Evaluating policy options for increasing the RES-E penetration in Greece

According to the current European and national legislation, Greece targets to a 40% share of renewable energy sources (RES) in electricity production by 2020. This paper focuses on the most suitable policy mix for Greece in achieving or approaching the aforementioned target. For the evaluation of different policy mixes two research tools are used, the Green‐X simulation model and the multi‐criteria evaluation method AMS; the latter is the combination of the standard multi‐criteria AHP, MAUT and SMART methods. The Green‐X simulation model is used to create four different scenarios about Greece regarding policy mixes aiming to increase the percentage of electricity produced by renewable energy sources. Outcomes of the model along with information from official reports and research papers are used as inputs to the AMS method. The results of the AMS method concerning all scenarios show which scenario ensures a more effective policy framework for achieving or approaching the new target. The results show that none of the scenarios can exceed an average of 25% share of renewable energy sources‐electricity production in mainland–large‐scale hydropower plants excluded. Sensitivity analysis is used to examine the robustness of the final results. As long as the electricity production of the non‐interconnected islands represents 9% (average of the last decade) of country’s total it is very difficult for Greece to achieve the 40% share of RES in electricity production by 2020.