The political drivers of renewable energies policies

This paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy (RE) sources and compares their explanatory power to that of other economic, energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far. The sample encompasses the EU countries bound to attain the target of 20% share of gross final energy consumption by 2020. The panel data analysis shows that lobbying by the manufacturing industry negatively affects RE deployment, whereas standard measures of government quality show a positive effect; furthermore, left-wing parties promote the deployment of RE more than right-wing parties.