Mainstreaming Solar Energy in Small, Tropical Islands: Cultural and Policy Implications

This book explores how cultural considerations can improve policymaking to achieve mainstream solar energy in small, tropical islands.

Focusing on Trinidad, Barbados and Oʻahu, Kiron C. Neale looks at how culture can affect and be affected by the policies that support the household adoption of two key energy technologies: solar water heating and photovoltaics. Drawing on interviews with residents and energy officials, and an examination of the institutional, socio-economic and physical factors that affect energy systems such as governance structures and energy resource availability, the author explores themes including the impact of insularity on energy transitions and behavioural and cultural change. Overall, this book rebrands policies as instruments of cultural change and puts forward recommendations applicable to all small, tropical islands.

Following the islands’ transition to renewable energy, this book will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, energy transitions, climate change, cultural studies and small states development, as well as industry professionals working on energy policy implementation.

Kiron C. Neale completed his postgraduate studies at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute in 2018, and is currently involved in coordinating energy efficiency projects for small to medium-sized enterprises in Oxfordshire as the EiE Environmental Officer at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean and grew up in Southern Trinidad (San Fernando and Princes Town).