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11 - The Politics of Renewables: Lessons for International Economic Dispute Settlement from Renewable Energy Disputes

from Part III - New Issue Areas and Dispute Settlement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2021

By
Vyoma Jha
Edited by
Manfred Elsig ,
Rodrigo Polanco  and
Peter van den Bossche
Manfred Elsig
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Rodrigo Polanco
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Peter van den Bossche
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
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Summary

Renewable energy is playing a central role in countries’ efforts to diversify and move away from the use of fossil fuels. The shift to a low-carbon economy, through renewable energy power generation, is hugely dependent on public and private, domestic and foreign investments in the sector. However, the private sector, which is an important player for advancing the renewable energy sector, is faced with policy uncertainties and low returns on investments as compared to traditional energy sources (Mathews 2010). Therefore, the initial high costs of moving into the renewable energy sector need to be balanced out with governmental support that incentivizes investment in the renewable energy sector (Wilke 2011). The economic rationale behind government support for renewable energy rests on the fact that it has to overcome market failures arising from the inability of markets to account for social and environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions due to the use of traditional fossil fuels, while the environmental argument rests on advancing renewable energy production as a means of climate change mitigation (Peat 2012).

Type
Chapter
Information
International Economic Dispute Settlement
Demise or Transformation?
 , pp. 297 - 322
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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