OPERADORES EN LA IMPORTACION

Before 1990 the SPP technology was mainly used in niche projects beginning with space satellites and followed by off-grid terrestrial applications for isolated rural populations (Breyer et al., 2010). Fossil fuels and nuclear energy enjoyed a competitive advantage in terms of immediate costs and efficiency. However, scientists discovered that long-term costs had not been correctly took into consideration because they should include externalities. “The consequence for costs such as global warming or nuclear power can be very significant”(Rabl, 1999, p. 111) on future generations in terms of environmental damage and health problems.

This is one of the many reasons for which governments around the world offered various incentives to make RES technologies, and SPP in particular, economically attractive to compete with the existing energy technologies. These were the foundations for a more efficient mass-production technology that it is nowadays used mostly as on-grid rooftop PV system

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and available at a price approximately 30 times cheaper than in the early 1990s [13].

Next, we will present a summary classification of the main SPP policies based on a thorough analysis of the national survey reports in IEA countries [14] and their importance in the SPP adoption, as studied in the literature.

1.4.1 Policy classification

Public intervention supporting the SPP market has been implemented in the form of a wide range of incentives. These can be crudely classified into two broad classes that we call respectively direct and indirect policies. Direct policies are those offering an economic support directly targeting the SPP adopters (be they households, companies, institutions, etc). These can be further subdivided into (i) installation related actions, including e.g., discounts or refund of a proportion of the initial installation price, credit facilities such as interest-free loans, extended loan periods, etc; (ii) production related, such as feed-in-tariff schemes (FIT) and net-metering schemes (NMS), both aimed at rewarding the electricity produced in excess with at least the same price per kWh as charged by the local utility for a fixed period established at the beginning which could vary from 10 to 25 years. Moreover, for systems connected to the grid there is no need for storage facilities because the electricity can be used at any time from the utility company to whom the consumer is providing the clean energy. The difference between the two lies in the use of two meters in the case of FIT whereas the NMS needs only one bi-directional meter to measure the electricity flow [31]. Also, net-metering allows RES producers to compensate for the energy generated over a long period of time, ranging from one month to several years. With net-metering, customers can compensate for their electricity consumption, over an entire billing period, using it at a time other than when it is produced. This kind of incentives are continuously revised, recently even monthly, in order to fall in line with the SPP market conditions, such as the price decrease of the SPP systems. One of the first and the most successful implementation of FIT happened in Germany starting from 1990 (Kumar Sahu, 2015). In fact, in Germany FIT is adapted very month depending on the degree of achievement of the PV government target. Compensations differentiated

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sometimes also base on differences in solar radiation in different regions. Nowadays around the world, more than 75 jurisdictions adopted the production related policies which makes FIT the most popular policy (Dusonchet and Telaretti, 2015; Timilsina et al., 2012). NMS was implemented in several countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium (Dusonchet and Telaretti, 2015).

Indirect policies include the efforts provided by the government or companies to promote more favourable market conditions allowing to reduce over time the high initial cost of installation or to discourage the adoption of other technologies, especially “dirty” technologies. These include public investments and taxes. On the one hand, public investment in R&D reduce the direct costs of buying the technology, while the public effort in promoting its awareness e.g., by demonstration projects or promoting associations (Yamaguchi et al., 2013), decrease the side costs of investments (EcoFys B.V., 2012). On the other hand, taxes consist of e.g., (i) the carbon tax for fossil fuel energy users (Farrag and Gmbh, 2013), which increases the relative benefit of investing in SPP, (ii) penalties for utilities that do not buy energy from “clean” energy producers, (iii) green Certificates (IEA, 2013a).

Few policies are directly addressed to SPP producers. Among those we mention the Chinese government intentions to encourage domestic companies by offering tax-free grid connected systems (Kumar Sahu, 2015). As a matter of fact, it would not make any sense to have production facilities if there is not a market for them. So, most incentives are in favour of consumers.

