ANALYZING THE BARRIERS TO SOLAR PANEL ADOPTION IN SINGAPORE �S PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL SECTOR: AN INTERPRETIVE STRUCTURAL MODELING APPROACH

Abstract

Climate change and resource depletion is threatening the world’s reliance on burning fossil fuels for energy. The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris hopes to cap the global temperature rise at 2°C and to completely phase out the use of fossil fuels by 2050 (Friedman 2015). To achieve this while still supporting the ever-increasing energy consumption, a switch to renewable energy is paramount. Due to Singapore’s geographical limitation, solar energy is its only viable renewable energy. However, there exist many barriers to the successful adoption of solar panels. Currently, the adoption only contributes to less than 1% of the country’s electrical needs. Plans to increase the adoption have mostly been focused on the public sector, although energy consumption among the private sector is significantly higher.Therefore, the objectives of this paper is to (i) identify the barriers to widespread adoption of solar panels among the private residential sector in Singapore and (ii) analyze the relationship between these barriers to allow for more targeted strategies for increased adoption. Interviews with experts, supplemented with review of recent literature was conducted to gain insights on the barriers faced in adopting solar panels in residential projects in Singapore. Interpretative structural modeling (ISM) was then applied to help identify the relationships between these barriers. Using ISM, these barriers were classified under different levels and a graphical model was generated to help understand the relationships among them. ‘Lack of commitment by government’, ‘lack of government incentives’ and ‘management structure of private developments’ were found to be the root causes of the issue. Hence, targeting these 3 barriers will be the most effective in encouraging adoption of solar panels in the private residential sector. These findings will help governmental agencies come up with new policies to drive the issue of solar panel adoption in the private sector in Singapore.