assessing the regional economic impacts of renewable energy sources a literature review abstract the transition of the global energy system is one of the main trends that offers opportunities as well as challenges for the economy most literature evaluates the impact of that transition at a national level that view is broadened towards a regional scale due to the lower energy density of many renewable energy sources renewable energy generation will be more decentralised leading to potentially significant changes in the regional economy when transitioning to a renewable energy system in this paper the current literature and methods of assessing regional economic impacts of a transition to renewable energy generation is reviewed the findings suggest an overall need to clearly define the topics such as technologies that are assessed and the evaluated time period a guideline for a regional impact assessment is provided focusing on the suitability of applied impact assessment methods employment ratios supply chain analyses input output models and computable general equilibrium models

regional electricity generation and employment in uk regions abstractregional electricity generation and employment in uk regions regional studies a number of electricity generation technologies reduce carbon emissions but with different economic and employment effects partly consequent on how far generation capacity supports regional supply chains in devolved regions these issues are important because of the role given to renewable electricity generation in economic development strategies this paper analyses the regional employment supported by different electricity generation technologies illustrating trade offs between generation scale and employment intensity and shows that the regional employment supported under all pathways is modest compared with the regional economic scale the policy implications are investigated

will the locals benefit the effect of wind power investments on rural wages abstract an important and poorly understood question when communities consider wind power investments is whether the local population will benefit financially i examine the effect of wind power investment on wages in rural counties in the us i combine quarterly panel data on wages with data on all wind power plant investments larger than 1 megawatt mw using a bayesian multilevel model estimated by mcmc i estimate a significant positive effect with a magnitude consistent with a 2 permanent increase in wages following an investment in a large wind farm of 400 mw however this effect has large geographic and socioeconomic variation counties with low employment tend to see little impact on wages from wind power potentially because slack in the labor market prevents wages from rising from a policy perspective these results are most relevant for local regulators and planners who seek to balance the benefits and costs of wind farms to the community this research indicates that wind farms can provide on average a modest boost to local wages with some areas seeing an out sized effect

effects of renewable energy sector development on electricity consumption growth nexus in the european union abstract the aim of this study is to assess the effect of renewable energy sector development on the relationships between electricity consumption and economic growth in the european union countries in the period between 1995 and 2015 a panel vector autoregressive model is used for testing granger causality and estimating impulse response functions the results indicate that the relationships between economic growth and electricity consumption depend on the level of renewable energy sector development the greater the share of the renewable energy sector in the economy is the more noticeable the mutual dependence between the economic growth and renewable electricity consumption is in countries with relatively well developed renewable energy sectors renewable electricity consumption boosts the economy and vice versa in the remaining countries economic growth and electricity consumption are independent empirical findings suggest that policymakers should develop strategies to implement clean energy policy aimed at stimulating the development of the renewable energy sector to support economic growth

macroeconomic impact of the german energy transition and its distribution by sectors and regions abstract macroeconomic impacts such as changes in economic structures and employment are very important when evaluating the energy transition in societal terms we employ a macroeconomic model that accounts for regional economic and sectoral features the model results show how the overall positive net impacts of the energy transition in germany energy efficiency and renewable energies on economic growth and employment up to 2030 are distributed across sectors and regions the biggest relative increases in value added occur in construction real estate and electricity generation the biggest decrease is in mining of lignite significant effects mainly result from changes in the heat and transport sectors while the transition in the electricity sector entails smaller impacts the latter are however relevant to the regional distribution the model results suggest that especially northern and eastern german federal states will benefit economically from the energy transition because they offer attractive locations for investments at the same time these states are less affected by decreasing conventional energy generation moreover the impact of rising electricity prices is less negative here than in the other federal states because of their lower electricity intensity in production in summary the energy transition represents an opportunity for these regions to strengthen their economies

