IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/rensus/v41y2015icp762-776.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Barriers to renewable/sustainable energy technologies adoption: Indian perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Luthra, Sunil
  • Kumar, Sanjay
  • Garg, Dixit
  • Haleem, Abid

Abstract

Rapidly increasing energy demand and growing concern about economic and environmental consequences call for renewable/sustainable energy technologies׳ adoption in India. Renewable/sustainable energy technologies have faced a number of constraints that have affected their rate of adoption. In this paper an attempt has been made to identify and rank the major barriers in the adoption of ‘renewable and green’ energy technologies in the Indian context. Twenty-eight barriers have been identified from an extensive literature review. These identified barriers have been categorized into seven dimensions of barriers, i.e. Economical & Financial; Market; Awareness & Information; Technical; Ecological and Geographical; Cultural & Behavioral; and Political & Government Issues. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique has been utilized for ranking of barriers to adopt renewable/sustainable technologies in the Indian context. All pair comparisons in AHP have been made based on experts’ opinions (selected from academia and industry). Sensitivity analysis has also been made to investigate the priority ranking stability of barriers to adopt renewable/sustainable technologies in the Indian context. This paper may help practitioners, regulators and academician focus their future efforts in adoption of ‘renewable/sustainable energy technologies’ in India. Further, this understanding may be helpful in framing the policies and strategies towards adoption of renewable/sustainable energy technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Luthra, Sunil & Kumar, Sanjay & Garg, Dixit & Haleem, Abid, 2015. "Barriers to renewable/sustainable energy technologies adoption: Indian perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 762-776.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:41:y:2015:i:c:p:762-776
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2014.08.077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032114007631
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rser.2014.08.077?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Marilyn A., 2001. "Market failures and barriers as a basis for clean energy policies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(14), pages 1197-1207, November.
    2. Fthenakis, Vasilis & Mason, James E. & Zweibel, Ken, 2009. "The technical, geographical, and economic feasibility for solar energy to supply the energy needs of the US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 387-399, February.
    3. Thomas L. Saaty, 1986. "Axiomatic Foundation of the Analytic Hierarchy Process," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(7), pages 841-855, July.
    4. Alamian, Rezvan & Shafaghat, Rouzbeh & Miri, S. Jalal & Yazdanshenas, Nima & Shakeri, Mostafa, 2014. "Evaluation of technologies for harvesting wave energy in Caspian Sea," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 468-476.
    5. Singh, Jasvinder & Gu, Sai, 2010. "Biomass conversion to energy in India--A critique," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 1367-1378, June.
    6. Yang, Ming, 2006. "Energy efficiency policy impact in India: case study of investment in industrial energy efficiency," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(17), pages 3104-3114, November.
    7. Bhattacharya, S.C. & Jana, Chinmoy, 2009. "Renewable energy in India: Historical developments and prospects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 981-991.
    8. van der Gaast, Wytze & Begg, Katherine & Flamos, Alexandros, 2009. "Promoting sustainable energy technology transfers to developing countries through the CDM," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 230-236, February.
    9. Mahesh, A. & Shoba Jasmin, K.S., 2013. "Role of renewable energy investment in India: An alternative to CO2 mitigation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 414-424.
    10. Akella, A.K. & Saini, R.P. & Sharma, M.P., 2009. "Social, economical and environmental impacts of renewable energy systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 390-396.
    11. Reddy, V. Siva & Kaushik, S.C. & Panwar, N.L., 2013. "Review on power generation scenario of India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 43-48.
    12. Ansari, Md. Fahim & Kharb, Ravinder Kumar & Luthra, Sunil & Shimmi, S.L. & Chatterji, S., 2013. "Analysis of barriers to implement solar power installations in India using interpretive structural modeling technique," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 163-174.
    13. Kennedy, Matthew & Basu, Biswajit, 2013. "Overcoming barriers to low carbon technology transfer and deployment: An exploration of the impact of projects in developing and emerging economies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 685-693.
    14. Humphreys, D., 2001. "Sustainable development: can the mining industry afford it?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 1-7, March.
    15. Tsoutsos, Theocharis & Frantzeskaki, Niki & Gekas, Vassilis, 2005. "Environmental impacts from the solar energy technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 289-296, February.
    16. Hirmer, Stephanie & Cruickshank, Heather, 2014. "Making the deployment of pico-PV more sustainable along the value chain," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 401-411.
