This is an interesting analysis for what it does and doesn’t say. The document’s abstract states forcefully that a Feed Law “tends to be costly, inefficient, distortive of competitive pricing and, hence, incompatible with the creation of a single, liberalised electricity market in Europe.” This document and the others like it may have contributed to the il-will among Europeans over the then future “liberalized” market and the seeming incompatibility of Feed Laws with market rules. Since this document was written the European Court has ruled that Feed Laws do in fact comply with market rules in “liberalized” markets. Most intriguing is that the abstract does not accurately reflect the conclusion of the report. While the author maintains his argument that the best way to encourage renewables is to internalize social and environmental costs of conventional generation, he goes on to say “However, it may take quite some time – if ever – before either one of these ‘best means’ (or a combination of both) will be achieved. In the meantime, feed-in tariffs can and will be justified in several European countries as the best alternative instrument to encourage the generation of a certain amount of green electricity, notably when this amount is still small.”
It appears that this document, like the later document from the U.S. DOE’s EIA, has been passed through a political or ideological filter.
