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This paper describes a concept for the detailed assessment of the costs and benefits of renewable energy technologies deployment. A first quantitative impact assessment of German renewable energy technologies use is conducted from a historical perspective based on this comprehensive method. It includes costs and benefits at three different levels – energy system, micro- and macro-economic. The findings suggest that, at the system level, the generation costs in the electricity and heat sector are partly compensated by positive effects mainly from avoided emissions due to the use of renewable energy technologies in the electricity and heat sector. On the electricity market, small power consumers bear a very large share of the policy costs, while others might even profit from renewable energy technologies use. However, a comprehensive assessment that accounts for all the different negative and positive effects in the long term, including distributional effects, is more challenging. The concept applied here allows a differentiated comparison of a wide range of effects including aggregated costs and benefits as well as how these are distributed across different economic actors.

Worldwide investments in renewable energy (RE) have doubled between 2007 and 2011 while the financial crisis has led to stricter regulations. The paper describes the impacts of risk provision requirements on financing costs of RE investments. The risk assessment indicates that under the given conditions in Germany, policy and market risks are considered to be zero. Technical, performance and other risks are to be around 1.6 to 2.1 % p.a. So therefore, yield risk is left as the only determining default risk of RE investments. The risk provisions of RE investments are compared to the RE default risks by applying a simple cash-flow model. The findings show that risk provisions are not adequate for default risks and increase financing costs, and hence investment costs, in German PV and onshore wind generation plant, by up to EUR 13 million for large PV plants and EUR 8 million for wind parks (2011).

The national binding targets, set for renewable energy deployment at European Union (EU), call for extended clean energy investments. Renewable energy projects require high up-front expenditures including, in many cases, considerable financing costs. The main objective of this paper is to elaborate and apply a methodology that allows assessing the most important risk categories related to renewable energy investments. The cornerstone of this approach is the weighted average cost of capital, which has been extracted for new onshore wind projects in EU-28 member states based on diverse methods e.g. Capital Asset Pricing Model. Moreover, to validate the model results, a series of interviews with renewable energy project developers and financers across the EU has been conducted. The results show that, following the country risk, policyrelated risks exert the highest impact on the cost of capital. Moreover, there are significant discrepancies between different geographical regions and market deployment levels. To support policy makers’ decision on effective risk-reducing policy designs, the assessment could also be extended to other renewable energy technologies.

This article presents the outcomes of an assessment of expected costs and benefits of future renewable energy use in the European Union by 2020 and beyond. A binding European Unionwide renewable energy systems target of achieving at least 27% renewable energy systems share in gross final energy demand by 2030 was adopted by the Council of the European Union in October 2014. This has to be seen as an important first step in defining the framework for renewable energy systems post-2020. Other steps, like a clear concept for and an agreement on the effort sharing across Member States have to follow. For doing so, clarity on associated costs and benefits of the future renewable energy systems expansion across European Union Member States appears highly beneficial. The aim of this article is to contribute to the renewable energy systems policy debate, providing an indication of costs and benefits resulting from increased renewable energy systems deployment within the European Union in the 2020 and 2030 frameworks. Within the discussion of costs and benefits, we follow a standardized concept that takes into account the diversity of policies in force and depicts the cost and benefits of renewable energy systems deployment at different levels, avoiding double counting or mixing up of effects. The outcomes of the analysis presented here remain, however, incomplete, focusing on certain indicators and on a related cross-country comparison rather than presenting a complete overview on expected impacts of future renewable energy systems deployment within the European Union.

The use of renewable energy (RE) sources plays a significant role in increasing the security of energy supply and mitigating climate change. Whereas these roles are undisputed, there is an ongoing discussion about the employment impacts of promoting RE deployment. So far no common methodological approach has been developed on how to assess employment impacts of RE deployment. This paper represents the result of a project (IEA-RETD), which intention is to elaborate guidelines for the assessment of employment impacts and to provide insights on impact mechanisms for modelling RE deployment effects. Therefore, the different focus of gross and net impact assessment studies is elucidated and relevant aspects of these studies are discussed. Further, a few selected methodological approaches for impact assessment studies are outlined as well as the results of the recommended assessment approach are briefly presented.

