Katherina Grashof

Ph.D. Title: Institutional design of renewable auction mechanisms

Electricity from renewable energy sources (RES) has been supported in many countries in the last decades. Feed-in tariffs (FITs) have been common political instruments in this respect, but also quota systems or auction mechanisms. The latter have recently gained more attention, in part because of a reputation to limit costs to the minimum level necessary, and an increasing number of countries have now started to use auctions for determining the level of remuneration of RES power. The dissertation projects looks at different goals of RES auctioning schemes, like effectiveness, actor diversity and efficiency. At the core of the analysis are the institutional mechanisms used to pursue these goals and the necessary conditions for these to work. The Renewable Auction Mechanism in California and actor diversity in the German wind energy auctions are two of the case studies undertaken for the PhD project.

Katherina Grashof heads the Berlin office of the Institute of Future Energy Systems (Institut für ZukunftsEnergieSysteme gGmbH, IZES), where she is senior researcher with a focus on renewable energy policy. Before this position, Katherina Grashof worked at the Federal Radiation Protection Agency (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz). She studied political science at the Free University of Berlin.