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The aim of the article is to analyze the results of the Bulgarian renewable energy policy in the context of the EU aims and global renewable energy system (RES) investments till 2014. The policy is examined through comparison of the aims as stated in the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) of Bulgaria and the achieved results. They are evaluated in respect of renewables share in final energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and household access to green energy sources. The main outcomes show a low level of decentralized energy generation and pressure upon electricity price increase. Key words: Bulgaria, energy, climate changes, policy, renewable energy sources, investments. JEL CODES: Q48, Q42, Q54 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/rfds.v20i3.1344

The purpose of the work is to elaborate a concept of Roadmap for bioenergy development of Ukraine, which outlines the goals and prospects of the bioenergy sector until 2050. The proposed Roadmap is an essential document for the country for several factors. First, it determines the contribution of bioenergy to meeting Ukraine’s international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. Second, the Roadmap shows ways to achieve existing bioenergy development goals until 2035. Third, the Roadmap can be used to elaborate the National Renewable Energy Action Plan until 2030 and the Concept of state policy on energy and environment, as well as to revise the Ukraine’s current Energy Strategy with an extension until 2050. The baseline approaches of Roadmap for bioenergy development of Ukraine until 2050 are in line with the basic principles of the Ukrainian Green Deal until 2050 and additionally take into account two promising segments of the bioenergy sector such as the development of production and consumption of first- and second-generation biofuels and biomethane. The structure of consumption of biofuels by their types and by types of produced energy carriers is proposed. It is estimated that in 2050, about half of the total biofuels consumption will come from solid biofuels used for heat production. The rest in comparable proportions will be split between solid biofuels for power production, biogas, biomethane, and liquid biofuels. Further, the Roadmap needs to be detailed, refined and expanded to the level of the Strategy for bioenergy development in Ukraine until 2050.

The aim of the work is to analyze targets on the transition to 100% renewable energy sources (RES) existing in different countries of the world as well as strategies for their achievement. The task of the work is to identify the most promising directions and develop appropriate recommendations for Ukraine. The global trend is setting targets for the transition to 100% RES, at least in some energy sectors, developing appropriate strategies and their implementation. Over the last decade, the cost of renewable energy has been steadily declining, making RES more competitive with fossil fuels in many parts of the world. Today, more than 50 countries, hundreds of cities and regions in one form or another have committed to switching to 100% RES. Most often it is about achieving 100% of renewable electricity. So far, at least 52 cities and regions have achieved their targets for the transition to 100% RES. Of these, 41 are located in Europe and 9 are located in the United States. About 2/3 of these targets relate only to renewable electricity. In Ukraine, the official targets for the development of RES are set out in the National Renewable Energy Action Plan until 2020 and in the Energy Strategy of Ukraine until 2035. Recently, a draft Concept of the “green” energy transition of Ukraine until 2050 was developed, which sets the goal of achieving a climate-neutral economy by 2070. One of the main directions of decarbonization of the economy is the development of RES in combination with increasing energy efficiency and energy saving. It is necessary to resume completing the document with the inclusion of reasonable long-term goals to achieve 100% RES in certain energy sectors and in the whole energy balance of Ukraine.

In 2017, Bahrain’s Cabinet endorsed the country’s first national renewable energy action plan. The plan included the installation of residential solar photovoltaic cells as a means of using renewable energy in government-built housing units. This was followed by the establishment of the country’s first photovoltaic solar panel manufacturing company and the introduction of a net metering policy. However, public acceptance of residential solar panels has not been researched. This study aimed to address this gap through the distribution of an online survey. A total of 764 complete responses were received. The results showed a considerable number of respondents were interested in installing solar panels. However, the respondents recognized several challenges in both buying and installing them, including capital cost, lack of information, and maintenance requirements. This study’s findings offer insights on how the public perceives solar panels, along with issues the government needs to address to ensure successful public participation in the use of solar energy in the residential sector in Bahrain. Keywords: Climate change, Public acceptance, Solar panels, Survey, Willingness to pay

Проаналізовано місце біомаси в енергетичному балансі України та роль біоенергетики у досягненні цілей Національного плану дій з відновлюваної енергетики. Представлено результати оцінки енергетичного потенціалу біомаси в Україні. Розглянуто проблеми встановлення тарифів на теплову енергію та основні проблеми ринку паливної біомаси. Запропоновано шляхи створення конкурентних ринків теплової енергії та біопалива в Україні.

