Promotion of stationary fuel cells on the basis of subjectively perceived barriers and drivers

Since environmental technologies further economic development and improve environmental conditions, policy makers are willing to overcome possible barriers and drivers to their development by employing a variety of environmental and innovation policy instruments. Since the effectiveness and efficiency of such policies crucially depend on the exact knowledge of barriers and drivers and since most of them are primarily subjective, a behavioural approach is used in this paper to identify drivers and barriers and, on these drivers and barriers, build a model of entrepreneurial decision-making, which is then used to determine the most suitable policy instruments. Assessing the case of stationary fuel cell technology it is found that the availability of the technical capacity and community pressure is the most important driver whereas economic risk and the existing regulation represent the most powerful barriers. By contrast, the environmental risks addressed by the technology and competitive pressure exerted in the market were only little influential. The policy instruments derived from these drivers and barriers range from road map formation and R&D support over adjustment of institutions and standards to demand-oriented support schemes.