Achieving the objectives of renewable energy policy – Insights from renewable energy auction design in Europe

Many countries choose policy objectives around their renewable energy expansion targets, such as efficiency and effectiveness. Due to the different nature and impact of those objectives, not all can be achieved simultaneously, so prioritising objectives is advisable. In this paper, we theoretically analyse the relationship between objectives and show that most European countries with renewable energy auctions in place have defined incoherent policy strategies in their respective renewable energy legislation. Based on these strategies, we analyse which objectives lead to the choice of which auction design elements conducting a qualitative comparative analysis. Considering 269 auction rounds from 20 European countries in the period 2011–2020, not all resulting choices of auction designs are in line with auction theory and existing literature’s findings on the relationship between objectives and auction design. Nevertheless, we show that on a country-level basis, most considered countries choose congruent auction designs, which either support all their (coherent) stated objectives or prioritise one or several of their incoherent objectives. For those countries with an incongruent auction design, we give recommendations on how to adapt their auction design depending on their exact choice of policy objectives.