## 6 Discussion  
Overall, the analysis of the value-added effects in North Rhine-Westphalia, resulting from the funding, operation, and production of renewable energy facilities in 2011, produces a mixed result. Figure 7: Sector-allocation of overall effects from the operation and production of RET across the NRW economy. Strong contractionary effects are observed in particular through the financing of the feed-in tariff via the _EEG_ levy. These effects are the result of the reduction in purchasing power of private households and have a particularly negative effect on the producers of consumer goods and the providers of private services. In contrast, very positive value-added effects are created by the production of facilities for domestic use and for export. In comparison with the other federal states, NRW profits only to a relatively low degree from the positive effects, while it is also disproportionally affected by the negative effects. By 2015 NRW still received only 10% (as in 2011) of _EEG_ subsidies inflows [54], despite its share of population (ca. one fifth) and electricity consumption (ca. one fourth), hence we consider it to be crucial, for a regionally uniform energy transition, that such a state increases its national share of RET deployment. When comparing per capita RET installations, NRW falls behind states with similar or worse RES conditions, e.g., per capita PV installations in Lower Saxony or Schleswig-Holstein are higher than in NRW. For this reason, we think there might be the need to further identify and address behavioral, social, and technical barriers in NRW, in order to overcome RET investment hurdles. When evaluating the findings, it is important to consider that the positive effects from the production of renewable energy facilities are one-off effects. The overall negative effects from the operation of the facilities, however, occur throughout their entire lifespan. Furthermore, the year 2011 constitutes an exceptional one, as the second-highest level of investments in new facilities in Germany to date was recorded during that year and the _EEG_ levy was considerably lower than is currently the case (3.53 ct/kWh in 2011 against 6.792 ct/kWh in 2018). Although we point out the enduring negative economic impact for NRW, our aim is not to criticize the deployment of RET in its own right, but to stress the fact that such uneven regional and sectoral impact should be addressed by policy makers, in order to ease the energy transition and its public support. Finally, within this analysis, we do not consider the potential ancillary benefits of de-carbonization in NRW (e.g., for health and environmental outcomes), which would counterbalance the discussed monetary downsides. Recently, the _EEG_ introduced new financing procedures for large RE sites, focusing on bidding processes. For several projects, this approach resulted in a drastically lower RE financing costs compared to FiTs. On the other hand, direct employment in RE sector, which accounted for 400,000 jobs in 2012, went down by ca. 11% between 2012 and 2014. In particular, in the PV sector, jobs plummeted from 100,300 to 38,300 over this period [55; 56] and new data on cost structure could scale down the positive multiplier effects of RET production. Moreover, our analysis cannot embrace the whole technical complexity of the electricity market, especially with regard to spatial and temporal generation and load, as well as grid constraints. For example, merit order effect, induced by RE, drives down the wholesale price of electricity and may favor energy-intensive industries. On the other hand, RET deployment entails additional costs for the network operators (grid expansion, power curtailment, re-dispatch, etc. ), such costs are passed to final customers and are not covered by the _EEG-Umlage_. Therefore, it is preferable to conduct further studies on the regional economic impact of RE policies on the federal state level which can overcome such limitations. Conceptualization, J.T. ; methodology, J.T. ; formal analysis, J.T.