It is an open secret that renewable power requires incentives – these usually are in the form of capital subsidies, tax incentives and most importantly, via feed in tariffs.
It is a million dollar (make that Billion Dollar) question what the future of feed in tariffs will be for the mainstream renewable power sources. I picked up some resources on these. Wouldn’t say they provide a peek into the future, but at least one of these try telling us how the government arrives at these numbers, so that will provide us with some clues.
Go through the following links when time permits
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One of the points that should be discussed is the impact of such higher feed-in tariffs on the cost-competitiveness of a particular region once the amount of electricity from renewable sources becomes a significant proportion of the total electricity of that region. The argument has already been made that the process of best shoring has allowed developed nations to export their pollution by importing from nations with lax pollution control mechanisms. This can be a problem within a country as well, as the second link points to the experience of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in generating wind power beyond RPO targets.