23 November 2011: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published a book titled “Deploying Renewables 2011: Best and Future Policy Practice,” which analyzes successful renewable energy deployment policies and offers guidance for policy makers on avoiding past mistakes and overcoming incoming challenges surrounding the deployment of renewable energy.

IEA Executive Director Maria Van der Hoeven warned that without massive and sustained ramping up of renewable energy production, “the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system.” She added that to date, growth in renewable energy has focused on a minority of available technologies, and rapid deployment is confined to a relatively small number of countries.

The book provides guidance to policy makers to shift these trends via analyses of: market deployment for renewables, including cost trends for electricity, heat and transport; policies for deploying renewables, focusing on economic and non-economic barriers to technology deployment; economic support for electricity; and globalizing deployment.

Among its key findings are that: growth in renewable energy deployment is currently broadly in line with what would be required to meet IEA projections of a sustainable energy future; numerous renewable technologies are becoming cost competitive and offer attractive investment opportunities in some cases, although many economic and non-economic barrier remain; overall policy packages are more important than individual policies; and policymakers need to allow policies to be dynamic over time as priorities change.

The report also offers a number of recommendations for governments already trying to increase deployment as well as for those who have not yet committed to doing so. [IEA Press Release] [Executive Summary] [Publication: Deploying Renewables 2011: Best and Future Policy Practice]