The IEA was created during the first oil crisis in the early 70s.The original objective of this OECD sub-organization was to observe the supply and demand in the international oil market to ensure the supply to Europe and North America. Since then, we have come to understand that energy efficiency and renewable energies are the best way to ensure that supply.

The study "Deployment of renewable energies: the most effective policies" is the first study of this organization that examines the policies of OECD nations in the field of renewable energies. Also included in the study are countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The IEA says that, by 2020, renewable energies could provide up to 41% of the energy demand in the countries surveyed. The potential of solar and geothermal energy use is 30 times its current amount. The growth possibilities are enormous. What countries will use it better?

When analyzing the state of eolic energy, the best placed countries are Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Germany. All these countries use regulated rates to promote the installation of wind farms. IEA experts comment that their success with this renewable energy is due to the security given to long-term investors. Moreover, there are few bureaucratic obstacles. 

According to this study, the large investment costs associated with photovoltaic energy is what prevents this market from developing quicker. Regulated rates in Germany and Spain have helped promote the PV segment, despite the costs.

Germany, The United Kingdom and Luxembourg are the leaders in terms of biogas production. The installment system proved to be very effective in Great Britain and Italy. Part of this success is also due to the production of methane from organic waste, which lowers production costs. The study shows that for the production of biomass, different types of development policies can be useful.

The IEA also found that heat generating by renewable sources is quite neglected. This is the case, for example, of geothermal energy. According to the study, the large investment costs, the complex planning and bureaucracy, and the distance between heat sources and potential users, are the main obstacles for the development of this resource. Heat generation using biomass and cogeneration is growing much faster than geothermal or solar heating. Denmark and Sweden show the largest increases.

China, Brazil and Austria have experienced the highest gr owth in recent years in the production of hot water through renewable energy.

The production of biofuels has also been studied and, unlike other renewables, they can be used far away from the source. Brazil is the world leader of ethanol production from sugar cane. Germany, by contrast, focuses on the production of biodiesel and has the highest growth rates for this type of fuel, although the IEA admits that its production is relatively expensive.

There is already a widespread awareness of what the use of biofuels means, unlike three years ago, and it´s known that its mass production leads to increases in food prices, deforestation and massive use of water. For these reasons, the IEA argued that the use of biofuels must be sustainable to allow this market to continue growing.

The general conclusions of the study are:

- We should remove all possible obstacles for the use of renewable energies, such as legal, network access, technical expertise or public acceptance .

- The legal and economic conditions must be as simple as possible to attract investors.

The IEA states that the integration of renewable energy in the energy market will require a fundamental restructuring in this field and that greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts must be taken into account in the pricing of energy. They assert that if no measures are taken to reduce these emissions, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will double by the end20of this century and the average temperature could rise by 6 degrees, which would produce a climatic disaster of global dimensions.