A comparison between American and European wind energy diffusion models

The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 planned for all the subscribing countries a reduction of greenhouse gases by 5.2% with respect to the values of 1990. The production of electric energy through renewable energy systems is one of the ways to respect Kyoto limits. For this reasons, the countries that signed the protocol started to promote incentives policies for the adoption of these new technologies. The United States, although not subscribers of the protocol, is also committed in some way to create renewable electric energy. In particular with respect to the wind energy systems, the US is classified as one of the leader countries after Germany and Spain and often compared with European countries. On the contrary, since for comparing installed wind turbines capacity it is crucial to avoid all plain nuisance factors, we propose to compare the US diffusion model with that of Europe, that is a region similar for extension of geographical area and wind speed. Generalized Bass models were performed to estimate the life-cycle of innovations in the markets of the two regions.