Where the electricity grid is either not present or extremely unreliable, solar is competitive now. Indeed, it has been competitive for at least one, getting close to two decades. But, as with any technology, there is a period of time when the issue is not so much the competitiveness of the product as the success […]

The case of solar in emerging markets has clearly shown how effective the World Bank can be in helping to accelerate the diffusion of renewable energy. As we saw, when the World Bank entered the solar sector, it had very little prior knowledge it could draw on. Like the profiled entrepreneurs, it was a question […]

In Selling Solar, we have seen that there were two critical forms of finance necessary for diffusion: consumer finance for customers who wanted to buy solar systems and venture finance for entrepreneurs who were selling them. Both kinds of finance will be critical to the diffusion of renewable energy in emerging markets. When customers buy […]

A movement of academics and activists is urging businesses to target the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ as a way of addressing chronic poverty:3 not to write off the poorer 3 billion people in emerging markets, but to treat them as a huge untapped source of future growth. This applies to energy just as much as […]

As promised at the outset, the story of Selling Solar offers some ‘big picture’ lessons. Specifically, five lessons can be distilled to accelerate a renewable energy future. These lessons are primarily intended for policymakers with an interest in renewable energy in emerging markets. But it would not hurt for policymakers in industrialized countries to absorb […]

By now the framework will have helped the analyst draw three sets of conclu­sions: 1 It will have helped isolate the key barriers to diffusion of the innovation in question. 2 It will have shed light on how and why entrepreneurs are able, or not able, to effectively surmount these barriers. 3 It will have […]

By ‘resources’ we mean capital. Without capital, even the most effective entre­preneur is unlikely to affect diffusion. Of course, the amount of capital that needs to be raised will depend on the barriers identified and the entrepreneurs’ strategies for surmounting them. If the innovation is not yet competitive, then the entrepreneur’s capital requirements are likely […]

By ‘capacities’ we mean the prior experience entrepreneurs bring to their busi­nesses, and the key lessons they have learned along the way. Both of these inform business strategy, and influence the entrepreneur’s effectiveness in overcoming barriers to diffusion. In the case of solar, we identified the core barriers to diffusion as the lack of consumer […]