Small-scale renewable power technologies are an alternative to reach a sustainable economic growth: Evidence from Spain

Recent electricity management systems such as Smart Grids and Virtual Power Plants help to better integrate distributed generation renewable resources (RDG), such as photovoltaic, small hydro or micro wind in electricity markets. In this context, an important increase of small-scale power generation technologies is expected in Spain by 2020, according to the Spanish Action Plan for Renewable Energy. This paper analyses the environmental and economic impacts of the massive integration of RDG in Spain for 2020 by using an Input-Output approach. The induced production and employment effects in every sector due to new RDG project investments as well as the CO2 reductions attributed to a decline in conventional electricity consumption are estimated. The results indicate that investments in RDG based on photovoltaic and small-hydro have the greatest impact on employment generation. The RDG investments will lead to a decrease in emissions of 21.67% in 2020 compared with 2013. The RDG technologies become an alternative to reach a sustainable economic growth in Spain. In future research, a multi-regional input-output model and the study of the links between energy consumption, standard of living and consumption patterns will aid to delve deeper into the relationship between economic growth and the environmental impacts of small-scale renewable technologies. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.