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This paper deals with improving the feed-in tariff policy for green energy advancement in Ukraine's households based on assessing the economic efficiency of investment project implementation under the current state support mechanisms. This study was conducted for solar and wind power plants with different installed capacities. The Levelized Cost of Electricity and the payback period for such power plants were calculated considering the ongoing feed-in tariffs and discount rates determined by various equity and debt capital ratios. The results showed that the state support provides attractive payback periods for solar and wind power plants with an installed capacity of ≥30 kW. In comparison, 5 kW solar power plants and wind power plants with a capacity of up to 10 kW are not paid off during the power plants' lifecycle. It confirmed that the ongoing energy policy in Ukraine's residential sector is still designed to obtain profits by the owners of generating facilities by selling the excess electricity. In the meantime, its main goal—providing households energy independence—has been levelled. To resolve the issues caused by such a state support model, a methodical approach to improve the feed-in tariff calculation is proposed. In addition, recommendations for reconsidering other policy measures to ensure effective renewable energy development in the residential sector have been made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran is situated in a wind belt. However, the installed wind capacity in Iran is around 300 MW, which is minuscule compared with the global 651 GW capacity as of 2021. Using novel data from wind trackers across Iran, the paper's findings show immense potential for wind energy in Iran from a technical perspective. While attractive policies are already in place to incentivize wind energy development in Iran, the feed-in tariff (FiT) for wind energy has dropped to around 3 cents per kWh because of the sharp depreciation of the Iranian rial between 2018 and 2020. This paper shows that there is no economic justification for the development of wind farms in Iran at such low FiTs. A minimum FiT of 12 cents per kWh is required to reinvigorate Iran's wind energy industry investments. Given the extremely tight fiscal space of the Iranian government due to the sanctions and consequently reduced oil exports, the paper argues that a mere 2.14% of Iran's wasteful fossil fuel subsidies are sufficient to provide a FiT of 12 cents per kWh for wind energy to meet 5% of the country's total electricity demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The offshore wind (OSW) energy industry is rapidly developing in the United States. New federal mandates require at least 30 GW of OSW by 2030. With the largest goal in the eastern United States, the state of New York seeks to advance OSW in a way that is both environmentally and socially responsible as well as cost-effective. To achieve this, New York developed technical working groups (TWGs) in 2017 focused on critical topics relating to OSW energy development, including the Fisheries Technical Working Group and Environment Technical Working Group (F-TWG and E-TWG; collectively, "the TWGs"). The TWGs are composed of OSW developers, fishing industry (F-TWG) or environmental nongovernmental organizations (E-TWG), federal agency representatives, and state representatives from Maine to North Carolina. These groups advise the state of New York on OSW issues by emphasizing the use of science and technical expertise to inform decision making. The effectiveness of TWG collaborations is due to a variety of reasons, including the regional scale of stakeholder involvement, which allows the groups to develop guidance at an appropriate geographic scale relative to OSW and fishing activities and wildlife populations. The regional collaboration and communication fostered by the TWGs are essential for building trust among stakeholder groups and working collectively to minimize fisheries and environmental impacts as the OSW industry progresses. This paper highlights the OSW stakeholder engagement process and approach implemented by New York through the development of TWGs, as a means of identifying needs for environmental and fisheries resources to inform responsible OSW development within New York and regionally across the eastern United States. The lessons learned from the TWG process can be used to inform stakeholder engagement efforts in other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the application of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) for evaluating what technologies using renewable energy sources (RES) for electricity production have the chance to develop in Poland under the current socio-economic conditions. First, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to determine the weights of the optimization criteria. Five main criteria and 30 sub-criteria were identified. Next, the authors modified numerical taxonomy (NT) to rank eight RES technologies (such as onshore and offshore wind farms, photovoltaics, or biogas plants). The results show that offshore wind farms are the RES technology with the greatest development opportunities in Poland. The following three technologies: distributed photovoltaic energy, biogas plants, and biomass power plants, respectively, received a similar rating in the ranking. Hydropower and geothermal were the lowest-ranked technologies. The ranking, which is the result of multi-criteria analysis, in several respects, is significantly different from the directions of activities indicated in the state energy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewables today are the first-choice option for a modern power system. Wind and solar are now competitive with conventional sources and commanded a high percentage of investments in renewable power. The cost of wind turbines has fallen by nearly 1/3rd since 2009 and that of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules by 80%. The number of countries that held auctions to deploy renewables has increased (from 6 in 2005 to 67 countries in 2017) with a very large increase in global investment. Global cumulative installed wind power capacity had more than 645 GW by the first quarter of 2019. The paper reviews the recent developments in wind energy conversion systems technology and discusses