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

Wim Van Opstal and Anse Smeets
Additional contact information
Anse Smeets: Unit Sustainable Materials Management, Flemish Institute for Technological Research, VITO NV, 200 Boeretang, 2400 Mol, Belgium

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-26

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.

Keywords: renewable energy transition; solar PV; energy policy; social sustainability; circular business models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13069/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13069/ (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:14:y:2022:i:20:p:13069-:d:940156

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 ().