• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.51-83
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• 2022

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), one of the most commonly adopted regulation for renewable energy expansion since 2012, has the obvious advantage of inducing competition in power generation source and alleviating the government's financial burden. However, the abuse of credit multipliers and the use of national Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) have resulted in the distortion of RPS as a quantitative control policy. Just as no face value 10 years ago can hold its real value, this paper highlights for the first time that 27.8% of total renewable obligations over the total RPS period were not actually met due to REC inflation and the consequent decline in the value of renewable energy generation. In addition, the distortion of face/real value of REC causes problems in interoperability with other government policies such as RE100 and Emission Trading System.