The expansion of renewable energy (RE) sources is a cornerstone of the energy transition in order to achieve the global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. However, the costs of electricity from RE sources has not yet achieved grid-parity with conventional energy sources and thus RE sources need support in order to achieve the expansion targets. The global trend regarding the promotion of RE sources is to determine the support payments through competitive bidding processes. Such auctions for RE support are, as of today, deployed in many countries around the globe in particular in Latin America and in Europe. Moreover, since 2017 the European Commission requires its member states to deploy auctions in order to promote RE (European Commission, 2014). There is a large variety of auction designs in the different countries, yet, there is a general development to open up the auction formats. The most recent openings were so-called cross-border auctions, where participants from different countries could participate, e.g. in Denmark and Germany (Kitzing & Wendring, 2016), and technology-neutral auctions, where bidders participate with different technologies, examples include the Netherlands (Minister van Economische Zaken, 2015) and Mexico (IRENA, 2017). With a more open auction format and thus a larger variety in participating bidders, the complexity of designing an auction increases as well. We analyze the main challenges when designing a technology-neutral auction. We focus on the general differences between different RE technologies and the resulting implications for the bidders and the auctioneer.
展开▼