    17. Doukas, Haris & Karakosta, Charikleia & Psarras, John, 2009. "RES technology transfer within the new climate regime: A "helicopter" view under the CDM," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 1138-1143, June.
    18. Nhan Thanh Nguyen & Minh Ha-Duong & Thanh C. Tran & Ram M. Shrestha & Franck Nadaud, 2010. "Barriers to the adoption of renewable and energy-efficient technologies in the Vietnamese power sector," Post-Print halshs-00444826, HAL.
    19. Ramachandra, T.V. & Jain, Rishabh & Krishnadas, Gautham, 2011. "Hotspots of solar potential in India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 3178-3186, August.
    20. Frondel, Manuel & Ritter, Nolan & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Vance, Colin, 2010. "Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energy technologies: The German experience," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4048-4056, August.
    21. Karakosta, Charikleia & Doukas, Haris & Psarras, John, 2010. "Technology transfer through climate change: Setting a sustainable energy pattern," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 1546-1557, August.
    22. Khare, Vikas & Nema, Savita & Baredar, Prashant, 2013. "Status of solar wind renewable energy in India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 1-10.
    23. Bhattacharya, Soma & Cropper, Maureen L., 2010. "Options for Energy Efficiency in India and Barriers to Their Adoption: A Scoping Study," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-20, Resources for the Future.
    24. Cherni, Judith A. & Kentish, Joanna, 2007. "Renewable energy policy and electricity market reforms in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 3616-3629, July.
    25. Govindan, Kannan & Kaliyan, Mathiyazhagan & Kannan, Devika & Haq, A.N., 2014. "Barriers analysis for green supply chain management implementation in Indian industries using analytic hierarchy process," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(PB), pages 555-568.
    26. Kumar, Ashwani & Kumar, Kapil & Kaushik, Naresh & Sharma, Satyawati & Mishra, Saroj, 2010. "Renewable energy in India: Current status and future potentials," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(8), pages 2434-2442, October.
    27. Pillai, Indu R. & Banerjee, Rangan, 2009. "Renewable energy in India: Status and potential," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 970-980.
    28. Yoram Wind & Thomas L. Saaty, 1980. "Marketing Applications of the Analytic Hierarchy Process," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(7), pages 641-658, July.
    29. Painuly, J.P, 2001. "Barriers to renewable energy penetration; a framework for analysis," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 73-89.
    30. Khan, Shakeel A. & Rashmi & Hussain, Mir Z. & Prasad, S. & Banerjee, U.C., 2009. "Prospects of biodiesel production from microalgae in India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(9), pages 2361-2372, December.
    31. Thomas L. Saaty, 1994. "How to Make a Decision: The Analytic Hierarchy Process," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 24(6), pages 19-43, December.
    32. Ravindranath, N.H. & Balachandra, P., 2009. "Sustainable bioenergy for India: Technical, economic and policy analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1003-1013.
    33. Sarkar, Prabir & Sharma, Bhaanuj & Malik, Ural, 2014. "Energy generation from grey water in high raised buildings: The case of India," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 284-289.
    34. A. Flamos & W. Gaast & H. Doukas & G. Deng, 2008. "EU and Asian countries policies and programmes for the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 261-276, June.
    35. Alam Hossain Mondal, Md. & Kamp, Linda M. & Pachova, Nevelina I., 2010. "Drivers, barriers, and strategies for implementation of renewable energy technologies in rural areas in Bangladesh--An innovation system analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4626-4634, August.
    36. Stigka, Eleni K. & Paravantis, John A. & Mihalakakou, Giouli K., 2014. "Social acceptance of renewable energy sources: A review of contingent valuation applications," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 100-106.
    37. Reddy, Sudhakar & Painuly, J.P, 2004. "Diffusion of renewable energy technologies—barriers and stakeholders’ perspectives," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 29(9), pages 1431-1447.
    38. Kumar, Deepak & Katoch, S.S., 2014. "Sustainability indicators for run of the river (RoR) hydropower projects in hydro rich regions of India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 101-108.
    39. Jain, Sanjay V. & Patel, Rajesh N., 2014. "Investigations on pump running in turbine mode: A review of the state-of-the-art," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 841-868.
    40. Chang, J. & Leung, Dennis Y. C. & Wu, C. Z. & Yuan, Z. H., 2003. "A review on the energy production, consumption, and prospect of renewable energy in China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 7(5), pages 453-468, October.