Here we also mention the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which is a governmental measure that constrains the electricity supply companies to produce a certain share of electricity from RES. Thus, we cannot call it an incentive, but rather an obligation imposed to often monopolist utility companies.

Several studies emphasize the impact on the SPP diffusion of heterogenous policies. In the next section, we discuss the main SPP policies.

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1.4.2 The role of public incentives

The key role of public policies relative to renewable energies (RE) is to increase their profitability either by expand the scale of production so as to reduce the unitary cost, or by improving the quality of the technology, given the cost. This would make «clean» technologies competitive with «dirty» alternatives, which are less costly but not environmentally «friendly» (Avril et al., 2012; Chowdhury et al., 2014; Ratinen and Lund, 2015; Zhang et al., 2011).

Other two important roles of the policies that have not been stressed sufficiently in the literature could be to provide a viable source of energy for countries missing fossil fuels (in particular oil and gas) and to acquire a technology leadership, as currently evident for China, which has become the major producer of solar modules worldwide since 2007 (IEA, 2016, p. 53) . Other cases such as Germany, Japan, Italy and India (among others) also point in this direction.

Earlier studies used the learning curve approach (Breyer et al., 2010; Foxon, 2010; Masini and Frankl, 2003) to underline the importance of public and private investment (R&D) in reducing the unit cost of the SPP technology. Breyer et al (2010) studies OECD countries and indicates that 6 to 12% of SPP industry sales is invested in R&D dedicated to improvements of the manufacturing process or the creation of new products, such as storage batteries. Moreover, Foxon (2010) highlights that, globally, an annual cost of 1 to 2 % of the GDP would be sufficient to reach the targets against global warming, which in contrast would bring to a loss of 5 to 20% of total GDP. Masini and Frankl (2002) suggest that suitable policy actions are essential for the maximum penetration of the PV system.

Also Avril et al. (2012) highlights the importance of continuous R&D investments. In fact, after analysing the policy schemes in Japan, Germany, USA, France and Italy, they recommend a policy scheme based on R&D in a first phase to be followed by a second phase of FIT or any other demand- pull policy and the prolongation of R&D support even if at a lower level. The investment in R&D leads to a reduction of the substantial initial plant cost of the SPP technology, which represents a significant disadvantage (Zhang et al., 2011) and requires a more complex decision process. Therefore, not only domestic factors but also globalization factors should be taken into consideration when designing the right policy scheme in a

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certain country. A prediction of 67% decrease in the module price by 2020 is given in de La Tour et al. (2013) using experience curve models. They indicate consequently that the price of SPP generated electricity should align with the price of conventional electricity especially in countries with high irradiation levels.

Several comparative studies analyse the impact of various types of measures on the SPP diffusion in different locations. Solangi et al. (2011) highlights that, based on past literature, FIT and RPS appear to be the most common and to bring most of the advantages among different incentives. Additionally, in the case of South Korea the RPS reveals to be more significant in explaining the RE diffusion compared with the FIT (Lee and Huh, 2017). Even Ismail et al. (2015), after reviewing the SPP progress in Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries shows that 5 out of the 10 analysed countries applied FIT as central policy to drive SPP adoptions and finds it one of the most effective. Also, Radomes and Arango, (2015) study the SPP diffusion in Medellin, Colombia and reveal that the investment subsidy and the FIT rate offer the highest marginal increase in diffusion rate. In line with their findings, Zhao et al., (2013) relying on a large panel dataset, discover that FIT and direct investment incentives are the only efficient promoters for all types of RES.

Furthermore, Kumar Sahu (2015) describes the evolution of SPP installations in the top 10 SPP countries in terms of electricity production and emphasises that the success of the market is highly dependent on each country’s policy schemes, but also on the involvement of manufacturing companies. The study also indicates that the latest reduction in SPP module price pushed various countries to establish short- or long-term targets for the adoption of SPP.

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In the next section we examine SPP diffusion within the RES sector in countries with various energy portfolios as presented in the first section.