Technology, Markets and Investment for Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Development (TEMARIN)

Sustainable business model (SBM) research and practice has grown rapidly in the last two decades, not only showing the traits of an emerging research field, but also having an impact on business practices and government policies. Despite the wide-ranging academic and practical debates on SBMs, the academic literature still needs approaches specifically tailored to support the design of SBMs in […]

Access to clean, reliable and affordable energy services is fundamental to economic and social well-being. Yet nearly 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity. International commitments aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring universal access to energy services, principally the Paris Agreement of the UN Climate Change Convention and the UN SE4ALL Sustainable Development Goal 7, […]

While the sustainability transitions literature has highlighted the importance of agency in technological change, there is still limited understanding of the role of transnational actors, such as development agencies, which tend to be key drivers of energy transitions in low-income countries. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the role of transnational actors in the development of off-grid […]

Given the increasing cost-competiveness of renewable energy (RE) technologies, competitive auction schemes have increasingly been adopted in recent years across various developed and developing countries. Local content requirements(LCRs) are frequently used as part of RE auction schemes to promote local industrial development. In this paper, we present a review of the literature on the effectiveness of LCRs in fostering local […]

Solar PV is gaining ground in low and middle-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where a change from donor to more market-driven investments has been observed. This article contributes to energy transition research in low-income countries, taking Rwanda as a case study and focusing on the factors that determined the implementation of what was the largest on-grid solar project, upon […]

Solar power is becoming the go to technology for sustainable energy all over Africa, but trends are manifesting unevenly across the continent. To bring a new and needed perspective on the significant investment and market growth UNEP DTU Partnership has co-edited a special issue of the academic journal Energy Research and Social Science, looking at how market forces are working […]

This paper discusses the prospects for developing production and innovation capabilities arising from renewable electrification efforts. This discussion falls at the intersection of several literatures within innovation studies and development studies. It requires a combination of ideas from across several academic fields of study. This paper focuses on value chain linkages and interactive learning. Because this is largely unexplored terrain, […]

Given the growing interest in the ability of the private sector to contribute to the goal of providing universal access to energy in developing countries, this study sets out to investigate the practices and business approaches of private actors in the emerging niche of private mini-grid development in Kenya. The paper’s analytical focus is on how niche actors are influencing […]

The sectoral innovation system perspective has been developed as an analytical framework to analyse and understand innovation dynamics within and across various sectors. Most of the research conducted on sectoral innovation systems has focused on an aggregate-level analysis of entire sectors. This paper argues that a disaggregated (sub-sectoral) focus is more suited to policy-oriented work on the development and diffusion […]

This report is issued by the Kenya Miniwind project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark through the Danida Market Development Partnerships. The project aims to explore and develop the market for a partly locally produced kW wind turbine to be integrated into a PV mini-grid for rural electrification in order to reduce the cost of electricity and […]

This paper investigates how African governments are considering supporting and promoting the diffusion of solar PV. This issue is explored by examining so-called ‘technology action plans (TAPs)’, which were main outputs of the Technology Needs Assessment project implemented in 10 African countries from 2010 to 2013. The paper provides a review of three distinct but characteristic trajectories for PV market […]

The goal of providing universal energy access to all by 2030 under the UN-led SE4ALL initiative calls for new and innovative solutions to rural electrification and is fuelling the recent interest in mini-grids. Mini-grid solutions are emerging as a third alternative to rural electrification, coming between the option of large-scale grid extension and pico-scale stand-alone solutions like solar home systems […]

While the diffusion of solar home systems in Kenya has been market-based for some years, the diffusion of PV in most other Sub-Saharan African countries has been driven by government and donor-supported projects aimed at serving specific needs for electricity while at the same time creating a national niche market for PV. This practice is rapidly changing and, as in […]