The renewable energy sector expands continuously due to ambitious energy goals for 2020 declared by the EU, however its expansion is hampered by several barriers in the field of costs, regulation and market performance. This study elaborates renewable energy potentials in the region Centrope and identifies in the next step possible factors affecting the successful development of renewable energy sector in the named region. The results showed that lack of information deriving from deviations in energy potentials on national and regional scale become incorporated in national energy policies and feed-in tariff laws leading to ineffective exploitation of renewable energy potentials on a regional scale. Additionally it was observed that centralized policies as found in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary enhance this process due to missing authorized regional autonomy, which could counteract and have an agenda regarding the exploitation of renewable energy potentials. Therefore it is recommended to enlarge regional autonomy in order to facilitate the development of renewable energy sector and provide more flexible feed-in tariffs taking into account deviations in renewable energy potentials on a regional scale
