Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy – A Concept Centric Review of Literature.

Increasing renewable energy footprints now features prominently in the clean energy transition plan for many countries. Consumer’s Willingness To Pay (WTP) for renewable energy is an important variable in this plan. A concept-centric review of 70 research articles conducted in this study reveals that first and most commonly, consumer’s willingness to pay for renewable energy indicates the social acceptance of renewable energy, quantifying the extent of public financial support for meeting nationally set renewable energy targets. Second, it reflects the preferred attributes of renewable electricity supply in deregulated retail electricity markets. And third, it mirrors the non use values of renewable energy sources. A concept augmented matrix presented in the paper helps understand the most popular valuation techniques used to quantify WTP estimates in included studies. This paper concludes by presenting policy enablers to accelerate renewable energy transition in developing economies - where the transition is still in nascent stages.