Promoting electricity from renewable energy sources in emerging and developing countries - lessons learned from the EU

Promoting renewable energy sources for electricity generation (RES-E) has high priority in many countries. The core objective of this paper is to identify proper regulatory promotion systems for RES-E in emerging and developing countries based on an evaluation of such systems in the EU over the period 2000-2008. The major conclusions are: (i) Feed-in tariffs (FIT) will be a suitable instrument in emerging countries where a proper grid exists and where social acceptance of (low) transfer costs from electricity customers can be expected; this applies to countries like Brazil, China, India, Indonesia; (ii) for developing countries where solutions are mainly based on autonomous systems strategies has to focus on (international) support of investments; (iii) with respect to international trade of RES-E (e.g. from Africa to Europe) a more complex approach is required based mainly on two pillars: a royalty and a cross-border FIT.