Renewable energy investment attractiveness: Enabling multi-criteria cross-regional analysis from the investors’ perspective

Abstract

A review of economic geography studies on renewable energy showed a lack of the investors’ perspective in such an analysis that is crucial for both a single investment planning and policy development. This paper introduces a framework for a cross-regional analysis of renewable energy investment attractiveness and illustrates its use on the case of Russia. The attractiveness of each Russian region is analyzed based on four main variables that are used in the construction of an attractiveness indicator. In addition, the indicator takes into consideration the effect of the different renewable energy investment support mechanisms presented in the country. The results allow the comparative analysis of different regions in terms of renewable energy investment attractiveness. The graphical representation of the results enables intuitive understanding and facilitates decision making.

Apart from the direct usefulness of the results to Russian renewable energy market actors, such as investors and policy-makers, the introduced framework can be utilized by the research community and policy-makers for any country with geographical variability to better inform the transition to a low carbon future.