A Comparative Study On Laws And Policies Of Wind Energy Application

Human society is facing the huge challenge of energy shortage and environmental destruction,it has become the contemporary consensus to develop and apply clean and renewable energies to achieve sustainable development.Among all categories of renewable energy,wind energy could be regarded as the most business valuable practicing one except for the traditional hydropower.Almost every country with excellent wind recourse has devoted into the development of the wind energy,which has maintained the most rapid developing energy of the world in recent years.According to the practice of these leading countries,the high speed improvement of wind energy application could not occur without the support of laws and policies.In fact,an integrated law system is truly the cornerstone of the energy security and sustainable development strategy to a country.Accordingly,it could be with theoretic and practical significance to conduct comparative study on laws and policies of leading countries on the wind energy application.With analysis on the leading countries' relative laws and policies,the author is trying to find the universal methodology on wind energy law and policy making and to raise some prudent advice on the policy adjustment and law amendment of wind energy application in China,and this hopefully could be helpful to ensure China's wind energy industry maintaining the world's leading position and stepping onto a more benign development stage.Six countries are selected to be studied in this research,they are China,United States,Germany,Spain,India(which are the top 5 countries of the cumulative installed wind power capacity of the world)and Denmark(which gains the biggest proportion of wind power in the whole electricity capacity of the world).The multifarious and complicated laws and policies on wind energy application of these countries are classified into three fundamental systems which are regulatory mandates system,incentives system and public services system and studies are carried out respectively.The research starts with an Introduction and consists of five chapters.The Introduction indicates the theoretic and practical significance of the study,introduces the studying methodologies adopted and general structure of the study,and reviews the main existing research achievements on domestic and foreign.Chapter ?.The Survey of wind energy application and the evolution of laws and policies of the leading countries.The first section surveys the general situation of wind energy application of US,Germany,India,Spain,Denmark and China on the information officially presented by international authority.The second section comprehensively reviews the development history of the laws and policies on wind energy application in these countries,the development stages are technology research and laws and policies first building,early commercialization and laws and policies developing,market formation and laws and policies stabilizing and situation change and laws and policies adjusting.Chapter I hopefully could provide more comprehensive background information for the following research.Chapter ?.The regulatory mandates system on wind energy application of leading countries.This category includes development planning and objective of aggregated sum,guaranteed connection to the grid,renewable portfolio standards(RPS),compulsory technology standards and environmental standards.The relative laws and policies of leading countries are expounded and compared in this chapter.The RPS regime is especially discussed in this part.The regulatory mandates system could play a strong role in pushing wind energy application develop forward,it is the foundation of the law and policy framework on wind energy application in the leading countries.Chapter ?.The incentives system on wind energy application of leading countries.This category includes electricity price support,direct fiscal subsidy,tax incentive,financing incentive and public participation.The electricity price support in Germany,Spain,Denmark and China and the public participation in Denmark are especially discussed in this part.The incentives could induce investors engaging in the wind energy exploit through the economic benefits,generally to say,it always performs very good.But the incentives get the risk of distorting the market if did not apply in the proper field or apply with the proper scale,so,the choice and arrangement of specific incentives must be carefully demonstrated and strictly carried out.Chapter ?.The public services policy system on wind energy application of leading countries.In order to promote the application of wind energy,the public service system mainly aims at establishing a fair market order and providing equal opportunities for competition by indirect control means.Although the system measures could not be so directive and obvious as the above two types of systems,it can provide a more equitable external environment,thus ensuring the sustainable development of the wind energy industry.This category includes the electricity market reform,public research and development,construction of electricity grid infrastructure and fossil energy tax.Each specific policy tool has been deliberately expounded in this chapter.Public service system can guide the investors,manufacturers,equipment suppliers and consumers to correctly understand the environmental significance,strategic position and high growth of wind and other renewable energy,create a good social environment for the development of wind energy,and lay the foundation of the external environment for the implementation of other two systems.Chapter ?.The foreign experience and China's wind energy law and policy improvement.The Section ? has generalized the experience of the implement of law and policy on wind energy of typical countries from both the positive and negative sides,the successful experiences include the guide of development goals,the well work of systematic and specified legislation,the fair market environment,the combination of market driving and governmental driving,the extensive public participation and the technical innovation;the current challenges are the heavy fiscal burden arose from the FIT regime and the aging of electricity grid.The Section ?generalized the experiences and lessons of China on the base the research in the above four Chapters,takes that the firm determinations of decision makers,the definite development goal,the FIT support,contribute to the success of China,but some challenges still existing,such as the unwell work of the legal,the inadequate support from market driving,the electricity industry needs reform,some incentives needs revising,the public participation are not sufficient,etc.The Section ? is trying to bring the suggestions on improvement of the wind energy laws and policies in China on the base of the above comparative study.The proposed suggestions are as following:improve the making of plan goals and set legal liability,enhancing legislation on wind and renewable energy,further electricity market reforming,introducing more effective market mechanism,revising financial incentives,powering technical innovation and broaden the chance of public participation.Especially on the reality that the development of wind power industry in China has entered a mature stage,the suggestion of China should stipulate the legal liability and the design of renewable energy certificate trading system as soon as possible,so as to set up the systematic RPS regime has been put forward specifically.