Market-Specific Barriers and Enablers for Organizational Investments in Solar PV—Lessons from Flanders

Abstract

Solar Photovoltaics (PV) is an important contributor to a sustainable energy transition and consists of an increasingly affordable and accessible technology. Although solar PV policies in industrialized countries have mainly benefited affluent households, non-homeowner market segments often remain underdeveloped. In this paper, we review barriers and enablers for solar PV investments in non-homeowner market segments and investigate sustainability aspects of its institutional environment. We use focus group data from Flanders (Belgium) to investigate non-homeowner residential markets (including social, rental, and collective housing), public sector markets (including schools, and health and social care facilities), and commercial markets. They have in common that they are mostly governed or mediated by organizations, and that very specific regulatory and institutional conditions apply. Our main finding is that, even in times of high energy prices, the energy savings potential of solar PV is often not a sufficient condition for organizations to engage in solar PV investments. Major barriers include diseconomies of scale, split incentive problems, internal organizational barriers, and legal uncertainty. Important enablers are energy sharing frameworks and framework contracts for group purchasing. We conclude with recommendations on institutional quality, organizational capacity building, market development, mechanism design, and social justice to ensure sustainability.

When do circular business models resolve barriers to residential solar PV adoption?

“…Recent survey research focuses on barriers and enablers to increase self-consumption (and thus increase the economic benefits) of solar PV production (Colasante et al, 2022), including motivations for battery energy storage adoption (Alipour et al, 2022) or behavioral change (Colasante et al, 2021). Research on solar PV investments in non-residential market segments is far more limited and utilizes qualitative research techniques such as interviews (Reindl and Palm, 2021) and focus groups (Van Opstal and Smeets, 2022a).…”

The Carrot or the Stick? Stakeholder Support for Mandatory Regulations towards a Circular Fashion System

“…The advantage of this mixed-method approach is that it combines the analytic rigor of multivariate statistical analysis techniques with qualitative techniques that fully consider the undocumented and implicit knowledge of stakeholders in a descriptive way [176]. Focus group research within the domain of circular economy research has been used to gain an in-depth understanding of value propositions and boundary conditions for the implementation of circular business models and circular economy strategies [177][178][179][180][181]. A mixed-method approach has been applied to circular economy challenges, such as stakeholder awareness [182], reverse logistics [183], and organisational implementation practices [184].…”

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“…Sheng and Liu [12] suggested that residential solar development needs cooperation among political, market, and community actors. Some researchers found challenges associated with renewable energy [1,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”