How Political System Affects the Development of Alternative Energy (Case of the USA and the European Union)

This paper is devoted to process of innovation in a state. This issue is illustrated by another process: introduction of renewable sources of energy to the common structure of energy consumption. In fact, renewable energy began to develop not so long time ago and its potential is huge from simple saving resources to the improving the environmental situation. However, the widespread “problem” of renewable is high economic costs for developing technologies and the creation of special structures and long payback. So why do so many developed countries have come to such a move? Which do political factors influence? This is research question of this paper. Today world leaders in the introduction of alternative energy sources are the European Union and the United States of America. In both jurisdictions, renewable energy has one of the main places on the agenda relating to energy and the environment. It regularly hosts a variety of laws and creates more and more economic stimulus in the form of tax breaks and discounts for development, installation and using of renewable energy. Based on the analysis of the introduction of alternative sources in these regions several hypotheses have been formulated. They were tested by using regression analysis. As a result of the analysis it was found that the greatest impact on the introduction of renewable energy sources have EU-countries national goals to achieve a certain level of consumption of "clean" energy, the current price of petroleum, veto-players, and GDP .