Economic and Environmental Performances of Small-Scale Rural PV Solar Projects under the Clean Development Mechanism: The Case of Cambodia

Ellen De Schepper, Sebastien Lizin, Bart Durlinger, Hossein Azadi and Steven Van Passel
Additional contact information
Ellen De Schepper: Centre for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium
Sebastien Lizin: Centre for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium
Bart Durlinger: Blonk Consultants, Gravin Beatrixstraat 34, 2805 PJ Gouda, The Netherlands
Hossein Azadi: Centre for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium
Steven Van Passel: Centre for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-23

Abstract: The two core objectives of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are cost-effective emission reduction and sustainable development. Despite the potential to contribute to both objectives, solar projects play a negligible role under the CDM. In this research, the greenhouse gas mitigation cost is used to evaluate the economic and environmental performances of small-scale rural photovoltaic solar projects. In particular, we compare the use of absolute and relative mitigation costs to evaluate the attractiveness of these projects under the CDM. We encourage the use of relative mitigation costs, implying consideration of baseline costs that render the projects profitable. Results of the mitigation cost analysis are dependent on the baseline chosen. To overcome this drawback, we complement the analysis with a multi-objective optimization approach, which allows quantifying the trade-off between economic and environmental performances of the optimal technologies without requiring a baseline.

Keywords: mitigation cost; multi-objective optimization; solar lantern; solar home system; LCA; CDM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/9/9892/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/9/9892/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:9:p:9892-9914:d:55621

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().