Investigating the Barriers to the Adoption of Solar Water Heating in Oregon

Graduation date: 2013This study investigates the barriers faced by solar water heating (SWH) in the state of Oregon. SWH is a renewable energy technology (RET) that serves a functional purpose by heating water from a renewable resource (the sun) for practical commercial or domestic applications. Oregon currently experiences a low level of adoption of this technology despite incentives in place to promote its adoption. Additional barriers to adoption exist. This study is concerned with the most important context-specific barriers that exist and negatively impact the level of adoption of SWH. Important barriers are identified using J.P. Painuly’s framework for barrier identification. Under this framework, barriers are established through analyzing the literature and ranked by level of importance through a stakeholder engagement process. Stakeholders engaged are limited to the supply-side of the Oregon SWH industry and include industry members, utility representatives, public employees, SWH and RET promoters, and others with stake in the success of SWH adoption. Stakeholders were engaged through the use of an online survey, executed and analyzed using the survey software Qualtrics. Survey participants yielded results that were both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Due to the low number of total responses, quantitative results cannot be considered robust, but can indicate general trends concerning overall levels of agreement. Qualitative results proved to be very valuable in providing additional barriers that were not initially considered in the design of the survey and helped detail the contextual background of the institutional arrangements specific to SWH. An analysis of these results using Elinor Ostrom’s framework for Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) allows for a deeper understanding of the impact of the existing barriers on SWH’s institutional arrangements. Policy considerations are included to address the existing barriers and raise the adoption of SWH in Oregon