Footnotes for Financing and Partnerships for Technology Transfer

1. A large number of case studies in the Case Studies Section, Chapter 16, address the use of subsidies to promote market development. These include: Wind in Inner Mongolia (case 3), Butane gas stove by TOTAL (case 7), renewables in Ladakh (case 14). Innovative private sector initiatives include: Mobil (case 13), Green Lights (case 2), PV in Kenya (case 5), micro-hydro in Peru (case 25), GEF in India (case 22). Public-private partnerships are illustrated by cases 4, 17, 22 and 23.

2. If actors will be able to solve the problem among themselves through appropriate distribution of property rights, symmetric information and low negotiation transaction costs (see Coase, 1960). [If adopted insert ref.: Coase R.H., 1960, The problem of social cost, Journal of Law and Economics, pp.355-378.

3. In order to increase the effectiveness of aid, both increased recipient participation (including NGO) and reduced donor control are required. Today, aid is increasingly seen as a resource to help ensure the sustainable and efficient use of domestic resources in recipient countries. One approach to increase the effectiveness of aid has been the call to link, or tie, aid to performance. To the extent this is perceived as another conditionality, and leads to a reduction in country ownership, it could be counter-productive. Untying of aid has advantages for both recipients and donors. In 1992, OECD Member countries agreed that tied aid should be extended only to projects that are not commercially viable and that are unable to attract commercial financing. To the extent that this commitment is respected, it could prove beneficial to several climate-friendly renewable energy technologies, which face difficulty in attracting financing even when they are least-cost options for certain applications.

4. Even if a MNC could be optimised at a given moment in time, the rapid rate of change of the market, regulatory, and environmental factors with which it must contend would guarantee the emergence of profit opportunities.

5. Of course, the assumption of individual rationality has itself been questioned (Zey, 1992; Etzioni, 1987). For studies dealing specifically with energy technology choices, see Stern and Gardner (1981), Dennis et al. (1990), Stern (1992), Geller (1992), and Crabb (1992). Arrow (1951) gives the classical rigorous treatment of the problem of reconciling individual and social choice. The general problem of governance and of the efficiency of collective action pertains not only to voting rules for public decisions and the operation of capital-controlled firms, but also to cooperatives and worker-managed firms.