Cooperation on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Europe is expected to contribute to energy and climate policy goals and bring multiple benefits at the national, regional and European levels. For this reason, the Cooperation Mechanisms of the RES Directive 2009/28/EC were originally designed to encourage the collaboration of countries and contribute to the achievement of the 2020 EU RES target in a cost-effective manner while providing Member States (MS) with flexibility to meet their national RES objectives. These mechanisms will allow MS to achieve their national RES target in cooperation with other MS and include statistical transfers, joint projects and joint support schemes. However, their use has been limited, leading to skepticism about their future use. The aim of this article is to identify the factors that influence MS decision to use the Cooperation Mechanisms and to rank their importance. The empirical analysis is based on a comprehensive, in-depth literature review and a dedicated survey to MS. Our results show that, indeed, a wide array of drivers and barriers have influenced and will influence the future use of the Cooperation Mechanisms. The main drivers and barriers in the past significantly differ to those influencing the future use. Furthermore, the perception of the relevance of the drivers and barriers by the MS differs depending on whether the countries have already met or are having difficulties to meet their 2020 RES target domestically and on whether they have actually used the Cooperation Mechanisms or not. Some policy implications on how to overcome the existing barriers to the use of those mechanisms are derived from the analysis.

The “Jatropha for Galápagos” (JFG) project in Ecuador aims to progressively replace diesel with jatropha oil in the generation of electricity in The Galápagos Islands. Thus, understanding and motivating the participation of jatropha suppliers is a priority for the sustainability of JFG. For this reason, the factors influencing their decision-making to participate in the project have been identified and analyzed using a binomial logit model. The results show that factors found to positively influence the likelihood of participation include, amongst others, the supplier’s experience within the project, their participation in local organizations, and the degree of satisfaction with the price of jatropha oil. In addition, children from producer families’ collaboration in the harvest of jatropha increases the overall likelihood of participation within the project. Similarly, the distance to the collection center positively influences the chances of participation. Conversely, those suppliers with higher wages and those who declared that jatropha harvest starts in April have a reduced likelihood of participating in the project. The findings obtained from this project can help decision-makers develop new measures to improve the sustainability of the project through initiatives to motivate the participation of jatropha suppliers in the program.

The aim of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive sustainability assessment of the electricity generation with two alternative electricity generation technologies by estimating its economic, environmental and social impacts through the “Framework for Integrated Sustainability Assessment” (FISA). Based on a Multiregional Input Output (MRIO) model linked to a social risk database (Social Hotspot Database), the framework accounts for up to fifteen impacts across the three sustainability pillars along the supply chain of the electricity production from Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) and Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) technologies in Mexico. Except for value creation, results show larger negative impacts for NGCC, particularly in the environmental pillar. Next, these impacts are transformed into “Aggregated Sustainability Endpoints” (ASE points) as a way to support the decision making in selecting the best sustainable project. ASE points obtained are later compared to the resulting points weighted by the reported priorities of Mexican decision makers in the energy sector obtained from a questionnaire survey. The comparison shows that NGCC achieves a 1.94 times worse negative score than STE, but after incorporating decision makers´ priorities, the ratio increases to 2.06 due to the relevance given to environmental impacts such as photochemical oxidants formation and climate change potential, as well as social risks like human rights risks.