eu renewable energy support policy faith or facts the recent eu commission proposal for promoting the supply of power from renewable energy sources was originally based on a pan european harmonised tradable green certificate tgc scheme we suggest on the basis of a multi disciplinary analysis that a pan eu tgc system is not the way forward for europe it is vital that the commission and the majority of member states avoids implementation of such policy designs put forward by a coalition of vested interests they should instead look at and act upon the available evidence from those countries that have experimented with tgcs e g flanders uk and sweden and design policies that stand a better chance of meeting the criteria of effectiveness efficiency and equity in particular the policies must enable eu to meet the immense innovation industrialisation challenge by inducing the development of a capital goods industry that can eventually diffuse a broad range of technologies that use renewable energy sources only then we can acquire an ability to implement an industrial revolution in the energy system in a way that broadly meets the criteria of effectiveness and dynamic efficiency

endogenous technological change and emissions the case of the german steel industry abstract the paper starts from the observation that innovation and technical progress are only portrayed superficially in the predominant environmental economic top down models and that the assumption of perfect factor substitution does not correctly mirror actual production conditions in many energy intensive production sectors bottom up models on the other hand neglect macroeconomic interdependencies between the modelled sector and the general economy this paper presents a new modelling approach in an integrated bottom up top down approach based on the example of crude steel production in germany it is demonstrated how technological progress can be portrayed as process related and policy induced and how the technology choice between limitational processes can be explicitly modelled and implemented in the econometric input output model panta rhei the new modelling approach presented permits a process specific analysis of the impacts of changed frame conditions the effects of which on the choice of technology on the one hand and the technological progress on the other can be described endogenous to the model these features are demonstrated in a co2 tax simulation results show that policy induced technological change is besides a switch in production processes the major source of co2 reduction for the steel sector

employment impacts of solar energy in turkey abstract solar energy is considered a key source for the future not only for turkey also for all of the world therefore the development and usage of solar energy technologies are increasingly becoming vital for sustainable economic development the main objective of this study is investigating the employment effects of solar energy industry in turkey some independent reports and studies which analyze the economic and employment impacts of solar energy industry in the world have been reviewed a wide range of methods have been used in those studies in order to calculate and to predict the employment effects using the capacity targets of the photovoltaic pv and concentrated solar power csp plants in the solar roadmap of turkey the prediction of the direct and indirect employment impacts to turkey s economy is possible as a result solar energy in turkey would be the primary source of energy demand and would have a big employment effects on the economics that can only be achieved with the support of governmental feed in tariff policies of solar energy and by increasing research development funds

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

the economic impacts of high wind penetration scenarios in the united states abstract the u s electric sector is experiencing rapid increases in renewable generation with an expectation of continued growth we examine the impacts of increased wind electricity on the u s economy using a hybrid model that links a detailed electric sector model the national renewable energy laboratory s regional energy deployment system reeds with a computable general equilibrium model of the u s economy the massachusetts institute of technology s u s regional energy policy usrep model increasing wind capacity displaces fossil fuels for electricity generation which depresses fossil fuel prices and reduces economy wide co2 emissions competitive wind deployment in the reference scenario achieves these outcomes with lower electricity prices than a scenario with wind capacity fixed at 2016 levels lower fossil fuel and electricity prices benefit low income households but the dominant economic impacts are driven by increased electric sector investment and capital returns which primarily benefit those with higher incomes overall cost competitive wind provides benefits to the u s economy that are initially low but rise beyond 2030 to achieve cumulative welfare and gdp improvements of 110 and 111 billion through 2050 prescribing additional wind deployment meeting 35 of demand by 2050 increases post 2030 electricity prices but not more so than keeping wind capacity fixed at 2016 levels the negative effect of higher prices on welfare however is outweighed by higher returns from the additional wind investment while these changes favor higher income classes we find economy wide benefits through 2040 these benefits diminish by 2050 but the cumulative additional gains through 2050 beyond the reference case are 192 billion in welfare and 150 billion in gdp

