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The main goal of this paper is to contribute to a rapidly growing literature on the motivations, enabling factors and barriers to the energy transition in developing countries. We develop and compare the case studies of two developing countries – Indonesia and Vietnam – based on primary data obtained from questionnaires and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders during field surveys in 2015-2018. The main reason for the selection of these countries is the relative similarity of their energy transition paths. Although both Indonesia and Vietnam have made efforts to increase the share of renewable energy in their energy mix, the results so far have not been very encouraging. In particular, the share of energy from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar is still rather small. Our findings confirm the existing literature’s insights about the motivations, the enabling factors and the barriers to the shift to renewables but offer much deeper understanding of some specific enabling factors and barriers. In particular, we elucidate in more depth the concerns of both developing country policymakers and private investors.

Following the global trend of climate change mitigation, Japan has been rapidly increasing its share of renewable energy, in particular, its share of solar energy. However, Japan has limited flat land area that is suitable for solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and a high risk of natural disasters. There is a possibility that some of its newly built solar power plants are located in areas where landslides and floods are likely to occur. Therefore, it is important to study the locations for solar PV from the perspective of disaster risk management. Previous studies have reported a number of incidents where solar PV installations were damaged as a result of natural disasters. One study utilized geographical analysis technology to reveal the overlapping of solar PV powerplant locations and disaster-prone areas in Fukuoka prefecture in Japan. However, to our best knowledge, no previous research about the solar PV locations' hazard risks has been done on a national scale. This paper investigates the risks stemming from landslides and floods for the existing solar PV power plants in Japan. We compare the geographical data of disaster risks in Japan with the location data of solar PV power plants to investigate the number of solar PV power plants located in disaster risk areas. Our results show that the shares of medium and large-scale solar PV power plants located in areas where landslides and floods are likely to occur are about 8.5 and 9.1% respectively.

In this paper we study the Solar Energy for Poverty Alleviation Program (SEPAP) in China, which aims to increase the 3,000 Yuan annually for poor people by installing solar panels. SEPAP was initially launched in 2014 and officially ended in 2020 when President Xi announced that absolute poverty was eliminated in China. During the 6 years, China built and put into operation 26.49 million kilowatts of solar PV systems, benefiting 1,472 counties, 138,091 villages, and 4.18 million poor households. We propose a sustainable assessment framework and apply the Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (FCEM) to evaluate individual-level SEPAP in Jinzhai County, China, based on the findings of 80 semi-structured interviews with professionals and poor households. When examining SEPAP sustainability, we discover that the economic dimension is the most crucial one, with income, employment, training for the poor, and solar panel quality being the most weighted sub-indicators. In 2021, SEPAP could increase by roughly 2,700 Yuan for poor households, which is 90% achieved the governmental goals. We obtain a “Medium-high” outcome for the individual-level SEPAP. We provide two policy recommendations for maintenance work that will help the poor maintain a steady income.