This paper considers the innovation dynamics in OECD countries since the beginning of the 1990s. Special attention is given to German firms that had the exceptional opportunity and burden to develop an innovative regime in the former GDR. Among the OECD countries leading in innovation, Europe is loosing strength, although R&D has doubtlessly become more important in the innovation process of the manufacturing sector, but in particular in the service sector. The EU and some member countries have recognized this and formulated an ambitious objective: R&D expenditure is to be increased to 3% of GDP by 2010. After the trade diversion of West German high technology from international markets to the absorbing East German markets was over, in the second half of the 1990s, Germany has managed to get slightly ahead of Japan as an exporter of R&D-intensive goods and in international patent activities. However, the foreign trade success that the German technology sector enjoyed is mainly based on the automobile sector. Increasing problems in the long term are the decline in the number of qualified manpower entering the labour market. It will exacerbate the shortage of qualified staff in innovating companies.

When paving the way for steps towards the energy transition, aspects of acceptance and perception of society are relevant and partially crucial to be considered for a successful development. In order to help designing elements that are supported by society, this paper considers monetary and non-monetary effects, from society's perspective, on the energy transition. Starting from a literature review, relevant impacts on micro (effects affecting individuals directly), meso (effects that occur at the energy system level) and macro (effects that individuals consider important for society) levels were differentiated. With these findings in mind, a broad quantitative survey with a sample of 300 participants, as well as online workshops with 55 participants, were conducted to investigate perception and judgement of participation in the energy transition. Whether individuals actively participated or not was differentiated in the analysis. The survey revealed that the dynamics of the energy transition, the environmental effects and the increasing energy costs in financial terms and additional burdens were issues for all participants, while environmental and financial aspects were addressed more often by non-participating individuals. In parallel, workshops were held to identify perceived effects of the energy transition in an open format. Most participants had a generally positive attitude towards the energy transition or its impacts, while the majority also saw increasing burdens for society. Compared to non-participating individuals, the participating individuals were more critical of the implementation of the energy transition and of economical role players in the process. Renewable energies are seen as an important element, with active participation advocated predominantly by the participating group. Concerning personal impacts, participating individuals mostly voiced political views and were concerned that the transition was not happening fast enough. The non-participat

[Introduction] Changes in technologies, processes, behaviour and relationships are an essential part of transitions of socio-technical systems. They are induced by 'impulses' within and outside the system. There is a large body of literature discussing interactions within socio-technical systems, between niches and regimes and possibly landscapes (e.g. Geels 2007) or between elements of a system oriented towards specific purposes (Borrás and Edler 2015). However, interactions occur not only within a certain system, but between systems and in different forms and intensities of exchange between the components of two or several systems. Some examples of system interactions are the food-water-energy nexus, smart energy as a resulting field from electricity and ICT, functional foods as nexus between food and pharmaceuticals, or interlinkages between electricity, transport and heating (Hiteva and Watson 2019; Hoolohan et al. 2019, Papachristos et al. 2013, Rosenbloom 2019). The interactions between systems may have significant impact on related transformations, e.g. by accelerating changing pro-cesses, but these interactions could also have hampering and conflicting. Hence, multi relationships and dynamics have to be taken into account carefully in transitions research. However, Rosenbloom states that 'little literature is focussing on interactions between sys-tems'. We agree and think there is still a need to further explore where and how these interactions take place, what characteristics and features of interactions between socio-technical systems exists and what the implications for the system and its transition are. Thus, we strive to elaborate a typol-ogy for interactions between socio-technical systems and identify their impacts on innovations and transition of systems. Therefore, we review how interactions between two or more socio-technical systems are discussed in the transition literature, set up a systematic framework to identify interactions between systems a