IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/rensus/v142y2021ics1364032121001325.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the renewable energy policy paradox: A scenario analysis for the Italian electricity market

Author

Listed:
  • Cieplinski, A.
  • D'Alessandro, S.
  • Marghella, F.

Abstract

The renewable energy policy paradox states that the combination of liberalized markets with low marginal cost and intermittent technologies tends to reduce electricity prices and, hence, the profitability of new investments in wind and solar energy, thus rendering price-incentive policies less effective or more costly. Most simulation models are not suited to assess the feasibility of middle and long-term goals under the price policies already in place. To fill this gap, this study applies a novel hybrid top-down-bottom-up dynamic macrosimulation model to the Italian economy (2015–2040). To incorporate uncertainty about the future costs of generation and storage technologies, fossil fuel prices, demand elasticities, macroeconomic performance and price incentives, we rely on exploratory model analysis to build scenarios from three clusters out of the 1000 different simulations. Our results suggest a decreasing trend in electricity prices in contrast to the latest official projections. Accordingly, the expansion of renewable energy slows down and none of the 1000 simulations reach the 2030 target of 55% renewable energy in electricity supply. Despite the ineffectiveness of the price subsidy policy in the first ten years (2021–2030), it is still crucial to reach very high penetration of variable renewable energy sources by 2040.