This article contributes to discussions of the social acceptance of renewable energy (RE) by developing an analytical framework that considers three dimensions (community, market, and political-regulator) at three different scales (macro, meso, and micro). This framework is conceived in order to identify those dynamics that are potentially counterproductive to the energy transition and need further policy emphasis, as well as supporting those that demonstrate a positive impact. Using this framework, we critically reflect on the 2010 National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) policies of three European countries with high wind resources: Denmark, Ireland, and the UK. Within the RE policy landscapes of these three countries lies the contentious issue of social acceptance of wind power. The framework analysis reveals similar policy profiles for each country, characterized by a heavy focus on the market dimension at all scales, an effort to allow private business to steer the transition, and a low focus on the community dimension. In doing so, our research reveals how policy-making processes have privileged the voice of actors who are able to communicate quantifiable data and evidence to support their position, and these actors thereby have greater influence to shape national energy policies.

The electrical supply system of Mainland Portugal is primarily responsible for 25% of the country’s CO2 emissions. The principal reason for these high CO2 emissions is the significant dependence on coal power plants, which account for approximately 30% of the overall electricity generation. In 2018, to ensure CO2 emissions reduction, the Portuguese Government presented the “National Renewable Energy Action Plan for 2030”, a strategic proposal for the sustainable development of the Portuguese economy through the decommissioning of fossil power plants. This study presents, on the Portuguese mainland scale, electricity system technical solutions for achieving CO2 emissions reduction, using the guidelines of the Portuguese Government plans for the upcoming decades, and a high share of renewable energy supply. The technical solutions were achieved using an hourly electricity balance via the EnergyPLAN software. The study also identifies the minimal load capacity value of thermal power plants required to maintain the security levels of the Portuguese electrical system and highlights the importance of pumping hydropower plants for the integration of variable renewable electricity sources.

EU and Chinese energy policies have both internal and external effects, and are dependent on policies adopted by other global energy actors. In order to evaluate the EU’s and China’s strategic options in this field, the interdependencies of EU and Chinese energy policy need to be addressed in a complementary manner. This chapter provides an initial study of EU and Chinese domestic energy policy and a discussion of their interactions, mediated through the renewables sector and the power grid. Moreover, this chapter suggests a framework for a systematic analysis of these interactions and how the interactions between Chinese and EU energy policy may occur in the two sectors; it provides the basis for detailed elaboration of a broader analysis.

The threat of climate change and depletion of its fossil fuels has pushed the UK to aggressively pursue renewable energy sources for power production. According to its National Renewable Energy Action Plan, the UK hopes to generate 30% of its electricity demand by 2020 from renewable sources, with energy from biogenic sources accounting for approximately 22.3% of renewable generation. The UK requires that all woody biomass imported to help meet these renewable electricity goals provide evidence of legal and sustainable sourcing and, at a minimum, save 60% in GHG emissions compared to fossil fuels. Under its Timber Standard for Heat & Electricity, the UK recognizes woodfuel imported from US forests certified by Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as meeting this requirement. This study evaluates SFI and FSC sustainable forest management certification programs using criteria found in the scholarly literature for sustainable bioenergy feedstock production. The a...

Critical materials as well as rare earth elements and precious metals such as platinum, gold and silver are used significantly for computer hard disk drives, mobile phones, hybrid electric vehicles, batteries, renewable energy system and many other applications. It is therefore important to quantify and estimate both current stocks and flows of such materials, as well as future requirement for industries and economies. In this study, which is focused on wind energy system in the European Union (EU) 27, the current consumption and future requirement of critical and precious materials were calculated and estimated using the wind power production dataset from ecoinvent and data from National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). It is shown that fluorspar has been the most consumed material to date, and will probably be the most required material in the future. Among other critical and valuable materials, the main materials used for current wind energy system are silver, magnesium, indium, gold and tantalum. These materials will also be required significantly by 2020 for the wind energy system in the EU 27. It is argued that these results should be connected to the future energy and material policy and management.

