Renewable Energy Expansion: Key Challenges and Emerging Opportunities

Koichiro Ito

No 34644, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The global expansion of renewable energy is key to addressing climate change. After a decade of dramatic cost reductions—especially for solar photovoltaics and wind—renewables now approach cost parity with fossil generation. While this cost reduction has led to a steep increase in solar and wind power in several countries, the global share of solar and wind generation remains modest—approximately 15% as of 2023. This article reviews recent economic studies and identifies three central challenges and corresponding opportunities for scaling up renewable energy—underdeveloped regulatory and market design, insufficient intertemporal market integration, and inadequate spatial market integration. The insights from this review highlight effective ways to accelerate the global transition to renewable energy.

JEL-codes: Q40 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
Note: EEE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34644.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34644

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34644
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().