future expectations. Offshore wind turbines are the most possible technology for future utilization and of this, floating wind turbines are to dominate with larger scales could reach three times the present introduced scales. This is to provide more than 20% of the global demand in 2030. The paper presents several case studies for each case and highlights the technological aspects that support each development. The most important design advancements are also discussed with a forecast of the future design expectation that will affect the wind power generation program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian renewable energy sector has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 15.51% in the last five years, where wind growth is about 8%. The Indian government has been adopting changes to create a safe, cheap, and sustainable energy system to fuel vigorous economic growth. The government has made significant efforts in ensuring universal access to energy, giving power to its residents. It is implementing a large-scale deployment of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind. This paper examines the country's wind sector in-depth, including the government policy, financial incentives, and accomplishments. The study goes on to discuss the prospects and problems of the wind sector, as well as solutions to overcome them to reach the estimated target of 140–150 GW by 2030. Wind power growth in the country has weakened in the last few years which may hamper the country's ambitious renewable energy targets. Wind industry is facing several hindrances ranging from discontinuation of incentives, land acquisition, DISCOM's poor health, change in bidding scheme, old wind sites, etc. Certain steps, such as repowering outdated wind farms, giving generation-based incentives, tax concessions, reassessing the country's wind potential, and constructing competitive renewable energy zones could aid in reviving the wind energy sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we utilize a systematic review to assess opportunities and challenges in wind energy development in Uganda. Apart from being an environmentally friendly and renewable energy resource, development of wind energy could boosts economic growth and creates jobs. For Uganda, rising energy demand, need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing electricity access to rural areas, emerge as rational opportunities to invest in wind energy. The main obstacles to wind energy development in Uganda are insufficient wind resource data, high initial investment cost, inadequate research and development, weak infrastructure, and unsupportive policies. For policy, comprehensive wind resource assessment, energy infrastructure investment, financial de-risking, capacity building, and deliberate wind power policy incentives could accelerate wind energy development and consequently contribute to the country's energy security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past ten years, Morocco has been focusing on developing renewable energy, especially wind power. This new energy policy has enabled it to become, in 2017, the leading country in the Middle East and North Africa region and the second one in Africa in terms of installed wind power capacity. In 2019, Morocco moved for the first time from the status of electricity importer to that of electricity exporter, better yet green electricity. This paper provides a quantitative study of the demand, production and installed power capacity of electrical energy in Morocco over the past two decades. It mainly focuses on the evolution of installed wind power capacity and its share in the global energy mix during this period, as well as its future prospects by year 2030. This article presents a synthesis work based on an updated assessment of the carried-out wind projects and aims to assess the realization of Morocco's national energy strategy which sets out to achieve 42% of renewable energy by 2020, and more specifically 14% of the overall energy mix being wind energy. It also aims to show the impact of wind energy integration in terms of energy autonomy, industrial integration and CO2 emissions reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In recent years, landscapes in many countries have been transformed by efforts to fight global warming, specifically the shift towards renewable energies such as wind power. This development has been met by growing opposition from local citizens and their initiatives. There is an ongoing debate about whether and how such protests have a real impact on the development of energy landscapes. Methods: Drawing on the rare case of a state government scaling back ambitious targets for the expansion of renewables, the authors were able to analyse the impact of protests in the context of regional spatial planning and, particularly, state policy-making on energy. Conceptually drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and using the method of causal-process tracing, the qualitative study investigates related interactions and decision-making processes in the federal state of Saxony, Germany, between 2011—when targets were increased—and 2013—when targets were scaled back. Results: The findings show that the protests grew significantly when the raised expansion targets for renewables were translated into a higher number of potential wind farm sites. The protests, which primarily referred to landscapes, were well-organised and creative. Activists worked through a range of channels across various contexts and several levels of the politico-administrative system, in particular approaching regional spatial planners and a wide range of politicians. In the end, the protests (along with other factors) significantly contributed to the readjustment by the Saxon coalition government of its energy and climate policy and thus to a slowdown of energy-related landscape change. Conclusions: The study confirms that the influence of protesters can greatly exceed the previously studied participation in the planning of sites and the approval process for individual wind farms. Also highlighting other relevant co-influential factors, the paper contributes to the development of a middle-range theory of the impact of local opposition to wind power in the context of energy landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a discussion on the paper titled “Assessing feed-in tariffs on wind power installation and industry development in Taiwan” published by Hsu et al. In the discussed paper, there were several missing variables in the historical test of the system dynamics (SD) model, and thus the test was not integrated and valid. Additionally, the simulated results of the missing variables were used as important indexes to observe the behavior of the SD model. Therefore, it was highly likely that the solution and related policy analysis based on the simulated results were incorrect. Accordingly, the present study illustrated the structure characteristics of the SD model with respect to the fore-mentioned problems, discussed the reason for missing variables and proposed a method to assess whether or not the historical test was integrated. Finally, after a careful analysis, this study offered suggestions to perfect the historical test proposed in the discussed paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offshore wind energy development is planned for areas off the Atlantic coast. Many of the planned wind development areas fall within traditional commercial vessel routes. In order to mitigate possible hazards to ships and to wind turbines, it is important to understand the potential for increased risk to commercial shipping from the presence of wind farms. Risk is identified as the likelihood that an occurrence will happen, and the consequences of that occurrence, should it occur. This paper deals with the likelihood of commercial vessel accidents, because of the development of offshore wind energy along the US Atlantic coast. Using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, historical shipping routes between ports in the Atlantic were identified, from Maine to the Florida Straits. The AIS data were also used as inputs to a numerical model that can simulate cargo, tanker and tug/towing vessel movement along typical routes. The model was used to recreate present day vessel movement, as well as to simulate future routing that may be required to avoid wind farms. By comparing the present and future routing of vessels, an analysis of potential maritime accidents was used to determine the increased marginal risk of vessel collisions, groundings and allisions with stationary objects, because of the presence of wind farms. The outcome of the analysis showed little increase in vessel collisions or allisions, and a decrease in groundings as more vessels were forced seaward by the wind farms. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an enquiry into the role of State policies in influencing wind installed capacity. The paper studies the impact of policies on deployment of wind potential across the States of India over two decades. Aggregate indices are computed for each of the seven wind resourceful States of India indicating attractiveness for installed capacity of wind energy. For computing the indices, four policies, Feed-in-Tariff, Renewable Purchase Obligation, Banking facility, and Wheeling charges are considered. Panel data techniques are then employed to investigate the impact of the policy differences on wind potential deployment over the 19 year period (1993–2012) after controlling for three State-specific factors. The controlling factors include per-capita income of the State, power deficit, and ratio of installed capacity of wind to geographic potential indicating unmet capacity. The results show that that policy index positively impacts wind deployment whether control variables are included or not. Moreover, the control factors like the per-capita income of the State and unmet capacity have positive influence over the investment in wind energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation and environmental improvement are two important targets which most developing countries try to achieve. In order to promote the poverty alleviation by using clean energy sources, this paper develops a joint poverty alleviation project including the green energy investment company (GEIC), solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant (SPP) and wind power plant (WPP). By using a tripartite evolutionary game model, evolutionary stable strategies are evaluated. Influence estimate results of key factors show that longer annual operation time and higher on-grid electricity price will increase the participating intention of all the three participators. The government should increase the on-grid electricity price of the SPP properly, but control that of the WPP as the joint poverty alleviation project can also progress well even with relatively low on-grid electricity price of the WPP. A reasonable investment ratio of the SPP and WPP is the guarantee for the smooth development of the joint poverty alleviation project. In this study, the investment ratio of the SPP and WPP of 6:4 is relatively proper and can make the three participators all have relatively high increasing rates of participating intention simultaneously. The results will be of reference value for formulating relevant governmental policies on the poverty alleviation and clean energy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind power has become an increasingly important source of renewable energy in Norway. Current demand and production capacity have exceeded expectations stipulated in energy policies a few years back. Wind power affects landscape characteristics, and the rapid development has created considerable public conflict. However, knowledge to date about public attitudes toward wind power development in Norway is limited. We surveyed a representative sample of the Norwegian public to examine relationships between wind power development and place attachment, localization, and policies. We also examined if attitudes toward wind power are linked to broader environmental attitudes and meaning of place. Public attitudes range from strong support to strong opposition. We found limited support for NIMBY effects. Support versus opposition correlates with attitudes toward place attachment, localization of wind power plants and energy policies. We found evidence of a dichotomy between the more fundamental world views of eco-modernism versus de-growth influencing the more specific wind power attitudes. We argue that policy institutions have underestimated the power of attitude diversity in the wind power debate, and that social acceptability of future wind power