Title of Dissertation: national renewable energy policy

 

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4 
Table 2. 
International trade disputes on renewable energy policy. 
Dispute 
number 
Respondent 
Complaint 
Request date 
At issue 
Current status 
DS 412 Canada 
Japan 
(USA) 
(EU) 
Sep. 13, 2010 
(Sep. 24, 2010) 
(Sep. 27, 2010) 
Domestic content 
requirements in the 
feed-in tariff program 
Implementati
on notified by 
respondent 
DS 419 China 
USA 
(EU) 
(Japan) 
Dec. 22, 2010 
(Jan. 12, 2011) 
(Jan. 17, 2011) 
Grants to domestic 
manufacturers of 
wind power 
equipment 
In 
consultations 
DS 426 Canada 
EU 
Aug. 11, 2011 Domestic content 
requirements in the 
feed-in tariff program 
Implementati
on notified by 
respondent 
DS 452 EU 
Italy 
Greece 
China 
(Japan) 
(Australia) 
(Argentina) 
Nov. 5, 2012 
(Nov. 16, 2012) 
(Nov. 19, 2012) 
(Nov. 19, 2012) 
Domestic content 
restrictions 
In 
consultations 
DS 437 USA 
China 
May 25, 2012 
Imposition of 
countervailing duty 
measures by the U.S. 
on certain products 
from China 
Compliance 
proceedings 
ongoing 
DS 449 USA 
China 
Sep. 17, 2012 
Countervailing and 
anti-dumping 
measures on certain 
products from China 
Report 
adopted with 
recommendati
ons 
DS 456 India 
USA 
(Japan) 
(Australia) 
Feb. 6, 2013 
Feb. 13, 2013 
Feb. 21, 2013 
Domestic content 
requirements 
Appellate 
Body report 
circulated 
DS 473 EU 
Argentina 
(Russia) 
(Indonesia) 
Dec. 19, 2013 
(Jan. 9, 2014) 
(Jan. 15, 2014) 
Anti-dumping 
measures 
Appellate 
Body report 
circulated 
DS 510 USA 
India 
Sep. 9, 2016 
Domestic content 
requirements 
In 
consultations 
Source: WTO, “Index of Dispute Issues”, 
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_subjects_index_e.htm
 (accessed 
October 10, 2016). 

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5 
These new types of renewable energy policies conflict with the original goal of 
renewable energy policies because they increase the cost of renewable energy. For 
instance, domestic content requirement would increase the cost for renewable energy 
installation by interrupting developers to use low-priced imported products. Increasing 
trade of renewable energy products has contributed to reducing the cost of renewable 
energy, but it led governments to introduce the measures to protect domestic renewable 
energy industry, which could slow down the increasing trend of renewable energy 
installation. 
Previous studies on renewable energy policy tend to focus on traditional 
renewable energy policies, which are mostly support policies.
4
Since they investigated 
how support policies contributed to the growth of renewable energy, these studies barely 
addressed the recent rise of non-traditional renewable energy policies. Although a few 
recent studies examined the rise of renewable energy protectionism and trade disputes, 
they are limited in revealing why new types of renewable energy policies have 
4
Bird, Lori, Mark Bolinger, Troy Gagliano, Ryan Wiser, Matthew Brown, and Brian 
Parsons. "Policies and market factors driving wind power development in the United 
States," 
Energy Policy
33, no. 11 (2005): 1397-1407; Gan, Lin, Gunnar S. Eskeland, and 
Hans H. Kolshus. "Green electricity market development: Lessons from Europe and the 
US."