Hector Pollitt, Migle Petrauskaite
This article builds a framework to help policymakers identify priorities for promoting clean energy adoption to meet emission reduction targets. It uses four simple questions to identify the potential barriers to clean energy adoption: (i) do appropriate clean energy technologies exist? (ii) do investors know about them and trust them? (iii) can investors adopt them? (iv) do investors want to adopt them? The article finds that large-scale change will be difficult unless there are positive answers to all four questions. It starts to develop a practical guide for policymakers, discusses when standard policies like carbon pricing could be effective, and explores related challenges for current macroeconomic models.