development will depend on improved understanding of how social values of landscapes are impacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the policy effectiveness of power purchasing agreements, capital grants, tax incentives, preferential loans, and research, development, and demonstrations for photovoltaic (PV) and wind power development in the member countries of the European Union (EU). The empirical findings confirm that the feed-in tariff is more efficient than renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for PV and wind power development, although RPS does have an effect on wind power development. However, the other economic instruments are all inefficient for PV development but are efficient for wind power development, except for tax incentives. Moreover, the economic growth required, serious financial deficits, and dependence on imported energy that discourage PV development are unrelated to wind power development. The energy intensity of the economy will have a negative impact on both PV and wind power development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the planning of wind energy development in the West Pomeranian Region after the introduction of the Act "On investments in wind farms" as of 20 May 2016. The purpose of the article is to provide the forecast of the region's wind energy development in 2019–2030 by taking into account current legal regulations in Poland. The article proposes an original, optimizing multi-criteria wind energy development model for the studied region, exploring various types of technologies that may appear in the system, taking into account recent legal and political changes in the field of renewable energy regulation in Poland. The results of the optimization model show that the currently passed Act "On investments in wind farms" in Poland actually stopped the development of wind energy in the region. On the other hand, in accordance with the objectives of the adopted draft of the Polish energy policy until 2040, it is expected that the share of renewable energy in electricity production will increase in 2030 in the studied region. Therefore, the paper argues that policy changes are necessary to meet the renewable energy goals of Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity production in Poland is stable and ranges from 160–170 TWH a year. The share of renewable energy sources (RES) is increasing. Poland increased its share from 6.9% in 2010 to 12.7% in 2019 and 16.1% in 2020. The share of hard and brown coal decreased in Poland from 87.8% in 2010 to 73.5% in 2019. Wind energy (9.2%) and natural gas (9.2%) are the most important sources of RES in electricity production. The purpose of this research is to discover the changes in renewable energy production, and the impact on electricity production in Poland. Our research showed the extent of development of RES in Poland and other countries of the European Union. The share of renewable energy sources in electricity production increased as the effect of energy policy of the European Union. We also evaluated the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the renewable energy market and electricity production in Poland, and other countries of the European Union. Because of the shortage of data, we presented changes at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in 2019–2020. First, we described the sustainable development and energy policy of the European Union. Then, we described and used methods, including regression analysis, as the most important method. We also found that the power capacity in Poland increased, with the increases coming from solar radiation (11,984%), wind energy (437.8%) and biomass installations (324.7%) in 2010–2020. The biggest electricity producers in the EU are France and Germany. These countries also use nuclear energy, which helps to meet the increasing demand. To check the impact of power installed from renewable energy carriers we conducted a regression analysis. This method provided a correlation between electricity production from renewable energy sources and investments in renewable energy carriers. We wanted to discover the impact of RES installations, and their impact on electricity production in Poland. The statistical analysis was based on data from 2010–2020. Our research points out that the most important factors shaping electricity production were installations using energy from solar radiation and hydropower installations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acceptance plays an important role in the successful adoption of wind energy technology. This article identifies factors influencing the acceptance of wind energy and selects those factors which have the highest relevance for wind energy acceptance in Bavaria. We decided to analyze the Federal State of Bavaria in Germany as its current policy governance decelerates the building-up of wind turbines in this federal state. Using a qualitative approach, the results indicate that the perception of political processes, such as the recent enacting of the 10-H regulation in Bavaria, influences the acceptance towards wind energy, as trust and transparency in political processes are essential. In addition, the paper reveals the importance of the distributive justice, focusing in particular on the subitem envy, which can be considered on a neighboring or regional level. Additionally it reveals additional factors which are relevant for wind energy acceptance in the specific case of the analyzed federal state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Malaysian government has attempted to develop renewable energy (RE) through newly introduced regulatory supports after 30 years of failure to achieve a greater than one percent non-hydroelectric RE share in the total power mix. The government is currently assessing the onshore wind energy potential in Malaysia to determine the possibility of including wind energy in its FiT scheme. However, wind energy development in this low-energy location is not as straightforward as it would seem. Many previous wind studies in Malaysia have relied on poor data and simplistic or inadequate methodologies, resulting in grossly inaccurate estimates of wind potential. Moreover, two wind turbine generator demonstration projects executed by the government have failed. However, above all, the greatest factor impairing the progress of RE development