Abstract

DG Competition has persistently advocated externality pricing (through measures like the Emissions Trading Scheme and tradable green certificates) over subsidies to renewable energy suppliers to tackle carbon emissions. The evidence thus far is that these shadow market methods, as implemented to date within the EU, have not incentivised large scale investment away from fossil fuels but rather have bestowed anti-competitive windfall profits on incumbents. On the other hand, DG Competition has been hostile to national price supports for renewable energy on the basis that ...