ViewCompat.setElevation(View, int) currently creates no shims.
The only way to simulate elevation right now is to apply a shadow pre-v21. Define your style/layout/drawable in values and override it in values-v21. For buttons I use style overrides. For layouts, I usually go for reference override (use @null to get rid of a drawable).
Hopefully in the future an update to the support library will add shims.