Evaluation of Renewable Energy Policies

The world demand for clean and renewable energy is growing, which is a response to stringent environmental policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions; price instability on the world energy markets and declining fossil energy resource availability. The main goal of the current study is to evaluate alternative renewable energy policies, which we achieve by quantitatively assessing socio-economic impacts of selected policy instruments. In particular, we perform ex-ante scenario simulations using a general equilibrium bioenergy model. Our empirical results suggest that a fossil energy tax is more efficient than a subsidy. In line with previous studies we found that a subsidy lowers the average cost of production, a tax increases the average cost of production. Our empirical results suggest that bioenergy sector benefits more from an indirect tax reduction than from a removal of fossil energy sectors' subsidies.