Impacts of Human Factors on Willingness to Use Renewable Energy Sources in Iran and Morocco

Currently Iran and Morocco are going through an energy transition. Ambitious plans exist at international, regional and national governance levels to deploy renewable energy sources (RES), such as concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) solar power. These plans foresee deployment of RES to cover local growing energy needs, to diversify energy supply and to benefit from electricity trade. Even though the majority of MENA countries have favorable geographic conditions, namely, the level of solar irradiance, for deployment of solar projects, they are very diverse in terms of availability of fossil fuels, which might hinder deployment of RES projects. For instance, Morocco is covering almost 95% of its energy needs by imports at the same time as Iran is not only benefiting from availability of fossil fuels for local consumption but are also exporting fossil fuels to the global markets. The first question of this paper is trying to answer is how availability of fossil fuels for domestic consumption might impact the willingness of people in Iran and Morocco to use RES. And secondly how public acceptance of RES in general, and solar projects in particular effects the development of RES projects in this region. The methodological basis of this paper is formed by the case study method of two countries. It also includes different methods of elicitation of opinions and views to understand public acceptance and willingness to use renewable energy.  By comparing Iran and Morocco we aim to understand to which extent availability of non-renewable energy sources in in these two countries influence perceptions of its inhabitants regarding RES energy.