Abstract
Brazil has been failing to offer the most favorable conditions for the implementation of onshore wind farms, due to the presence of multiple barriers. However, the country has observed a fast and expressive wind energy (WE) diffusion (the installed WE capacity grew 37 times in the last decade). Furthermore, its onshore wind farms have reached impressive capacity factors (with productivity levels much higher than the average around the world) and a very low levelized cost of electricity. This study aims at identifying how wind developers plan onshore wind farms to overcome existing barriers. Based on forty-one interviews with relevant stakeholders of the Brazilian WE sector, the study identified efforts targeted at overcoming twenty-four previously identified barriers. Although most barriers may be overcome directly through developer initiatives, addressing higher level barriers, namely an unstable macroeconomic environment, a poor transmission infrastructure, and inadequate access to capital, depends on government actions.

Abstract
Onshore wind energy (WE) has achieved a significant diffusion worldwide, in spite of the existence of multiple barriers to the large-scale implementation of wind farms. These barriers have been reported in a large number of studies, but the literature is lacking a systematized overview of their categories and locations. Based on a framework for the analysis of barriers to the penetration of renewable energy sources proposed by Painuly [363], this systematic literature review contributes to addressing this gap, identifying barriers to the large-scale implementation of onshore wind farms by category (market failures, market distortions, economic and financial, institutional, technical, social and other barriers) and location (countries around the world), and characterizing them by the level of economic development (least developed, developing, in transition, and developed) and stage of diffusion (recent or advanced) in their locations. The framework showed a high level of fit with the case of WE and allowed the identification of 31 barriers in 159 countries. The barriers were found to be mostly present in developing economies with recent diffusion, although some barriers were found to occur broadly across developed economies, regardless of the stage of diffusion. The three most frequently observed barriers were the inadequate consideration of externalities, uncertain and unsupportive governmental policies, and insufficient transmission grids.

Abstract

Abstract
Investments in cross-border electricity interconnections are key for the integration of the European energy market. To analyze policy frameworks for these decisions, we model two settings for the expansion of transmission capacity between two regions, where the volume of investment is agreed upon through either Nash-Coase or Nash bargaining. For each setting we provide fair share cost allocation solutions, respectively with and without compensations. Each region has its own TSO, maximizing social welfare within its geography, and the markets are modeled with linear supply and demand curves, with trade enabled by the interconnection. The results of the application of the models to the Iberian market suggest their ability to estimate realistic values for the capacity of cross-border interconnection between two regions.

Abstract
Increasing wildfire threats and costs escalate the complexity of forest fire management challenges, which is grounded in complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and policy factors. It is immersed in this difficult context that decision-makers must settle on an investment mix within a portfolio of available options, subject to limited funds and under great uncertainty. We model intra-annual fire management as a problem of multistage capacity investment in a portfolio of management resources, enabling fuel treatments and fire preparedness. We consider wildfires as the demand, with uncertainty in the severity of the fire season and in the occurrence, time, place, and severity of specific fires. We focus our analysis on the influence of changes in the volatility of wildfires and in the costs of escaped wildfires, on the postponement of capacity investment along the year, on the optimal budget, and on the investment mix. Using a hypothetical test landscape, we verify that the value of postponement increases significantly for scenarios of increased uncertainty (higher volatility) and higher escape costs, as also does the optimal budget (although not proportionally to the changes in the escape costs). Additionally, the suppression/prevention budget ratio is highly sensitive to changes in escape costs, while it remains mostly insensitive to changes in volatility. Furthermore, we show the policy implications of these findings at operational (e.g., spatial solutions) and strategic levels (e.g., climate change). Exploring the impact of increasing escape costs in the optimal investment mix, we identified in our instances four qualitative system stages, which can be related to specific socioecological contexts and used as the basis for policy (re)design. In addition to questioning some popular myths, our results highlight the value of fuel treatments and the contextual nature of the optimal portfolio mix.