Selling Solar The Diffusion of Renewable Energy in Emerging Markets

To solve the looming climate change crisis, the world will need to make a profound technological shift to cleaner sources of energy. One technology that has enormous potential, especially in rural areas of many emerging markets, is solar photovoltaic technology for electricity. And yet, the progress of this technology has been disappointingly slow since its introduction in the 1980s. In Selling Solar the author seeks to explain why this has been the case, arguing that the market for solar has been ready for the last decade, it just took time for entrepreneurial firms to pioneer this new business, and for the right policies to take shape to encourage and support them. Once that happened, diffusion ramped up leading to the beginning of what can truly be called a solar revolution.

The author draws on the compelling, but often overlooked, literature on innovation diffusion to guide the analysis. Such literature has tremendous applicability to understanding the up-take of solar energy, as it does to the up-take of other green innovations. The author then adds to this literature, by drawing in the transformative impact of entrepreneurs and their firms. Selling Solar puts business at the centre of its analysis, as the pivotal agent that will drive change, but also recognizes that business responds to incentives set by policy. The author reviews which policies have and have not worked for solar in emerging markets. He concludes by calling on market mechanisms, such as carbon markets, to be made to work for solar, and considers the broader lessons for clean energy diffusion.

To solve the climate crisis, the world must make a wholesale shift to renewable energy technologies. With surging growth in emerging markets, this transformation takes on even greater urgency. The challenges– and opportunities– are immense. Selling Solar considers how such a shift might happen. Focusing on the case of solar photovoltaics, it shows how, at the start of thetwenty-first century, this promising technology began to diffuse rapidly in select emerging markets, after years of struggling to take off. What were the initial barriers to diffusion? How were they overcome? Who did it? And how can this success be replicated? Drawing on literature on innovation diffusion and entrepreneurship, the author answers these questions, showing how entrepreneurs affected profound technological change not just through the solar systems they sold, but through the example they set to both new market entrants and policymakers. In analyzing how this happened, this book offers important lessons for the diffusion of a range of renewable energy technologies in emerging markets, and for the advancement of the sector as a whole. Selling Solar is essential reading for anyone who believes in a renewable energy future and wants it sooner rather than later.

Prologue Part 1: Solar and Diffusion Theory 1. Solar in Emerging Markets 2. Diffusion Eheory and Entrepreneurship 3. Theory Applied to Solar Part 2: Case Studies in Entrepreneurship and Policy Formation 4. Solar Goes Commercial 5. Entrepreneurs as Agents of Change 6. The World Bank on a Learning Curve Part 3: Policy and Conclusions 7. Policy Guidance: Seeing it Like an Entrepreneur 8. Solar Tomorrow: 100 Million Solar Homes 9. Accelerating a Renewable Energy Future. Index

Damian Miller is the CEO of Orb Energy, a leading provider of solar energy solutions in India. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has more than ten years of solar industry experience. Selling Solar is written from the perspective of someone who has both analysed and influenced the diffusion of solar energy in emerging markets.