Abstract
This paper describes how energy policy can be evaluated in practice. The goal is to make policy makers aware of how an evaluation can be based on scientific principles and to help economists appreciate how an evaluation can be performed if strong empirical evidence is lacking. We have built a basic evaluation framework and have applied this to a selection of Dutch energy policy instruments, namely production subsidies and their complementary non-financial instrument, DEN-B. Our evaluation criterion was effectiveness, defined as the extent to which policy instruments contribute to achieving policy goals. The evaluation was based on existing ex post evaluations complemented by interviews and other available data. We conclude that production subsidies and DEN-B were (partly) effective. Furthermore, the Dutch government increased effectiveness by reconsidering the design of production subsidies. We also formulate lessons for future policy evaluations and energy markets policies.
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Notes
Our original policy review also evaluated cost-effectiveness of policy measures and, to a much lesser extent, other effects of policy measures than achieving a specified goal. We focus on effectiveness here, only touching upon cost-effectiveness and other effects if results in this regard are clear and specifically relevant.
Energy Reports (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2005, 2008 and Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, 2011).
Investment subsidies are distributed as well, but on a much smaller scale. Examples are subsidies for solar PV installations and sustainable heat production of households and the EIA (Energie Investeringsaftrek; Energy Investment Allowance).
Production subsidies in the Dutch system are similar to feed-in tariffs such as in spot market gap models (Couture & Gagnon 2009). A close alternative to production subsidies is the Contract for Difference (CfD) that has recently been introduced in the UK (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2013).
The SMART principle has more than one interpretation.
EnerQ was an organization of TenneT, the Dutch energy transmission company. The Ministry of Economic Affairs commissioned TenneT to execute MEP projects, to which aim TenneT established EnergQ in 2003. The Ministry took over the tasks of EnerQ in 2009.
As of 2015, offshore wind projects have been completely excluded from SDE+.
Removing bottlenecks in learning by research belongs to energy innovation, in particular to the Energy Innovation Agenda and the Top Sector Policy “Energy”.
The original evaluation contains all topics with the corresponding actions.
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Kocsis, V., Hof, B. Energy policy evaluation in practice: the case of production subsidies and DEN-B in the Netherlands. Environ Dev Sustain 18, 1433–1455 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9837-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9837-0