Historical pathways to a green economy: The evolution and scaling-up of solar PV in Ghana, 1980–2010

Although scaling up of renewable technologies is essential in creating opportunities for sustainable economic development to flourish, our understanding of the historical trajectory of government policies in facilitating this process remains limited. In this paper, we attempt to address this deficit in our understanding by focusing on developing economies. We examine the Ghanaian government's policies from 1980–2010 towards scaling up solar photovoltaic technology. Our analysis led to the identification of four distinct phases as the industry evolved and scaling-up activities intensified. During the embryonic phase, much of the development was driven largely by non-governmental organisations. However, as the industry conditions changed, government involvement increased and policies became less ambiguous. During the last two phases, more private–public partnerships emerged to respond to incentives such as tax relief and subsidies offered by the government. We enrich our understanding of the process of evolution by integrating the literature on capacity building and scaling-up theories.