Evaluation and evolution of policies to promote renewable energy: the transition of the electricity sectors in Latin America.

Summary The global energy transition implies an accelerated development of new and renewable energies for electricity production (ENRe), which implies new technical, economic and regulatory challenges for the electricity sector. However, a stronger commitment of emerging and developing countries to deep economic decarbonization requires a strengthening of promotion policies as well as the design of regulatory instruments better adapted to the specificities of their economic and institutional contexts.This thesis addresses the issue of the design, implementation and evaluation of policies for the promotion of ENRe adapted to the context of Latin American countries. To this end, we first use environmental economics to analyze the different regulatory instruments available, characterize them and propose evaluation criteria, based on a thorough review of the literature. We then carry out a panel econometric study to identify the determinants of investments in new ENRe capacities and to measure the effectiveness of policies. Third, we mobilize the evolutionary theory of technological change to analyze in depth the process of policy implementation, the existing barriers and the results obtained. This analysis is based on three case studies of the electricity sector in Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Finally, we explore the issues related to the massive deployment of ENRe in Latin America by 2030-2040: the integration of intermittent energies, access to financing and the industrial challenge. Our analyses highlight that the transformations of the economic and institutional context drive a dynamic that conditions the choices of public policies and their performance. We therefore propose the basis of an analytical framework for the design and evaluation of ambitious long-term promotion policies. These policies must be integrated into a multidimensional and coherent project for the energy sector. Specifically regarding the choice of the promotion instrument and its design elements, we have highlighted four principles to be taken into account especially in the context of emerging countries: the level of risk for investors, the total cost of the policy for the consumer, the institutional adequacy of the instrument and, finally, its flexibility to support technologies with different degrees of technico-economic maturity. This flexibility must also respond to multiple objectives linked to the socio-economic development process of each country.