The book gives a comprehensive overview of technologies for decentralised power generation (DG technologies), including those based on both renewable energy sources (RES), and on combined heat and power (CHP) technologies, and of relevant policies of the EU and its Member States. Special attention is paid to barriers to implementation and success factors that were drawn from 24 case studies carried out throughout the EU. Furthermore, the book offers policy recommendations regarding how to move towards a level playing field for DG technologies. Additionally, the analysis is founded on the results of a study for future developments in European DG technologies and likely scenarios for the role of DG in the future.

Based on close to two hundred interviews with decision-makers, government officials, and industry stakeholders, Karoline Steinbacher presents the first in-depth enquiry into Germany’s efforts of “exporting” its sustainable energy policies. The book closes the empirical gap in understanding how Germany’s leadership influences the transfer of renewable energy policy to three heterogeneous cases, namely Morocco, South Africa, and California.

Bridging theory and practice, this book offers insights into how Europe has experienced the evolution of modern electricity markets from the end of the 1990s to the present day. It explores defining moments in the process, including the four waves of European legislative packages, landmark court cases, and the impact of climate strikes and marches.

This book provides timely, multidisciplinary cross-national comparison of the institutional and social processes through which renewable energy landscapes have emerged in Southern Europe. On the basis of case studies in these countries, it analyzes the way in which and the extent to which the development of renewable energies has affected landscape forms and whether or not it has contributed to a reformulation of landscape practices and values in these countries. Landscape is conceived broadly, as a material, social, political and historical process embedded into the local realm, going beyond aesthetic. The case studies analyze renewable energy landscapes in Southern Europe on different political and geographical scales and compare different types of renewable energy such as wind, hydro, solar and biomass power. The contributors are leading experts from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. The book is intended for researchers, graduate students and professionals interested in geography, landscape and planning.

This book examines the coordination of renewable energy policies in the European Union using an innovative theoretical approach to explain national policy making. David Jacobs asks, why are national support instruments for electricity from renewable energy sources converging, even though the harmonisation of these frameworks at the European level has failed? Which causal mechanisms lead to cross-national policy similarities? And what are the implications for policy coordination in the EU? The author traces the evolution of feed-in tariffs - the most successful and most widely used support mechanism for renewable electricity - in Germany, Spain and France. He reveals increasing cross-national policy similarities in feed-in tariff design - despite the failure of harmonizing instruments at the European level. He explains these increasing policy similarities by applying policy convergence theory. Policy convergence can occur voluntarily, based on transnational communication, regulatory competition and technological innovations and these findings have important implications for European policy steering. The key to this book is the interrelation of an innovative theoretical concept (coordination of policies in the international arena via voluntary cooperation) with a very topical empirical research focus - the promotion of renewable energies in the EU. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of environmental policy, comparative politics and European studies.