The Potential and Social Acceptability of Renewable Energy sources in North Iraq: Kurdistan Region

Abstract

Kurdistan region government(KRG) is located to the north of Iraq, its Energy System has suffered from a lack of electricity, and many challenges to be overcome to meet future increases in demand for power, about 85% of the production of power is almost depended on fossils fuels, while the remaining 15% is covered by hydro-electrical plants. Therefore, the renewable energy sources are alternative sources of energy for reducing energy demand and CO2 emissions in KRG. In order to review the Kurdistan potential renewable energy and social-acceptance toward renewable energy source use and implementations, mixed methodology was used qualitative and quantitative to provide the    most    complete    analysis    of    study problems. In this study, the potential renewable energy sources (RES) has been examined as well as the survey which was designed with three groups of questions: awareness of renewable energy sources, person background information and willingness to invest in renewable energy sources. The result showed that Kurdistan region has a great ability to utilize renewable energy sources and long-term economic viability of using RES in house wasn’t clear for 40% of 320 interviews. About 63% of the participants were ready to pay extra cost to get renewable energy. The majority of the participant think that public sector should take the first step towards renewable energy production as well as providing incentives and business models to motivate peoples to implement RES in their building.