TY - GEN A1 - Engelhorn, Thorsten A1 - Müsgens, Felix T1 - Why is Germany’s energy transition so expensive? Quantifying costs from wind energy decentralisation T2 - Resource and Energy Economics N2 - This paper discusses the efficiency of promotion schemes for renewable energy sources using the example of onshore wind energy in Germany. We analyse whether the scheme incentivised a cost-minimal capacity build-up by developing a model to derive two cost-minimal benchmark scenarios, which are then compared to the historical capacity build-up between 1995 and 2015. The costs of the two cost-minimising benchmark scenarios are significantly lower than those of the historical build-up. The benchmark cost reduction largely stems from greater efficiency—fewer turbines are being constructed overall but they are being placed at better wind sites so the annual production of wind energy remains unchanged. Hence, aggregated turbine land use is also significantly down in these scenarios. Furthermore, we compare costs for consumers, as protecting consumers from price discrimination of producers is sometimes used to justify higher payments for low-wind sites. However, our results show that the efficiency gain from building at high wind sites outweighs the distributional effect, even from a consumer’s perspective. KW - Energy markets and pricing Y1 - 2022 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-UBICO/frontdoor/index/index/docId/28688 UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928765521000269 SN - 1873-0221 VL - 65 ER -