in Malaysia is the weak and uncertain political support of these efforts. This lack of robust support is particularly true where fossil fuels are still heavily subsidised amid the subsidy reform in 2013. A review of global wind energy development shows that successful projects depend heavily on a sound and robust regulatory framework supported by strong and consistent political will. This dependence is not observed in Malaysia, where the government continues to subsidise private independent fossil fuel power producers but levies taxes on electricity consumers to fund RE development. These levies do not effectively support RE development, given the magnitude of the RE fund compared to fossil fuel subsidies. In the absence of strong and sincere political will, the progress of RE development in Malaysia has been notably slow. As a result, the prospect of wind energy development in Malaysia currently remains vague. This paper discusses the above issues in detail and recommends selected regulatory mechanisms based on the global experience of supporting RE development in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of human society, the demand for energy has accordingly increased, and along with this increasingly serious energy and environmental crises have developed. Many countries have been focusing on new energy resources to combat these crises, and offshore wind energy resources are especially attractive; they are safe, non-polluting, renewable, and widely distributed with large reserves, which has made them become the focus of developed countries. However, the distribution of wind energy has strong regional and seasonal differences, which determines the success and efficiency of wind energy developments. Therefore, there is a clear need for “resource evaluation and planning in advance” in the wind energy development. Previous research has made a great contribution to the evaluation of offshore wind energy resources, mostly through analysis of the climatic characteristics of wind energy. In the actual development process of wind energy resources, these analyses of the climatic characteristics of wind energy provide a reference for site selection. However, after constructing wind farms, to aid their operation, there needs to be a more comprehensive understanding of other factors, such as the short-term forecasting and medium- to long-term predictions of wind energy. This paper reviews the research progress of the wind energy resource evaluations, and then considers where future research needs to focus, for the evaluation of wind energy resources. This mainly includes further analyses of the climatic characteristics of wind energy, short-term forecasting, medium- to long-term predictions, early disaster warning systems, the establishment of a wind energy development index (WEDI) and an integrated application system, in hope of providing a reference for offshore wind power generation, seawater desalination and other wind energy resource developments, and accelerating the industrialization and utilization of offshore wind energy. Doing this will alleviate the energy and environmental crises, and promote the sustainable development of human society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating variable and non-dispatchable renewable power generation into existing power systems will have consequences for their operation and future expansion. These impacts will depend on two factors: (1) the variability of the total renewable power generation on different time scales and (2) the possibilities of accurately forecasting these fluctuations. In this paper, previous research on variability assessment and forecasting of solar, wind, wave and tidal energy resources is reviewed. The aim is to summarize the state of knowledge in each area and to compare the approaches used for the respective resources. For temporal variability, methods and models used for assessing the variability are surveyed, as well as what is known about the variability at individual sites and for larger aggregates of sites. For forecasting, an overview of forecasting methods for the different resources is made, and selected forecasting methods are compared over different time horizons. An important finding is that it is hard to draw strong conclusions from the existing studies due to differences in approaches and presentation of results. There is a need for further, more coherent studies that analyze the variability for the different resources in comparable ways, using data with the same resolution, and for studies that evaluate the smoothing effect and complementarity of combinations of several renewable energy resources. For forecasting, future research should suggest ways to evaluate forecasts from different renewable energy sources in easily comparable ways, using data from the same locations or regions, with the same temporal and spatial resolution, and with comparable metrics for the forecasting errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent time, the concern for grid integration of wind power has been a subject of discussion in the academic community. At present, the penetration level is still moderate for most grids to accommodate. As the penetration level increases, wind power may cause additional problems to the grid due to its intermittent nature. One of the intending solutions to this problem is the adoption of energy storage. This paper examines the state of the art energy storage technology options that are capable of mitigating wind power intermittency on the grid and their challenges. It also highlighted the existing policies that aided the development of wind power and discusses the limitations of its integration into the grid. It was found that, the ability of storage technology to be effectively utilised in mitigating the wind power intermittency depends on the ramp rate of the technology, response delay time, duration of storage, maturity of technology, installation cost, efficiency of the technology, its environmental impact and the suitability of the site topology. Therefore, no single storage technology is capable of providing total solution at mitigating the effect of wind power intermittency on the grid. The effectiveness of the storage technology lies in the hybridization of the storage technologies depending on the level of cost and technical requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]