Suchergebnisse

The 'regulatory crisis' has become a common paradigm on both sides of the Atlantic. It seems to be corroborated by economists pointing to inefficiencies of regulation. Political scientists have discovered implementation lags, and legal scholars complain about an overburdening of the legal system.By reviewing some witnesses of the US discussion and by comparing this discussion with trends in Europe [European Economic Community (EEC) and member state level] I attempt to reshape the issues. Regulation has to be discussed with reference to perceived market failures and instruments used by the political system to cope with them. Pressure is put upon 'social regulation', that is, regulation of market deficiencies affecting 'diffuse interests' of consumers, environment, etc. Despite the rhetoric, the welfare state has not regulated too much but too little: It suffered from the reductionism paradox which is seemingly inherent in social regulation and becomes more apparent in federal (USA) or quasi-federal (EEC) vertically integrated political and legal systems. The modern discussion about 'deregulation', regulation 'by incentives', or regulation 'by negotiation' has not been able to overcome the structural deficiencies which limit attempts at social regulation.The regulatory crisis is defined in terms of the dwindling legitimacy of the welfare state to keep markets both running and 'clean'. The more people perceive this dilemma, the more the crisis will shift from ideology to reality.

Investment risks of utility-scale PV systems may arise from a wide range of sources: political stability in a region, interest rate levels and currency exchange rates or future energy price. However, the presence of stable political and economic conditions and feed-in tariffs or power purchase agreements may limit interest and price risks to acceptable levels. The technical risk of deviations between expected and actual life-time energy yield of a PV power plant is mostly influenced by the quality of energy yield predictions in case that system components correspond to their datasheet and guaranteed values and the maintenance concept is applied as expected. Recent publications estimate the standard uncertainty of life-time energy yield predictions to about 8%, which directly contributes to overall investment risk. In this paper we analyze two different strategies to reduce the influence of uncertainties of energy yield predictions on investment risks. The first strategy is diversification of risk, i.e. investing in a portfolio of systems. The second strategy is related to adjusted investment periods. It is concluded, that both strategies as well as the combination of these strategies are able to significantly reduce uncertainties. The resulting uncertainty of the lifetime energy yield for the combination of both approaches is estimated to about 3%.