Recently new and renewable energy sources began to become prominent as alternatives to fossil fuels. Among these are wind, solar, hydraulic, biomass, geothermal and wave energies. As for Turkey, the least accounted and less applied of these sources is wave energy. The government has established a short-term outlook on utilization of renewable energy sources, named “National Renewable Energy Action Plan” which is a part of Vision 2023 targets. Nonetheless, there is no planned utilization of and/or investment into wave energy in Turkey’s agenda up to the year 2023. This might be mainly because of the complex structure of wave energy conversion systems, marine conditions, mechanical difficulties and high initial investment costs. However, this type of energy is environmentally friendly, cheap and clean, and a great potential is available especially in Turkey which is surrounded on three sides by sea. Although Turkey has neither coasts to oceans nor a long stretch of west coastline, which have the highest energetic waves thanks to the prevailing west-to-east winds; the Black Sea basin, as well as the south-western Mediterranean region, may offer a good potential for development as an energetic regime, often comparable to oceanic sites in terms of wave heights, induced by strong wind patterns. In this study, wave energy potential in Turkey and recent studies made on determination of suitable sites for evaluation of wave energy in Turkey are discussed.

In a notable change from the position in the past, the Greek government is committed to greening the economy and has assumed determined policies and actions to boost the utilization of renewable energy. The aim of the paper is, firstly, to present the latest developments of the renewable energy policy in Greece, the current achievements and impediments in the implementation of planned reforms in the accomplishment of its 2020 targets, and the specific policy measures introduced; second, to discuss the pace of respective developments in other EU-28 member countries; and, third, through a questionnaire survey and stratified interviews with market participants, to verify the achievements of the government towards reversing previous bureaucratic and prone to corruption procedures. Respectively, research survey results from our survey and interviews conducted in the second semester of 2014 are presented. The majority of respondents expect that the targets set in the National Renewable Energy Action Plan will be reached by 2020. The paper and the questionnaire survey have been conducted under the auspices of the European research program THALES, which intends to measure various aspects of the shadow economy in Greece, also including the areas of renewable energy trade and finance.

The domestic biogas market has been developing rapidly, and legislation (The Act) supporting the use of renewable energy sources has come into force. In light of this act and investment support from national programs co-financed by the European Union (EU), the total number of biogas plants has recently increased from a few to 670. The total capacity of electricity generation of those 670 installed plants exceeds 360 Megawatts (MW) (as of mid-2018). Such dynamic growth is expected to continue, and the targets of the National Renewable Energy Action Plan are projected to be met. The use of waste material, which was urgently needed, was the original aim of biogas plants. However, in certain cases, the original purpose has transformed, and phytomass is very often derived from purpose-grown energy crops. Maize is the most common and widely grown energy crop in the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, maize production raises several environmental issues. One way to potentially reduce maize&rsquo, s harmful effects is to replace it with other suitable crops. Perennial energy crops, for example, are possible alternatives to maize. A newly introduced species for the conditions of the Czech Republic, Elymus elongatus subsp. ponticus cv. Szarvasi-1, and some other well-known species&mdash, Phalaris arundinacea L. and Miscanthus &times, giganteus&mdash, are suitable for Czech Republic climate conditions. This paper presents the findings of the research and evaluation of environmental, energy-related, and economic aspects of growing these crops for use in biogas plants. These findings are based on 5-year small-plot field trials. The energy-related aspects of producing Elymus elongatus subsp. ponticus cv. Szarvasi-1, Phalaris arundinacea L., and Miscanthus x giganteus are reported on the basis of experiments that included measuring the real methane yield from a production unit. The economic analysis is based on a model of every single growing and technological operation and costs. The environmental burden of the individual growing methods was assessed with a simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) using the impact category of Climate Change and the SimaPro 8.5.2.0 software tool, including an integrated method called ReCiPe. The research findings show that Szarvasi-1 produces 5.7&ndash, 6.7 Euros (EUR) per Gigajoule (GJ) of energy, depending on the growing technology used. Szarvasi-1 generates an average energy profit of 101.4 GJ ha&minus, 1, which is half of that produced by maize (214.1 GJ ha&minus, 1). The environmental burden per energy unit of maize amounts to 16 kg of carbon dioxide eq GJ&minus, 1 compared with the environmental burden per energy unit of Szarvasi-1, which amounts to 7.2&ndash, 15.6 kg of CO2 eq GJ&minus, 1, depending on the yield rate. On the basis of the above-mentioned yield rate of Szarvasi-1, it cannot be definitively recommended for the purpose of biogas plants in the Czech Republic.

