Success factors for renewable energy businesses in emerging economies

Purpose - With a growing demand for safe, clean and affordable energy, emerging economies (EEs) across the globe are now seeking to create and rapidly develop renewable energy (RE) businesses. The success of these businesses often hinges on their ability to translate RE into sustainable value for energy consumers and the multiple stakeholders in this industry. Such value includes low production costs due to an abundance of natural resources (e.g. wind, water and sunlight) and public health benefits from reduced environmental pollution. With that in mind, this paper aims to gauge RE’s potential for sustainable value creation and then develop an effective RE business strategy. Design/methodology/approach - This paper develops a structural equation model, conducts an exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analyses with and without common latent factors and proposes a moderated mediation analysis to identify a host of factors that influence the success of RE businesses. Findings - This paper discovers that RE business performance is significantly affected by integrated vision, intellectual capital and social capital. Originality/value - To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first empirical studies that identify various factors influencing successful RE businesses in EEs such as Asian (e.g. China and India) and Latin American countries.