Economics of Renewable Energy

The book provides a comprehensive review of renewable energy from an economic perspective. Modern renewable energy emerged due to the transformation of ethical values about safety and self-reliance into technologies for energy consumption. Innovative entrepreneurs created valuable energy services. As services with renewable energy expanded during the period of high fuel prices and supportive policies the costs of technologies are decreased which generated global commercialization albeit increasing differences across countries. While the commercialization of renewable energy enables substantial emission reduction of carbon dioxide it also causes larger differences in the pace of consumption across countries which impedes international policies. This optimistic viewpoint on the shift to global low-carbon economy is largely based on statistical data about purchasing power, energy consumption, innovative energy businesses and valuable energy services in many countries on all continents. Interpretation of those data are useful for the verifications scholarly hypotheses and support decisions making about sustainable development in civil society, businesses and policy making.