The Irish government has undertaken to reduce national CO2 emissions through a range of measures put out in their Biomass Action Plan and the National Renewable Energy Action Plan. The conversion of peat fired power plants to co-fire with renewable biomass is one of these. This paper considers how the adoption of sweeping policies impact on other actors presently supplying or utilizing woody biomass resources. The SAWMILL sector (18 sawmills), BOARD sector, 3 board plants, and ENERGY sector (3 peat fired power stations) were included in a Linear Programming (LP) based transportation study. Specific transport costs between each residue producing sawmill and each board and energy plant were modeled and used in finding the minimum delivered cost for a number of scenarios. Scenario 2015 represented the status quo, while Scenario 2030 represented a situation with 30% co-firing with woody biomass equivalents in the energy plants. For each time horizon, the problem was solved from the perspective of society at large (GLOBAL), for the benefit of the board sector (BOARD) or with emphasis on minimizing the cost to the energy sector (ENERGY). The cost of transporting alternative sources of renewable energy was varied between €100 and €500 TJ−1. Results showed how overall supply costs increase with increasing alternative energy cost, but also how the dynamics between sectors focus worked. The cost of transport to the Energy sector ranged from €306,043 to €996,842 in Scenario 2015, while the increased demand in 2030 led to a range of between €1,132,831 and €4,926,040, depending on the alternative cost selected. For the Board sector, whose absolute demand remained constant, the total transport cost ranged between €868,506 and €3,454,916 in Scenario 2015. The unchanged demand showed that the transport costs also remained the same for the 2030 Scenario, however, the optimization focusing on the Energy sector, increased the delivery cost to the Board sector by up to €693,730 per year by 2015 and €842,271 per year by 2030, indicating how intervention would be necessary if political ambitions of a 30% co-firing should happen without detriment to other important wood based industries. Science Foundation Ireland Charles Parsons Energy Research Programme Bioenergy Innovation Centre CenBio project COST Action Coford, The National Council for Forest Research and Development

The heating sector has been neglected in energy policies for quite some time, especially on the European level. Only recently, with the implementation of the European directive 2009/28/EC the sector has gained higher attention. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the heat market in Austria and of the current status and future prospects of renewable energy in the heat sector (RES-H) up to 2030. Despite the growing energy demand, the share of renewable energy in the total energy demand for space heating and hot water increased from about 20% in 1970 to about 34% in 2008. This is mainly due to ambitious RES-H support instruments and regional policy targets. For example, the government of the region of Upper Austria has implemented a target of 100% RES-H share in the space heating and hot water sector until the year 2030. However, the National Renewable Energy Action Plan for 2020 foresees only moderate growth rates for RES-H compared to recent market growth and scenarios in literature. Due to the ambitious targets and support schemes of regional governments it seems likely that RES-H deployment could growstronger than stated in the action plan.

The growth in the use of renewable energies in the EU has been remarkable. Among these energies is PV. The average annual growth rate for the EU-27 countries in installed PV capacity in the period 2005-2012 was 41.2%. While the installed capacity of PV has reached almost 82 % of National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) targets for the EU-27 countries for 2020, it is still far from being used at its full potential. Over recent years, several measures have been adopted in the EU to enhance and promote PV. This paper undertakes a complete review of the state of PV power in Europe and the measures taken to date to promote it in EU-27. 25 countries have adopted measures to promote PV. The most widespread measure to promote PV use is Feed- in Tariffs. Tariffs are normally adjusted, in a decreasing manner, annually. Nevertheless, currently, seven countries have decided to accelerate this decrease rate in view of cost reduction of the installations and of higher efficiencies. The second instrument used to promote PV in the EU-27 countries is the concession of subsidies. Nevertheless, subsidies have the disadvantage of being closely linked to budgetary resources and therefore to budgetary constraints. In most EU countries, subsidies for renewable energy for PV are being lowered. Twelve EU-27 countries adopted tax measures. Low-interest loans and green certificate systems were only sparingly used.

This short paper presents results from an energy forecast model for the Republic of Cyprus. The model was used during years 2010–2011 to assist national authorities in their preparation of the National Renewable Energy Action Plan and the Energy Efficiency Action Plan of Cyprus in line with the requirements of European Union Directives. Major macroeconomic and price assumptions of the model are presented, and results from model application under different assumptions with regard to the evolution of energy efficiency are outlined and discussed. On the basis of these scenarios the paper discusses policy implications for Cyprus regarding the country's compliance with EU energy and climate legislation.

The European Union has set ambitious targets of raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources from 20% by 2020 to 27% by 2030. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of woody biomass in renewable energy as gross final energy consumption in the European Union (the EU-28). The paper identifies leading and lagging countries in biomass development by focusing on their current biomass use and forecasts future perspectives. The research compares and evaluates the role of biomass in renewable energy in the EU-28 focusing on countries' potential resources and policy support. The study shows that all countries are making efforts to reach the 20% target in 2020 and exhibit a trend of increasing renewable energy as gross final energy consumption towards the new target of 2030. Solid biomass plays an important role in reaching the EU's renewable energy targets. The majority of the EU-28 countries are close to reaching their national renewable energy targets and show a very attractive biomass development. Unless energy consumption decreases however, some member states will face serious problems in reaching their renewable energy target in 2020. Following our analysis, the largest problems occur in those MS having a relative high-energy consumption pattern: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is unlikely that they can comply with expected renewable energy demand, unless they mobilize more woody biomass from their available domestic potential (France, Germany) or considerably increase their woody biomass imports (mostly wood pellets) from elsewhere (United Kingdom). Post-print / final draft

This report aims to identify the savings that EU countries with expensive renewable energy options would incur if a joint wind project was developed in Albania. It further investigates the potential to share the renewable electricity from such a project between Albania and the EU. In its draft National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP), the Albanian government outlined several potential wind power projects. Among these we selected one which is located in the north of the country, close to developed transmission grids, and is sufficient in size to attract international investors. The envisaged Lezhe wind power plant would have an installed capacity of 230 MW and estimated investment costs of 275 million EUR.

Today, the supply of electricity still comes mainly from large power plants fueled primarily by fossil fuels that operate through established distribution and transmission systems. Although these systems provide an efficient service worldwide for many years, times are changing. Modern societies have understood that in order to mitigate climate change, it is needed to reduce polluting emissions. The optimum use of traditional sources must be accompanied by an ever-increasing use of renewable energy sources (RES). There is therefore the spread of a wide range of energy sources that involve a number of complexities in terms of improvements in RES’ technologies and design of electrical networks. The EU has launched several initiatives to increase the use of RES in all EU countries. With the climate and energy package, energy policy becomes a unilateral commitment in Europe. The achievement of macro-objectives outlined in the package is entrusted to the synergistic effects of different proposals closely linked. With regard to the RES Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from RES, it sets the overall policy framework in order to ensure coverage of 20 % of the energy demand of the EU through RES to the electricity, transport (biofuels), and heating–cooling sectors. The objectives of mandatory coverage with RES are implemented at the national level and they vary from one country to another; they are between 10 and 49 % of final consumption by 2020.

