Financial Measures for Supporting Wind Power Systems in Europe: A Comparison between Green Tags and Feed’in Tariffs

Abstract

Distributed Generation demonstrates to be able to significantly influence the electric power system, bringing considerable benefits to the quality of service and improving the energetic efficiency of the distribution network. In particular, in the last few years, Distributed Generation from renewable energy sources is considerably increased thanks to the many support policies promoted worldwide with the aim of facing the environmental issue and the problem of the permanent rise of prices of the fossil energy. In this contest, after a brief review on the financing strategies carried out in Europe in the last decade for promoting the recourse to renewable energy, the paper presents a comparison among the main support strategies for Wind Farms (Feed-in tariffs and Green Tags), taking into account the situation in some European Countries.