 The diverging paths of German and United States policies for renewable energy: Sources of differenceFrank N. Laird and Christoph Stefes Energy Policy, 2009, vol. 37, issue 7, 2619-2629 Abstract: The United States and Germany started out with very similar policies for renewable energy after the energy crisis of the 1970s. By the year 2000 they were on very different policy paths and, as a result, the German renewable energy industry has moved well ahead of that in the United States, both in terms of installed capacity in the country and in terms of creating a highly successful export market. In this paper, we reject some of the conventional explanations for this difference. Instead, these differences arise from the intersection of contingent historical events with the distinctive institutional and social structures that affect policy making in each country. Our analysis of the historical path-dependent dynamics of each country suggests that those who wish to further renewable energy policy in the United States need to take into account these institutional and social factors so that they will better be able to exploit the next set of favorable historical circumstances. Keywords: Renewable; energy; policy--Germany; Renewable; energy; policy--United; States; Path; dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:37:y:2009:i:7:p:2619-2629 Access Statistics for this article Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier |
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