    41. Masachika Suzuki & Bernardo Okazaki Kehdy & Sulabh Jain, 2010. "Identifying Barriers for the Implementation and the Operation of Biogas Power Generation Projects in Southeast Asia: An Analysis of Clean Development Mechanism Projects in Thailand," Working Papers EMS_2010_20, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ghimire, Laxman Prasad & Kim, Yeonbae, 2018. "An analysis on barriers to renewable energy development in the context of Nepal using AHP," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 129(PA), pages 446-456.
    2. Yaqoot, Mohammed & Diwan, Parag & Kandpal, Tara C., 2016. "Review of barriers to the dissemination of decentralized renewable energy systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 477-490.
    3. Singh, Rhythm, 2018. "Energy sufficiency aspirations of India and the role of renewable resources: Scenarios for future," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P2), pages 2783-2795.
    4. Punia Sindhu, Sonal & Nehra, Vijay & Luthra, Sunil, 2016. "Recognition and prioritization of challenges in growth of solar energy using analytical hierarchy process: Indian outlook," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 332-348.
    5. Luthra, Sunil & Mangla, Sachin Kumar & Kharb, Ravinder K., 2015. "Sustainable assessment in energy planning and management in Indian perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 58-73.
    6. Singh, Amritpal & Vats, Gaurav & Khanduja, Dinesh, 2016. "Exploring tapping potential of solar energy: Prioritization of Indian states," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 397-406.
    7. Sahoo, Sarat Kumar, 2016. "Renewable and sustainable energy reviews solar photovoltaic energy progress in India: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 927-939.
    8. Sindhu, Sonal & Nehra, Vijay & Luthra, Sunil, 2017. "Solar energy deployment for sustainable future of India: Hybrid SWOC-AHP analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1138-1151.
    9. Talaei, Alireza & Ahadi, Mohammad Sadegh & Maghsoudy, Soroush, 2014. "Climate friendly technology transfer in the energy sector: A case study of Iran," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 349-363.
    10. Ansari, Md. Fahim & Kharb, Ravinder Kumar & Luthra, Sunil & Shimmi, S.L. & Chatterji, S., 2013. "Analysis of barriers to implement solar power installations in India using interpretive structural modeling technique," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 163-174.
    11. Oryani, Bahareh & Koo, Yoonmo & Rezania, Shahabaldin & Shafiee, Afsaneh, 2021. "Barriers to renewable energy technologies penetration: Perspective in Iran," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 971-983.
    12. Avri Eitan & Gillad Rosen & Lior Herman & Itay Fishhendler, 2020. "Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs: A Conceptual Framework," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-23, May.
    13. Yaqoot, Mohammed & Diwan, Parag & Kandpal, Tara C., 2017. "Financial attractiveness of decentralized renewable energy systems – A case of the central Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in India," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 973-991.
    14. Ana María González & Harrison Sandoval & Pilar Acosta & Felipe Henao, 2016. "On the Acceptance and Sustainability of Renewable Energy Projects—A Systems Thinking Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-21, November.
    15. Madhusudhan Adhikari & Laxman Prasad Ghimire & Yeonbae Kim & Prakash Aryal & Sundar Bahadur Khadka, 2020. "Identification and Analysis of Barriers against Electric Vehicle Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-20, June.
    16. Joshi, Girdhar & Pandey, Jitendra K. & Rana, Sravendra & Rawat, Devendra S., 2017. "Challenges and opportunities for the application of biofuel," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 850-866.
    17. Bhatt, Brijesh & Singh, Anoop, 2021. "Power sector reforms and technology adoption in the Indian electricity distribution sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(PA).
    18. Edrisi, Sheikh Adil & Abhilash, P.C., 2016. "Exploring marginal and degraded lands for biomass and bioenergy production: An Indian scenario," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1537-1551.
    19. Indora, Sunil & Kandpal, Tara C., 2018. "Institutional cooking with solar energy: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 131-154.
    20. Pandey, Shreemat & Singh, Vijai Shanker & Gangwar, Naresh Pal & Vijayvergia, M.M. & Prakash, Chandra & Pandey, Deep Narayan, 2012. "Determinants of success for promoting solar energy in Rajasthan, India," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 3593-3598.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:41:y:2015:i:c:p:762-776. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.