As member of the European Union, Poland has committed to the reduction of CO2 emissions, the increase of energy efficiency and an increase of the share of energy generated from renewable sources by the year 2020, a difficult challenge for a member state traditionally relying on energy generation from out-dated coal-fired power plants. Poland must implement a comprehensive strategy to gradually diversify and modernize the energy sector, while meeting the growing energy demand and maintaining stable supply. The thesis aims to identify the challenges and opportunities for the development of a future-proof energy sector, which further complies with the commitments agreed upon within the framework of the EU 20-20-20 goals. It will look at the characteristics of the current coal based network and assess the potential to diversify the national energy mix by inclusion of renewable energy alternatives.

Wind and solar energy are expected to play a major role in the current decade to help Europe reaching the renewable energy penetration targets fixed by Directive 2009/28/EC. However, it is difficult to predict the actual production profiles of wind and solar energy as they depend heavily on variable meteorological features of solar radiation and wind speed. In an ideal system, wind and solar electricity are both injected in a fast reacting grid instantaneously matching supply and demand. In such a system wind and solar electricity production profiles should complement each other as much as possible in order to minimise the need of storage and additional capacity. In the present paper the complementarity of wind and solar resources is assessed for a test year in Italy. To achieve this goal we employ data at high spatial and temporal resolution data for both solar radiation and wind speed in Italy obtained from running two state of the art models (PVGIS and MINNI). Hourly profiles for solar and wind energy produced are compared in each 4 × 4 km 2 grid cell in Italy for 2005, and hourly, daily and monthly correlation coefficients are computed in order to assess the local complementarity of the two resources. A Monte Carlo approach is also developed to estimate how large-scale wind and solar energy productions could be potentially involved to complement each other in a scenario with up to 100 production sites across Italy. The results show how local complementarity can be very interesting with monthly correlation coefficients reaching values lower than −0.8 in several areas. Large-scale complementarity is also relevant with nation-wide monthly correlation coefficients showing values between −0.65 and −0.6. These model results indicate that in this sample year of 2005, wind and solar energy potential production have shown complementary time behaviour complementary, favourably supporting their integration in the energy system.

UE policies have played a leading role in protecting the environment by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and minimizing environmental impacts of energy use. Romanian National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) has promoted the use of energy from renewable sources in accordance with the Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament. In this regard, renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions for clean and sustainable energy development in Romania. Despite the current economic downturn, electricity consumption in Romania for 2014–2020 is expected to have a growth of 2–3% per year, estimating a 4.6% gross domestic production (GDP). Romania’s potentials for electricity generation from renewable resources is represented by: hydro energy with a theoretical potential estimated to 40 TWh in hydro power plant with more than 10 MW and 6 TWh in the small ones; wind energy with a theoretical potential estimated to 23 TWh and photovoltaic energy estimated to 1.2 TWh (source Romanian NREAP). From estimations and theoretical figures to reality regarding renewable energy in Romania the evolution is spectacular because in 2007 the hydro electric energy production was representative with 15.7% and renewables were no longer mentioned, and in 2013 (04.03.3013), the figures were 30.0% in hydro power and 6.5% wind (www.transelectrica.ro). According to NREAP, the expectations in the wind energy installed capacity were 1,850 MW in 2012 and the real installed capacity was 1,905 MW, with 3% growth. This paper deals with present and future prospect situation of renewable energy and the role of hydropower in Romania. This study shows that there is an important potential for Energy and Sustainability IV 3 www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, Vol 176, © 2013 WIT Press doi:10.2495/ESUS130011 renewable energy in Romania, especially concerning hydropower, and wind energy. We analyze the renewable energy sources in Romania considering the most important criteria for sustainable development.