a novel approach for analyzing the effectiveness of the r d capital for resource conservation comparative study on germany and uk electricity sectors abstract limited access to energy resources and increasing demand for mitigation of the environmental impacts have necessitated higher production efficiencies therefore the promotion of r d activities has been one of the main parts of national energy policies in this research work two methods are used for assessing the effectiveness of the r d capital on resource conservation first by developing the resource included knowledge production function of the energy sector and second through direct assessment of the functionality of resource productivity from r d capital based on official data provided by national statistical centers a comparative analysis has been conducted to examine the effectiveness of r d in the electricity generation sectors in the united kingdom and germany in these analyses non renewable exergy cost is used as an index of resource depletion and environmental burden it is shown that due to non economic energy transition policies the inclusion of the r d investment does not result in statistically meaningful elasticity of production for the r d capital however according to the second method it is shown that the r d investment in the united kingdom has been more effective in resource conservation than in germany possible reasons for such differences are discussed and recommendations for further investigations are presented

economic effects of renewable energy expansion a model based analysis for germany abstract the increasing utilization of renewable energy sources res is a major energy policy strategy in many countries worldwide germany is a forerunner in the deployment of res and has ambitious goals for the future the support and use of renewables affects the economy it creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable energy facilities but comes with costs related to supporting its deployment this paper analyses and quantifies the net balance of economic effects associated with renewable energy deployment in germany until 2030 to this end we use a novel model the sectoral energy economic econometric model this is an econometric multi country model which for germany contains a detailed representation of industries including 14 renewable energy technology sectors our results show that renewable energy expansion can be achieved without compromising growth or employment the analysis reveals a positive net effect on economic growth in germany net employment effects are small but also positive their size depends strongly on labour market conditions and policies results at the industry level indicate the size and direction of the need for restructuring across the sectors of the germany economy

does energy policy hurt international competitiveness of firms a comparative study for germany switzerland and austria this paper investigates the impact of energy policies on the export performance of firms there has been a long policy debate on potentially negative impacts of cost increasing energy policies on international competitiveness we use firm level data from three countries with similar industry structure but different energy policies germany switzerland and austria we rely on firm manager assessments on the relevance of energy policy in terms of taxes regulations standards subsidies and demand stimulation for their firm operation and link data on the adoption and development of new energy technologies regression analyses and matching approaches both show very few impacts of energy policy on export performance suggesting that either policy impacts on firms cost are negligible in the period of study 2012 to 2014 or likely negative impacts are balanced by the adoption of new technology

sustainable energy development in austria until 2020 insights from applying the integrated model e3 at this paper reports on the austrian research project renewable energy in austria modeling possible development trends until 2020 the project investigated possible economic and ecological effects of a substantially increased use of renewable energy sources in austria together with stakeholders and experts three different scenarios were defined specifying possible development trends for renewable energy in austria the scenarios were simulated for the period 2006 2020 using the integrated environment energy economy model e3 at the modeling results indicate that increasing the share of renewable energy sources in total energy use is an important but insufficient step towards achieving a sustainable energy system in austria a substantial increase in energy efficiency and a reduction of residential energy consumption also form important cornerstones of a sustainable energy policy

a retrospective analysis of benefits and impacts of u s renewable portfolio standards abstract as states consider revising or developing renewable portfolio standards rps they are evaluating policy costs benefits and other impacts we present the first u s national level assessment of state rps program benefits and impacts focusing on new renewable electricity resources used to meet rps compliance obligations in 2013 in our central case scenario reductions in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from displaced fossil fuel generated electricity resulted in 2 2 billion of global benefits health and environmental benefits from reductions in criteria air pollutants sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxides and particulate matter 2 5 were even greater estimated at 5 2 billion in the central case further benefits accrued in the form of reductions in water withdrawals and consumption for power generation finally although best considered resource transfers rather than net societal benefits new renewable electricity generation used for rps compliance in 2013 also supported nearly 200 000 u s based gross jobs and reduced wholesale electricity prices and natural gas prices saving consumers a combined 1 3 4 9 billion in total the estimated benefits and impacts well exceed previous estimates of rps compliance costs

