Community acceptance of large-scale solar energy installations in developing countries: Evidence from Morocco

Abstract

Renewable energy production is climbing the public agenda in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region), for reasons of energy security, independence and local value creation. While technical and economic barriers are largely understood, in this paper we investigate the issue of community acceptance. In so doing, we explore the importance of relevant drivers of community acceptance such as level of expected socioeconomic and environmental impacts, procedural and distributive justice, and trust. We conducted 232 face-to-face interviews with the local population in Ouarzazate in Morocco, the building site of a flagship project for concentrated solar power in the MENA region. We find that community acceptance is almost universal, particularly because solar power is perceived to be environmentally friendly. At the same time perceived level of knowledge about the project is very low, which is positively linked to the high level of acceptance. Our data suggest that there may be some social desirability bias distorting community acceptance; only long-term experience with the project will show whether hopes for job creation will be fulfilled and high levels of acceptance can be maintained.

Public Perceptions and Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy: A Case Study from Greece

“…Another study was deployed in the Malaysian context, about views and perceptions of the local population towards solar energy and the installation of photovoltaics; it was concluded that the Malaysians hardly understood the incentives and the wider socio-economic benefits derived, thus they were reluctant to invest in photovoltaics [33]. Additionally, in the Middle East and North Africa, the attribute of social opposition was reported among interviewed citizens, since they expressed a biased behavior, significantly distorting anything that tends to become socially acceptable [34]. On the other hand, a study about the social acceptance of small hydropower plants (SHP) in India revealed that SHP projects are regionally challenging forms that can be directly utilized in the Indian energy mix of production [35].…”

Effects of Rank-Ordered Feature Perceptions of Energy Sources on the Choice of the Most Acceptable Power Plant for a Neighborhood: An Investigation Using a South Korean Nationwide Sample

“…(3) Eco-friendliness-the degree to which the energy source claims to reduce, minimize, or do no harm to the environment-is also a significant determinant of energy acceptance. A greater perception of eco-friendliness generally leads an individual to perceive the energy source as low in environmental risk and thus renders the source more acceptable [20,[35][36][37][38]. 4The contribution to the country's economic development is an economic benefit that an energy source provides at the macro-level.…”

Determination of the Optimal Size of Photovoltaic Systems by Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods

“…They are the general criteria that determine the optimum size of the photovoltaic system: technical, economic, environmental, and social criteria. Fourteen sub-criteria are selected from almost 70 determining factors that affect the optimal size of a distributed generation photovoltaic system (Table 2) that recent studies have shown [43][44][45][46][47], according to the criterion to which they belonged. These sub-criteria were divided into quantitative and qualitative according to the characteristics of measurement in each case.…”