The Policy Impact of Renewable Energy Subsidies on Solar PV: The Case of Renewable Portfolio Standard in Korea

In 2012, Korea introduced a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) scheme, replacing the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) scheme as a market support policy of renewable energy in the electricity market. RPS is to allocate obligatory quota of renewable energy sources for electricity suppliers, whereas FIT is to guarantee high prices for electricity from renewable energy sources. This study examines the effect of this policy change on solar photovoltaic market. According to the study, solar PV market grew fast under FIT as well as under RPS. However, under RPS the size of subsidy for solar PV suppliers was shrunk substantially. In addition, market risk increased severly under RPS due to the volatility of price of renewable energy certificate (REC) as well as of the electricity market price. The small and medium suppliers of solar PV were suffered the most severly from these policy effects. Therefore, the policy reform of RPS is needed to alleviate the market risk of small and medium suppliers of solar PV.