Identifying and prioritization barriers to renewable energy diffusion in developing countries: a novel spherical fuzzy AHP approach and application

The expansion of renewable energy (RE) technology could be assisted by energy policies that tackle significant barriers. Several obstacles have slowed the RE sector’s growth in developing nations, leading to less-than-ideal development in this area. Moreover, exploring potential alternate strategies to surmount these constraints has received limited attention. It is essential to identify the barriers preventing the use of RE technologies before proposing an adequate replacement to tackle these issues appropriately. Hence, the present research aspires to identify and prioritize the obstacles currently impeding the advancement of RE technologies in developing countries, using the spherical fuzzy analytical hierarchy approach. The results suggest that the “Policy and political” category (0.1769) has the highest ranking among the main groups, followed by “Economic” (0.1647), “Administration & regulatory” (0.1640), and “Technology” (0.1438), respectively. The market barriers, with a weight of (0.1333), exhibit the lowest weight among the various factors considered. Similarly, the geographical and ecological barriers, with a weight of (0.1170), and the social and cultural barriers, with a weight of (0.1003), all have relatively lower weights. In contrast, the comprehensive global rankings of sub-obstacles indicate that the lack of a sufficient market base (0.05419), transportation problems (0.04375), and a lack of local entrepreneurship (0.04243) are the three most notable sub-obstacles among the remaining thirty-five obstacles across diverse categories. Moreover, recommendations are provided for the eradication of the obstacles. Furthermore, it is essential to consider the possible advantages of devising approaches to indorse the effective execution of RE projects in developing nations.