A Crowdfunding Agency Model for Renewables in an Emerging Economy

Abstract

Mobilizing finance for investment in renewable energy is a challenge for climate change mitigation via fostering the layout of new projects. The challenge becomes critical in emerging or developing economies, mainly because the architecture of financial intermediaries as well as their instruments are shallow and insufficiently developed. The present investigation reviews alternative vehicles of finance applied specifically to renewable energies, that are intermittent, so-called non-dispatchable, and innovation- plus capital-intensive, as compared to conventional sources. The high degree of investment irreversibility and with relatively high uncertainty in the regulatory and wholesale market, calls to carefully design origins of finance at the government, private, and mixed levels. An agency-based theoretical framework is proposed within our ongoing research effort that includes green banks, state banks, bonds, and mainly, crowdfunding, that could be applied to Mexico.