Incentives for investing in solar plants : What motivations and obstacles does companies and housing cooperatives have to invest in a medium sized solar plant?

Abstract: The Swedish government has set a long-term goal which implies that Sweden's electrical production should be based on one hundred percent of renewable energy until the year of 2040, which among other things include solar cells. To involve more people into this process The Swedish Energy Agency has evaluated which different investment motivations there is. They mention that the motivations for housing cooperatives and various companies with the main purpose to produce solar energy for their own use, are hard to define. The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate what the different motivations for investing in solar plants, for the housing cooperatives and various companies, might be. More specifically it will focus on companies and housing cooperatives as an empiric example of actors who invest in medium sized solar plants. The main purpose of the thesis leads to two different query formulations which is what are the different motivations for housing cooperatives and companies for investing in medium sized solar plants? And what might be an obstruction for housing cooperatives and companies for investing in medium sized solar plants? This thesis contributes to further evaluation of the different motivations and the obstructions there might be by interviewing companies which have installed one or more solar plants and a survey to various companies and housing cooperatives to gather the thoughts of a possible future investor. From the interviews and survey, we got the conclusion that the most important motivations are economy, technology interest and environmental awareness. Furthermore, we got to the conclusion that the time of the payback of the investment, which is a big part of the economical motivation, might be an obstruction because of the unclear preconditions for calculating the investment. Many of the involved respondents implies that this is caused by the lack of competence from the potential investors and uncertainty of the government's incentives.