Crowdfunding Investment for Renewable Energy

This paper studies a new renewable energy investment model through crowdfunding, which is motivated by emerging community solar farms. In this paper we develop a sequential game theory model to capture the interactions among crowdfunders, the solar farm owner, and an electricity company who purchases renewable energy generated by the solar farm. By characterizing a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium, and comparing it with a benchmark model without crowdfunding, we find that although the farm owner reduces its investment level under crowdfunding, the overall green energy investment level is increased due to the contribution of crowdfunders.