directive such as introducing a feed-in tariff. Anne Held and Mario Ragwitz, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research take a closer look at European progress to date, in particular focusing on the feed-in tariff approaches employed by Spain and Germany and how these may be optimized.