the expansion of renewable energies and employment effects in germany the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy is a high priority of the european union as well of its member states the german government wants to increase the share of renewable energies from about 5 to 12 by 2010 to attain this goal the german government has introduced compulsory compensation schemes for electricity produced from renewable energy fed into the public grid this paper examines the economic impact of this policy employing an econometric model particular emphasis was given to employment effects in general we distinguish two effects 1 an expansive effect resulting from additional investments and 2 a contractive effect resulting from an increase in the production cost of power the first effect will dominate during the first years and lead to an increase in employment of approximately 33 000 new jobs however the contractive effect will offset these gains and lead to a slightly negative employment balance by 2010

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

green jobs economic impacts of renewable energy in germany abstract the labor market implications of large investment into renewable energy re are analyzed in this text although a growing re industry can be observed in germany the overall effect of large increases of re based electricity and heat generating technologies on the german economy require a careful model based analysis the applied model panta rhei has been used among others to evaluate the german energy concept in 2010 it takes positive and negative impacts of re into account the paper shows the overall effects under different assumptions for fossil fuel prices domestic installations and international trade the results are sensitive to assumptions on the development of re world markets and german exports to these markets almost all of these scenarios exhibit positive net employment effects under medium assumptions net employment of re expansion will reach around 150 thousand in 2030 only with assumptions for german re exports below today s level net impacts are slightly negative gross employment will increase from 340 thousand in 2009 to between 500 and 600 thousand in 2030

modelling strategy and net employment effects of renewable energy and energy efficiency a meta regression by conducting a meta analysis of the empirical literature on the net employment effects of renewable energy we explore the extent to which the reported net employment effects are driven by the applied methodology we find that the reported conclusions on net employment effects are to a large extent driven by the methodology that is applied where computable general equilibrium cge and i o methods that include induced effects and studies that consider only the near future in their study period up to 2020 are generally less optimistic about net employment creation in the wake of the energy transition in addition we found that policy reports have a greater tendency to report a positive net employment effect than academic studies

habit seasonality and time aggregation in consumer behaviour habitual behaviour in consumer demand analysis is generally portrayed via some form of a lagged dependent variable model the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications for habit behaviour of time aggregation this is done by specifying both habit and seasonal components in demand relations the results indicate that much of what has traditionally been identified as habitual behaviour is in fact seasonal effects

the rocky road to reform trade industrial financial and agricultural strategies abstract this paper reviews recent issues of economic reform in developing countries based on studies undertaken for the world institute for development economics research wider emphasis is placed on a novel 3 gap adjustment model for savings investment trade and fiscal limitations at the macro level and a distinction between allocative and productive efficiency microeconomically issues of stabilization and adjustment and trade industrial policy financial reform privatization market deregulation and the agrarian question are discussed

endogenous technological change and the policy mix in renewable power generation abstract this paper introduces the renewable power generation module which complements large scale macro econometric input output models by introducing technological change endogenously into the model so far technological change in renewable power generation technologies is either set exogenously autonomous energy improving technological change or price induced in economic models introducing endogenous technological change is necessary to adequately analyze not only the direct effects but also the indirect effects on important macro economic indicators such as growth employment welfare and trade as well as their feedback to the electricity sector the development of pv module and wind turbine prices is modeled using learning curves at the global scale i e depending on global capacity installed of each of these technologies national capacity additions in turn depend on global prices national policies and economic development while demand pull policies enhance capacity installations technology push policies do not seem to have a significant direct influence the empirical results confirm the overshooting of pv installations in germany which can be slowed down by introducing degression of feed in tariffs over time

