Abstract for: Diffusion Dynamics of Wind Energy Technology in Brazil

Renewable energy sources hold great promise to offer a solution to on-going energy scarcity worldwide and to reduce CO2 emissions. Brazil now is the country with the 9th largest installed wind capacity in the world. However, the same auction-based policies that boosted wind energy technology development in Brazil, might be threatening its future development: in the last 3 years, wind energy suffered from a decrease in purchase agreements until reaching zero contracted energy in 2016. This article aims to analyze policy alternatives for increasing the diffusion of wind energy technology in the country, through the modeling of the wind energy market based on innovation diffusion theory. For policy testing, seven scenarios are developed, four related to tax incentives and three related to new auction programs in 2019 onwards. The results show that tax incentive policies effectively decrease the price of energy sold but have little effect in the increase of wind installed capacity. On the other hand, policies aimed at continuing auction programs in the long run provided higher positive variations of wind installed capacity with respect to the base case scenario.