To examine the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures regarding their position in the success of energy transition, attitudes towards these technologies have been increasingly recognised to play an important role. Notably, most of empirical literature has focused on the global northern countries, with bottom-up transition governance structure. In this paper, we study attitudes towards photovoltaics in Iran, as a fossil fuel-rich country of the global south, with a top-down energy transition structure and committed to UNFCCC. We focused on governmental organisations as a key stakeholder group regarding their role in winning public acceptance. Aiming at finding determinants of attitudes towards PV, we conducted 15 qualitative interviews in 10 governmental organisations in Golestan, Guilan and Tehran. Taking an inductive approach to the data, we considered the acceptance and attitude theories as sensitising concepts to investigate common and specific issues in terms of social acceptance in Iran. We find accessing electricity and diversifying electricity resources via PV as the key technical drivers, and the upstream policies as the key political drivers towards PV adoption. Though the weak policies (design and implementation), privileging economic and technical obstacles, do hinder the PV adoption and shape negative attitudes toward it. We realise that the previous literature overlooked the fossil fuel-rich countries and their energy transition governance structure. Our findings imply that better-designed upstream policies with a more enabling policy framework are needed to motivate actions on the governmental organisation level.

Market acceptance of renewable energy technologies involves both the demand and supply sides, though the main empirical literature has focused on the demand side under the titles like public, communities, users’, market or even social acceptance. In this study, I focus on solar businesses (niche actors) as the suppliers of solar PV services in Iran. My main research questions are: (i) which factors drive solar businesses to establish and do business in the solar PV field despite the fossil-based economy and energy policies in Iran? (ii) what are the practical barriers to solar business in Iran? and (iii) which roles do Iranian solar businesses play in bringing solar PV development forward? I collected the data via 20 semi-structured interviews with solar businesspeople in diverse Provinces in Iran. Taking an inductive approach (Grounded Theory) toward the data, my results lead to significant insights: the dominance of intrinsic behavioural drivers over the major extrinsic barriers among Iranian solar businesspeople, moreover to their key roles in educating people and driving the innovative deployment of solar PV. This research helps to inform first, policymakers about the existing potential among solar businesses, and second the solar businesses themselves about adopting better business strategies.