Support Mechanisms' Effects on Renewable Energy Implementation

'Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.' (Nikola Tesla, 1933) Electricity drives the world around us; unfortunately, most sources of electricity are fossil fuels with high CO2 emissions and low energy security factors. Renewable energy initiatives represent a solution for both of these issues and many more. This book focuses on the mechanisms driving renewable energy development and installation figures for wind and solar photovoltaic energy. It also examines a multitude of intrinsic country-level characteristics such as geographical location, wind and solar electricity generation potential, as well as support mechanisms and other factors to derive conclusions relevant to the problem statement. For the purposes of this research, twelve countries were randomly selected out of the EU-27 and data covering the years 2003-2010 was used. The methodology used was that of random effects estimation in order to capture the effects of time-invariable and slowly changing characteristics such as the propensity of a government and people to demand and consume renew