An evaluation of renewable energy usage based on incentive policies

The objective of this thesis is to examine the incentive mechanisms that are applied for the renewable energy across selected countries and to put forward a set of suggestions for the future revision of incentive policy, especially in the photovoltaic technology, that will end in 2020 in Turkey. Three members of European Union, Germany, Denmark and Spain, are analysed with a particular emphasis on their successful/unsuccessful incentive applications. China is also analysed due to its noticeable industrial development in the field of renewable energy. The causal comparative method is used to evaluate the success of incentive policy applications and how they are affected by the external conditions. As a result of the research, it is seen that the best progress in technology-based developments is obtained by constantly observing the technological changes and market monitoring along with the fixed price guarantee. Additionally, the promotion of regular and stable policies, transparent administrative processes, good classification of resources and technologies in applications are found to be important. Announcement of medium and long term incentive policies, removal of fossil incentives, shortening the administrative processes and making constructive changes for domestic part production, determining new tenders for the capacity increase are considered as important for the Turkish case.