Spreading the use of responsive adjustment mechanisms for renewable energy deployment policies: An agent-based modelling cross-country evaluation

Kurzfassung

Deployment policies proved to effectively stimulate the diffusion of renewable energies. Yet, the adjustment of incentives to evolving technology costs remains a challenge. A previous study suggested novel policy designs, which automatically adjust the incentives based on control theory principles, to produce a more effective and cost-efficient feed-in tariff for photovoltaics (PV) than the historical policy in Germany. However, policy transfer between countries sometimes leads to policy failure. Thus, the reproducibility of the suggested achievements in jurisdictions comprising different economic, social or environmental contexts remains unclear. Especially for technologies such as solar PV, the transfer of deployment policies from one country to another could be particularly risky. They often combine rapidly evolving technology costs, influenced by global and local learning rates, and an attractiveness heavily influenced by local factors, such as irradiation. This study assesses if the new mechanisms can repeat the improvements upon historical policies in Switzerland and Spain. Therefore, it employs an agent-based model of the socio-technical system for solar PV in each country. The results state that the analyzed design can reliably achieve a higher deployment with significantly lower costs per installed capacity than the simulated historical policies in each country. It can curb, yet not fully avoid the historically occurred boom and bust cycles in Spain. The results show that different overall deployment targets as well as different initial incentive levels do not compromise the policy’s cost efficiency when using the new suggested policy design. However, they stress that a later deployment generally allows for higher cost-efficient policies. The novel policy design could offer policy makers a reliable new tool for designing future deployment policies under different conditions that effectively accelerate the diffusion of technologies to mitigate climate change without becoming too costly. As it becomes less critical to decide upon the right initial level of incentives or a suitable target for overall deployment, the novel design could encourage governments to apply deployment policies in the future.