Three scenarios are developed to illustrate the likely impacts of sustainability criteria on biomass supply and demand within the Biomass Futures project. This paper presents the rationale behind these scenarios. The reference scenario re-analyzes the NREAP bioenergy demands based on the EU Renewable Energy Directive sustainability criteria targeted to biofuels for transport. It provides a refined basis for assessing sustainable bioenergy supply curves. As such, it is expected that this scenario provides member states with direct input to update their National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) templates and to benchmark the available information with a coherent, harmonized approach of estimating the biomass role in the different markets (heat, electricity, and transport) for each member state. The sustainability scenario, on the other hand, expands its coverage to electricity and heat production and applies the sustainability criteria to all bioenergy sectors. Additionally, it considers more stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation criteria for all bioenergy carriers (70%). A high biomass scenario focuses on stronger policy ambitions. The objective of this scenario is to analyze the role of biomass in view of the quite large amount of unutilized biomass potential in the EU, even when the sustainability criteria are included in analyzing the potential.

Growth in the use of renewable energies in the 27 European Union (EU-27) countries over the past decade has been remarkable. Among these energies is solar thermal energy (STE). The average annual growth rate for the EU-27 countries in installed STE capacity in the period 2005–2011 was 20.82 %. While the use of STE has reached almost 43 % of National Renewable Energy Action Plan targets for the EU-27 countries for 2020, it is still nevertheless far from being used at its full potential, mainly because of barriers that hinder the installation of STE-based technologies in homes. Over recent years, various measures have been adopted in the EU to enhance and promote the use of STE. One measure has been to implement legislative regulations that require the housing construction industry to installation this type of energy in new homes. Another alternative has been to promote STE use via three forms of incentives: tax incentives, non-refundable grants and favourable lines of finance. Twenty-five of the 27 EU countries have used subsidies to promote solar thermal energy, 13 have used tax measures, 8 have used financial incentives and only 4 have adopted feed-in tariffs, with those countries with the most implemented measures being those with greatest amount of installed STE technology.

Climate change due to CO2 emissions has been defined as the major environmental challenge to be faced nowadays by the International Community. The European Directive 2009/28/EC of 23 April 2009 on the Promotion of Renewable Energy aims at achieving by 2020 a 20% share of energy from renewable sources in the EU's final consumption of energy. Each EU Member State adopted a national renewable energy action plan (NREAP) setting out its national targets for the share of energy from renewable sources consumed in transport, electricity, heating and cooling in 2020.

According to the Article 4(3) of Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable energy sources the EU Member States submitted their forecast documents. The analysis of the forecast documents resulted that the EU will exceed the 20 % renewable energy consumption target with 0,3 % in 2020. The paper gives an overview about the technical feasibility of the integration of the renewable energy sources in the energy systems in the EU and analyze the critical factors and possible solutions.

Environmental problems and high import dependency from fossil fuels are core problems of the energy policy of the European Union (EU), therefore the EU has committed to increase the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in final energy consumption to 20% by 2020. Individual targets for each EU member must be incorporated in National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). To evaluate the possibilities for development of sustainable energy industry and for preparation of NREAP, evaluation of future energy needs must be made, national RES potentials must be examined and increase of RES share must be planed. In this paper the energy balance and the consumption structure of energy sources in Slovenia, EU and the World is analyzed. The share and growth of RES in Slovenian energy balance is compared with the average values of EU and the World, with emphasis on examining RES potential in Slovenia. Compatibility of RES potentials with the planed utilization for individual RES potentials in Slovenia is analyzed from economic and technological point of view with environmental considerations taken into account. The purpose is to examine which RES potentials have not been fully exploited and compatibility of measures provided in Slovenian NREAP with the estimated potential of RES.

This paper illustrates an analysis of the power generation expansion plan of the Hellenic Interconnected Mainland System as an aspect of the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) of the country for the year 2020. The modeling background and a description of the incorporated technologies are thoroughly provided. In addition, major conclusions of the scenarios investigated are analyzed, and potential issues that system operators will confront are underlined.

In the frame of the European Union energy climate package Slovenia set ambitious target by 2020 to achieve 25% renewable energy in gross final energy demand. According to the new National Renewable Energy Action Plan Slovenia would play an active role in the development and promotion of the new technologies and solutions, which would enable wider usage of the renewable energy sources in industry, public, residential and transport sectors. Within this paper the most important challenges from the Slovenian National Renewable Energy Action Plan, including projection of the electricity production and the future development of the renewable energy sector in Slovenia are presented.