Strategies to overcome barriers for cleaner generation technologies in small developing power systems: Sri Lanka case study

To Re-Explore the Causality between Barriers to Renewable Energy Development: A Case Study of Wind Energy

“…In addition, an erratic pricing policy reduces the potential developers' willingness to invest, and limits R&D in turbine and other technologically related industries [40,44]. It is worth noting that a reasonable pricing policy not only elevates the economic potential brought by the wind energy [14,26,51,[56][57][58], but also promotes integration between wind energy and national grids [28,42]. From the discussion above, we assume that the absence of an appropriate PPA may limit the site availability and R&D capacity of the related industries; 3.…”

“…Similarly, failure to improve public awareness and understanding on the subject, that may result in the choice of site may become an issue due to the "not in my back yard" (NIMBY) syndrome; often this results in the plant being located in remote areas, and these areas typically have insufficient infrastructure [44,48]. Thus, potential developers must invest additional funds in infrastructure such as building power grids and substations in the early stages of wind energy development [12,14,17,28,42,43,46,51]. Based on the above discussion, we assume that the lack of social promotion measures may result in insufficient knowledge regarding projects and technology information, with the limitations on site availability; 5.…”

“…That is, the evolution of the research assumptions, or literature collation and derivation theory, becomes a hypothetical model to be verified [54,55]. This study is based on the existing literature on wind energy development barriers [1,8,9,12,14,17,22,26,28,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. The causality model of barriers in the study is built by the assumptions of barriers that are documented in the literature.…”

“…Secondly, as far as choosing the variables (barriers) is concerned, due to the difficulty of data collection, a complex model might not necessarily contribute to the development of wind energy in developing countries; on the contrary, a clear and simple result of the analysis provides better clearer insights. Therefore, this study selected important developing countries over the last six years and their wind energy development-related issues [1,8,9,12,14,17,22,26,28,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], in order to inspect common obstacles from the economic, social, technological, policy and environmental dimensions, which focused on 11 issues: the policy aspect-the lack of national policies and appropriate power purchase agreements (PPA); the economic aspect-the lack of fiscal incentives and high investment costs; the social aspect-the lack of social promotional measures with local infrastructure deficiencies; the technical aspect-insufficient R&D capabilities, lack of projects and technology information, and necessary equipment for wind energy; and the environmental aspect-limitations over site availability, and the wind energy intermittency. Some other issues such as country-specific and region-specific barriers (for example: hurricanes, dust storms, etc.…”

“…Namely, aside from the decision maker's determination for RE development, the enhancement of the integration of the electricity grid, expansion of infrastructure, and increased industrial innovative ability seem to be the priorities for China's future development of wind energy. Other related researches include the development of wind energy in the past, present and future [22,43], the potential of wind energy and strategies to promote RE market penetration [1,26,44],the restrictions of RE technology applications and coping measures [8,45], the potential of RE development, its current status and future prospects [46][47][48][49], the analysis of RE technology feasibility and the importance of public awareness [9], RE technology applied in rural areas [50], and clean energy and responses to energy-efficient technological improvement and obstacles [51]. In summary, if policy makers are determined to promote the penetration of RE, in addition to the necessary innovative policy framework, future areas that decision-makers should endeavor to address included the related technologies (i.e., the information of wind energy development and technology), the environment (i.e., the usability of the site), and social factors (i.e., public education and improvement of public awareness).…”