LAPSE:2023.25610
Published Article
LAPSE:2023.25610
A Free-Market Environmentalist Transition toward Renewable Energy: The Cases of Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom
William Hongsong Wang, Vicente Moreno-Casas, Jesús Huerta de Soto
March 29, 2023
Renewable energy (RE) is one of the most popular public policy orientations worldwide. Compared to some other countries and continents, Europe has gained an early awareness of energy and environmental problems in general. At the theoretical level, free-market environmentalism indicates that based on the principle of private property rights, with fewer state interventionist and regulation policies, entrepreneurs, as the driving force of the market economy, can provide better services to meet the necessity of offering RE to protect the environment more effectively. Previous studies have revealed that Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have made some progress in using the market to develop RE. However, this research did not analyze the three countries’ RE conditions from the perspective of free-market environmentalism. Based on our review of the principles of free-market environmentalism, this paper originally provides an empirical study of how Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have partly conducted free-market-oriented policies to successfully achieve their policy goal of RE since the 1990s on a practical level. In particular, compared with Germany and Denmark, the UK has maintained a relatively low energy tax rate and opted for more pro-market measures since the Hayekian-Thatcherism free-market reform of 1979. The paper also discovers that Fredrich A. Hayek’s theories have strongly impacted its energy liberalization reform agenda since then. Low taxes on the energy industry and electricity have alleviated the burden on the electricity enterprises and consumers in the UK. Moreover, the empirical results above show that the energy enterprises play essential roles in providing better and more affordable RE for household and industrial users in the three sampled countries. Based on the above results, the paper also warns that state intervention policies such as taxation, state subsidies, and industrial access restrictions can impede these three countries’ RE targets. Additionally, our research provides reform agendas and policy suggestions to policymakers on the importance of implementing free-market environmentalism to provide more efficient RE in the post-COVID-19 era.
Keywords
decision-making, Denmark, electricity prices, energy production, energy transition, entrepreneurship, EU Green Deal, European Union, free-market environmentalism, Germany, industrial access restriction, political economy, public policy, Renewable and Sustainable Energy, state subsidies, taxation, United Kingdom
Suggested Citation
Wang WH, Moreno-Casas V, Huerta de Soto J. A Free-Market Environmentalist Transition toward Renewable Energy: The Cases of Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. (2023). LAPSE:2023.25610
Author Affiliations
Wang WH: Department of Applied and Structural Economics & History, Faculty of Economics & Business, Complutense University of Madrid, 2822 Madrid, Spain [ORCID]
Moreno-Casas V: Department of Applied Economics I, History and Economic Institutions and Moral Philosophy, Social and Legal Sciences Faculty, Rey Juan Carlos University, 28033 Madrid, Spain
Huerta de Soto J: Department of Applied Economics I, History and Economic Institutions and Moral Philosophy, Social and Legal Sciences Faculty, King Juan Carlos University, 28033 Madrid, Spain
Journal Name
Energies
Volume
14
Issue
15
First Page
4659
Year
2021
Publication Date
2021-07-31
Published Version
ISSN
1996-1073
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PII: en14154659, Publication Type: Journal Article
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doi:10.3390/en14154659
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