Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Agent-Based Modeling of Alternative Financing Models for Clean Energy Investments

Ibrahim Ari and Muammer Koc
Additional contact information
Ibrahim Ari: Division of Sustainable Development, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha 34110, Qatar
Muammer Koc: Division of Sustainable Development, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha 34110, Qatar

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-34

Abstract: Renewable energy investments require a substantial amount of capital to provide affordable and accessible energy for everyone in the world, and finding the required capital is one of the greatest challenges faced by governments and private entities. In a macroeconomic perspective, national budget deficits and inadequate policy designs hinder public and private investments in renewable projects. These problems lead governments to borrow a considerable amount of money for sustainable development, although such excessive debt-based financing pushes them to unsustainable economic development. This substantial amount of borrowing makes a negative contribution to the high global debt concentration, putting countries’ economic and social development at risk. In line with this, excessive debt-based financing causes an increase in wealth inequality, and when wealth inequality reaches a dramatic level, wars and many other social problems are triggered to correct the course of wealth inequality. In this regard, the motivation behind the study is to develop a set of policy guidelines for sustainable financing models as a solution for these intertwined problems, which are: (1) a financial gap in energy investments; (2) an excessive global debt concentration; and (3) a dramatic increase in wealth inequality. To this end, this study presents a quantitative and comparative proof of concept analysis of alternative financing models in a solar farm investment simulation to investigate the change in wealth inequality and social welfare by reducing debt-based financing and increasing public participation. There are many studies in the literature investigating the evolution of wealth inequality throughout history. However, there is a gap in the literature, and investigating the effects of various policy rules on the evolution of wealth inequality in a future time frame needs to be explored in order to discuss possible policy implications beforehand. In this respect, this paper contributes to the literature by developing simulation models for conventional and alternative financing systems. This enables investigating the changes in wealth inequality and social welfare as a result of various policy implications throughout the simulation time.

Keywords: sustainable economics; sustainable finance; equity-based financing; energy economics; agent-based modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/7/1967/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/7/1967/ (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:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:7:p:1967-:d:219446

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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