Potential impact of partial retail price feed-in-tariffs on a solar rebound effect in Germany

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Economy - Environment economics, grade: 1,3, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, language: English, abstract: In order to contribute to an understanding of the impact of the so called 'solar-rebound effect' (SRE) as described by Oliver et al. (2019), it is the goal of this paper to formulate a hypothesis regarding the potential impact of partial electricity retail price (ERP) feed-in-tariffs (FiT) on this effect in Germany, drawing on the theoretical model developed by Oliver alii (2019) and on empirical insights regarding the SRE, observed in Phoenix (Arizona) by Qiu alii (2019) and in Sydney by Deng & Newton (2017). Therefore, the research question that I would like to answer in the following argumentation, is: Has the policy measure of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) feed-in tariff scheme an impact on the solar-rebound effect in Germany, and does the mechanism mitigate or intensify the SRE compared to solar rebound effects observed in Arizona by Qiu et al. (2019) and in Australia by Deng & Newton (2017)? In Germany, there are a variety of different legal mechanisms applied to support the installation and usage of renewable energy. The most important one being the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) which is widely acknowledged and adopted as a model by other countries. The regulation led to an increase of the portion of renewable energy on total gross electricity consumption in Germany from 2009 to 2019. In 2019 renewables had a share of 43% on gross electricity consumption, of which 8.2% were generated by solar systems. Approximately 1/3 of the total amount of photovoltaic (PV) power production capacity in Germany is owned by private households, which are acting as prosumers. These numbers underscore the importance to understand effects on residential photovoltaic system usage to implement effective policies in line with climate objectives.