Evaluating the effectiveness of Australia’s Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme for rooftop solar

Rohan Best, Paul Burke and Shuhei Nishitateno

CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: Australia has among the highest rates of small-scale solar photovoltaic adoption in the world, with substantial geographical variation in uptake. Using postcode-level data up to December 2018, we quantify the impact of Australia’s spatially-differentiated Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme on solar uptake. We use spatial autoregressive models and other approaches such as a regression discontinuity design. The results indicate that postcodes receiving a higher subsidy factor have significantly more small-scale solar installations, after controlling for solar exposure and spatial patterns in the data. The subsidy elasticity of small-scale solar capacity installations during 2018 was around 1.2. We use this estimate to calculate that an increase in the subsidy flowing to new installations would be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at a subsidy cost of around US$36 per tonne, depending on assumptions.

Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/fil ... /2019-08/wp_1903.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Evaluating the effectiveness of Australia's Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme for rooftop solar (2019)
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:een:ccepwp:1903

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCEP ().