Abstract
This chapter focuses on the period between the late 1970s and the adoption of the Directive on the internal electricity market in 1996. This period saw the appearance of feed-in tariffs as well as the emergence of a European Union approach to renewable energy policy, though without direct connections between the two. Cointe and Nadaï retrace the origins of FITs, starting from their introduction in Germany and Denmark as a tool to integrate wind power into existing electricity systems and showing how they turned into renewable energy support instruments. They then analyse early European renewable energy policy, stressing that it was guided by the ideal of a liberalised market as a device for economic and social optimisation.
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Notes
- 1.
“Avoided costs ” based mechanisms were also used for co-generation for instance in Italy and France (Interview, energy economist 2013).
- 2.
In 1989, the framework for electricity tariffs was modified so as to allow for compensation of RES-E generators above avoided costs (Lauber and Mez 2004, p. 601).
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Cointe, B., Nadaï, A. (2018). FITs and European Renewable Energy Policy Before 1996: A Tale of Two Beginnings. In: Feed-in tariffs in the European Union. Progressive Energy Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76321-7_2
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