Crisis-Driven Acceleration of Solar and Wind Deployment: A Quasi-Experimental Comparison of Brazil, Germany, and Jordan

Abstract

Energy supply shocks are often expected to accelerate the shift toward solar and wind power, yet this expectation has rarely been tested with a common quasi-experimental design across different crisis types and development contexts. This study examines four supply-crisis episodes in Germany, Jordan, and Brazil over 1990–2024 using interrupted time series (ITS), difference-in-differences (DiD) event studies, and the synthetic control method (SCM), with autocorrelation-consistent confidence intervals and placebo-based inference. Germany’s post-2009 renewable slope rose by 1.19 pp/yr (95% CI 0.87–1.51), unchanged when the financial-crisis trough is excluded. Jordan’s post-2011 renewable-share increment rose by 1.90 pp/yr, led by photovoltaics, while its carbon-intensity increment fell by 13.92 gCO2/kWh/yr. Brazil’s clean-diversification slope doubled after the 2021 drought, from 1.62 to 3.39 pp/yr, although distributed photovoltaics expanding under a concurrent regulatory change supplied most of the added capacity. Germany’s 2022 carbon-intensity rise is the only effect on which all three designs agree in sign, but each estimate is individually imprecise, and SCM is infeasible for Brazil’s carbon intensity with regional donors. Supply crises are followed by faster renewable deployment in all three systems, but the strength of identification differs markedly across episodes.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Energies, 2026 · DOI ↗