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

do national level policies to promote low carbon technology deployment pay off for the investor countries abstract national level policies to promote deployment of low carbon technologies have been suggested and used as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the context of international climate change mitigation the long term benefits of such policies in the context of international climate change mitigation depend on their effects on near term emissions abatement and resultant long term technological change that will reduce abatement costs of achieving global mitigation goals there is also an argument that these policies might foster early mover advantages in international low carbon technology markets we first review the factors that could influence such benefits and use a global integrated assessment model to present an illustrative example to understand the potential magnitude of these benefits we find that reductions in long term abatement costs might not provide sufficient incentives to justify policies to promote the deployment of low carbon technologies in particular the emerging higher risk and currently expensive alternatives we also find that early mover advantages can potentially provide substantial benefits but only if these advantages are both strong and persistent our results suggest a role for international cooperation in low carbon technology deployment to address the existence of free riding opportunities in the context of global climate change mitigation

economic welfare impacts from renewable energy consumption the china experience over the last years renewable energy sources have increased their share on electricity generation of china due to environmental and security of supply concerns in this work author assesses the role of both the amount and share of renewable energy consumption in economic welfare using cobb douglas type production functions this assessment is carried out by multivariate ols and spss software for china from 1978 to 2008 results indicate that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption rec increases real gdp by 0 120 gdp per capita by 0 162 per capita annual income of rural households by 0 444 and per capita annual income of urban households by 0 368 respectively the impact of renewable energy consumption share srec on economic welfare is insignificant and an increasing share of rec negatively affects economic welfare growth to a certain extent in this paper the cost structural demand accounting mechanism and policy reasons of renewable energy development are interpreted marginal effects analysis show that the shape of sound and robust renewable energy institutions and policies would matter for increasing the standards of economic welfare in the context of speeding up renewable energy development and increasing share of renewable energy consumption especially the goal oriented policy refinement should be addressed efficiently in improvement households income while increasing share of renewable energy consumption c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

renewable energy deployment in europe up to 2030 and the aim of a triple dividend abstract renewable energy sources res play a key role in the european commission s 2030 climate and energy framework which aims for a low carbon economy that increases the security of the eu s energy supplies and creates new opportunities for growth and jobs among other benefits we assess whether renewable energy deployment in europe can provide this triple dividend at which ambition levels of 2030 res targets and what the role of the support policy scheme for electricity is we apply two types of models a detailed techno economic sector model of the deployment of res and two macroeconomic models our findings suggest that up to 2030 our triple dividend hypothesis holds even under a declining role of europe as technology provider for the rest of the world additional emission reductions of up to 1040 mt co 2 as compared to a baseline scenario in 2030 are possible demand for fossil fuels can likewise be reduced due to the deployment of renewable energy sources by up to 150 mtoe more ambiguous is the order of magnitude of the effects on gdp and employment which differs noticeably depending on the economic theory applied in the different models nevertheless both models predict slightly higher gdp and employment in 2030 when implementing ambitious res targets

the evolution of green jobs in scotland a hybrid approach in support of its ambitious target to reduce co2 emissions the scottish government is aiming to have the equivalent of 100 of scottish electricity consumption generated from renewable sources by 2020 this is at least in part motivated by an expectation of subsequent employment growth in low carbon and renewable energy technologies however there is no official data source to track employment in these areas this has led to a variety of definitions methodologies and alternative estimates being produced building on a recent study bishop and brand 2013 we develop a hybrid approach which combines the detail of bottom up surveys with top down trend data to produce estimates on employment in low carbon environmental goods and services lcegs we demonstrate this methodology to produce estimates for such employment in scotland between 2004 and 2012 our approach shows how survey and official sources can combine to produce a more timely measure of employment in lcegs activities assisting policymakers in tracking consistently developments applying our approach we find that over this period employment in lcegs in scotland grew but that this was more volatile than aggregate employment and in particular that employment in this sector was particularly badly hit during the great recession