Suggested Citation

  • Cieplinski, A. & D'Alessandro, S. & Marghella, F., 2021. "Assessing the renewable energy policy paradox: A scenario analysis for the Italian electricity market," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:142:y:2021:i:c:s1364032121001325
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.110838
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032121001325
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rser.2021.110838?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Child, Michael & Kemfert, Claudia & Bogdanov, Dmitrii & Breyer, Christian, 2019. "Flexible electricity generation, grid exchange and storage for the transition to a 100% renewable energy system in Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 139, pages 80-101.
    2. Nahmmacher, Paul & Schmid, Eva & Hirth, Lion & Knopf, Brigitte, 2016. "Carpe diem: A novel approach to select representative days for long-term power system modeling," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 430-442.
    3. Bellocchi, Sara & Manno, Michele & Noussan, Michel & Prina, Matteo Giacomo & Vellini, Michela, 2020. "Electrification of transport and residential heating sectors in support of renewable penetration: Scenarios for the Italian energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. Newbery, David & Pollitt, Michael G. & Ritz, Robert A. & Strielkowski, Wadim, 2018. "Market design for a high-renewables European electricity system," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 695-707.
    5. Auer, Hans & Haas, Reinhard, 2016. "On integrating large shares of variable renewables into the electricity system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 115(P3), pages 1592-1601.
    6. Prina, Matteo Giacomo & Manzolini, Giampaolo & Moser, David & Nastasi, Benedetto & Sparber, Wolfram, 2020. "Classification and challenges of bottom-up energy system models - A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    7. Ward, K.R. & Green, R. & Staffell, I., 2019. "Getting prices right in structural electricity market models," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1190-1206.
    8. Brouwer, Anne Sjoerd & van den Broek, Machteld & Zappa, William & Turkenburg, Wim C. & Faaij, André, 2016. "Least-cost options for integrating intermittent renewables in low-carbon power systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 48-74.
    9. Hu, Jing & Harmsen, Robert & Crijns-Graus, Wina & Worrell, Ernst & van den Broek, Machteld, 2018. "Identifying barriers to large-scale integration of variable renewable electricity into the electricity market: A literature review of market design," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P2), pages 2181-2195.
    10. Ringkjøb, Hans-Kristian & Haugan, Peter M. & Solbrekke, Ida Marie, 2018. "A review of modelling tools for energy and electricity systems with large shares of variable renewables," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 440-459.
    11. Ballester, Cristina & Furió, Dolores, 2015. "Effects of renewables on the stylized facts of electricity prices," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1596-1609.
    12. Clò, Stefano & Cataldi, Alessandra & Zoppoli, Pietro, 2015. "The merit-order effect in the Italian power market: The impact of solar and wind generation on national wholesale electricity prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 79-88.
    13. Rintamäki, Tuomas & Siddiqui, Afzal S. & Salo, Ahti, 2017. "Does renewable energy generation decrease the volatility of electricity prices? An analysis of Denmark and Germany," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 270-282.
    14. Peng, Donna & Poudineh, Rahmatallah, 2019. "Electricity market design under increasing renewable energy penetration: Misalignments observed in the European Union," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    15. Sáenz de Miera, Gonzalo & del Ri­o González, Pablo & Vizcaino, Ignacio, 2008. "Analysing the impact of renewable electricity support schemes on power prices: The case of wind electricity in Spain," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 3345-3359, September.
    16. Lion Hirth, 2013. "The Market Value of Variable Renewables. The Effect of Solar and Wind Power Variability on their Relative Price," RSCAS Working Papers 2013/36, European University Institute.
    17. Paraschiv, Florentina & Erni, David & Pietsch, Ralf, 2014. "The impact of renewable energies on EEX day-ahead electricity prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 196-210.
    18. Dillig, Marius & Jung, Manuel & Karl, Jürgen, 2016. "The impact of renewables on electricity prices in Germany – An estimation based on historic spot prices in the years 2011–2013," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 7-15.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Phoumin, Han & Rasoulinezhad, Ehsan, 2023. "Assessment of role of green bond in renewable energy resource development in Japan," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Lorenzo Ferrari & Gianluca Pasini & Umberto Desideri, 2023. "Towards a Power Production from 100% Renewables: The Italian Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-17, February.
    3. Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary & Ehsan Rasoulinezhad & Han Phoumin, 2022. "Ways to achieve universal access to sustainable electricity in Southeast Asia," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 2031-2050, November.
    4. Olabi, A.G. & Abdelkareem, Mohammad Ali, 2022. "Renewable energy and climate change," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    5. Hui Wang & Congcong Wang & Wenhui Zhao, 2022. "Decision on Mixed Trading between Medium- and Long-Term Markets and Spot Markets for Electricity Sales Companies under New Electricity Reform Policies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-23, December.
    6. Natalia Iwaszczuk & Jacek Wolak & Aleksander Iwaszczuk, 2021. "Turkmenistan’s Gas Sector Development Scenarios Based on Econometric and SWOT Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-18, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sánchez de la Nieta, A.A. & Contreras, J., 2020. "Quantifying the effect of renewable generation on day–ahead electricity market prices: The Spanish case," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    2. Figueiredo, Nuno Carvalho & Silva, Patrícia Pereira da, 2019. "The “Merit-order effect” of wind and solar power: Volatility and determinants," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 54-62.
    3. Zappa, William & Junginger, Martin & van den Broek, Machteld, 2021. "Can liberalised electricity markets support decarbonised portfolios in line with the Paris Agreement? A case study of Central Western Europe," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    4. Mwampashi, Muthe Mathias & Nikitopoulos, Christina Sklibosios & Konstandatos, Otto & Rai, Alan, 2021. "Wind generation and the dynamics of electricity prices in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    5. Javier L'opez Prol & Wolf-Peter Schill, 2020. "The Economics of Variable Renewables and Electricity Storage," Papers 2012.15371, arXiv.org.
    6. Sapio, Alessandro, 2019. "Greener, more integrated, and less volatile? A quantile regression analysis of Italian wholesale electricity prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 452-469.
    7. Atherton, John & Hofmeister, Markus & Mosbach, Sebastian & Akroyd, Jethro & Farazi, Feroz & Kraft, Markus, 2023. "British imbalance market paradox: Variable renewable energy penetration in energy markets," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    8. Sirin, Selahattin Murat & Yilmaz, Berna N., 2021. "The impact of variable renewable energy technologies on electricity markets: An analysis of the Turkish balancing market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    9. Peña, Juan Ignacio & Rodríguez, Rosa & Mayoral, Silvia, 2022. "Cannibalization, depredation, and market remuneration of power plants," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    10. Moreno, Blanca & Díaz, Guzmán, 2019. "The impact of virtual power plant technology composition on wholesale electricity prices: A comparative study of some European Union electricity markets," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 100-108.
    11. Østergaard, P.A. & Lund, H. & Thellufsen, J.Z. & Sorknæs, P. & Mathiesen, B.V., 2022. "Review and validation of EnergyPLAN," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    12. Bell, William Paul & Wild, Phillip & Foster, John & Hewson, Michael, 2017. "Revitalising the wind power induced merit order effect to reduce wholesale and retail electricity prices in Australia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 224-241.
    13. López Prol, Javier & Steininger, Karl W. & Zilberman, David, 2020. "The cannibalization effect of wind and solar in the California wholesale electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    14. Mosquera-López, Stephanía & Nursimulu, Anjali, 2019. "Drivers of electricity price dynamics: Comparative analysis of spot and futures markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 76-87.
    15. Foster, Edward & Contestabile, Marcello & Blazquez, Jorge & Manzano, Baltasar & Workman, Mark & Shah, Nilay, 2017. "The unstudied barriers to widespread renewable energy deployment: Fossil fuel price responses," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 258-264.
    16. De Siano, Rita & Sapio, Alessandro, 2022. "Spatial merit order effects of renewables in the Italian power exchange," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    17. Kolb, Sebastian & Dillig, Marius & Plankenbühler, Thomas & Karl, Jürgen, 2020. "The impact of renewables on electricity prices in Germany - An update for the years 2014–2018," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    18. Castaneda, Monica & Franco, Carlos J. & Dyner, Isaac, 2017. "Evaluating the effect of technology transformation on the electricity utility industry," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 341-351.
    19. Acar, Berkan & Selcuk, Orhun & Dastan, Seyit Ali, 2019. "The merit order effect of wind and river type hydroelectricity generation on Turkish electricity prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 1298-1319.
    20. Rövekamp, Patrick & Schöpf, Michael & Wagon, Felix & Weibelzahl, Martin & Fridgen, Gilbert, 2021. "Renewable electricity business models in a post feed-in tariff era," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:142:y:2021:i:c:s1364032121001325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.