Selling Solar: The Diffusion of Renewable Energy in Emerging Markets / Edition 1

by Damian Miller

Overview

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 the twenty-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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849712101
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/30/2010
Edition description:	1
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

'Few missions are more important than solarizing the developing world - Few people have more experience of this task than Damian Miller. This unmissable book is the story of making it happen.' Jeremy Leggett, Founder and Executive Chairman of Solar Century, and author of Half Gone and The Carbon War 'Selling Solar sheds light on the failures, successes, lessons learned and best-practice in the history of solar innovation diffusion in emerging market economies. Its analyses and sound recommendations, deriving from the author's long practice in this field, will provide a practical guideline in the future.' Hermann Scheer, General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy and President of EUROSOLAR 'An extremely useful publication which provides a very valuable assessment of how solar energy can be harnessed on a large scale using market approaches.' R. K. Pachauri, Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), and Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'Selling Solar is for everyone in the business of solar and solar support ... the solar trip of a lifetime from an expert who has experienced it all.' Photon International 'This book moves way beyond the headlines and explores the current and future of an exciting and dynamic industry.' Daniel Kammen, Professor, University of California Berkeley, Founding Director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory 'With a combination of entrepreneurial vision, persistence and policy innovation, Damian believes that the world can ignite a market for solar that always existed and was just waiting to happen.' Judge Business School, University of Cambridge 'There are books that inform, those that instruct, and those that inspire - Selling Solar does it all, and manages to be an absorbing and entertaining read at the same time.' Green Energy 'A report from the front line of entrepreneurial enterprise.' International Journal of Ambient Energy 'This book should be recommended reading for any policymaker who participated at the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 and really wants to make a difference in developing countries.' Institute of Physics Energy Group Newsletter 'The book provides an excellent argument for the need to ignite local entrepreneurs to establish infrastructure (sales, service and inventory) and to develop consumer credit in order to deliver a high capital item like solar in any market, developing or developed. I therefore support its primary conclusion, and recommend the book to interested readers.' Energy News 'The book is a land mark.' Renewable Energy Spectrum Magazine 'This richly-sourced overview of all the ways solar energy is operating in the lives of millions of rural and less-affluent people is quite inspiring! ...The Green Transition is clearly underway worldwide, as Damian Miller documents in this useful book.' EthicalMarkets.com

From the Publisher