Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-5 (section)

=== Box 5.7 | Solar PV and the Agency of Consumers ===

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As an innovative technology, solar PV was strongly taken up by consumers (Nemet 2019). Several key factors explain its success. First, modular design made it applicable to different scales of deployment in different geographical contexts (e.g., large-scale grid-connected projects and smaller-scale off-grid projects) and allowed its application by companies taking advantage of emerging markets (Shum and Watanabe 2009). Second, culturally, solar PV symbolised an environmentally progressive technology that was valued by users (Morris and Jungjohann 2016). Large-scale adoption led to policy change (i.e., the introduction of feed-in tariffs that guaranteed a financial return) that in turn enabled improvements to the technology by companies. Over time, this has driven large-scale reductions in cost and increase in deployment worldwide. The relative importance of drivers varied across contexts. In Japan, state subsidies were lower yet did not hinder take-up because consumer behaviour was motivated by non-cost symbolic aspects. In Germany, policy change arose from social movements that campaigned for environmental conservation and opposed nuclear power, making solar PV policies politically acceptable. In summary, the seven-decade evolution of solar PV shows an evolution in which the agency of consumers has consistently played a key role in multiple countries, such that deriving 30–50% of global electricity supply from solar is now a realistic possibility (Creutzig et al. 2017). See more in [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/chapter/chapter-5 Chapter 5] Supplementary Material I, 5.SM.6.1.

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