Fostering Sustainability through Ecosystems for Renewable Energy in India

Background: This paper focuses on promoting the sustainability of renewable energy ecosystems to ensure socio-economic development. This is critical for emerging economies where rising demand for energy is likely to deplete resources rapidly. It views industrial ecosystems organized around product/material supply chains or in defined geographies as analogous to natural ecosystems. It focuses on renewable energy for rural populations—a special case of industrial ecosystems—in developing countries such as India. Studying this sector is important because: (1) access to energy is a major problem for bottom of the pyramid populations; and, (2) shifting to renewable energy can improve sustainability and inclusive growth. Methods: Case study methods are used to study the renewable energy sector in India. A conceptual framework drawing on various literatures streams (ecological and industrial ecosystems, inclusive growth, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, and renewable energy) is presented to provide insights on how rural renewable energy ecosystems can promote inclusive growth together with environmental and socioeconomic sustainability. Data are drawn from cases on renewable energy in India. Results: Case data support the framework. Findings indicate that ensuring sustainability requires designing the ecosystem for resilience by facilitating collaboration across diverse types of players. Additionally, stimulating innovation and generating livelihoods by nurturing entrepreneurship are critical for achieving environmental and socioeconomic sustainability. Conclusions: This paper extends research on industrial ecosystems and sustainability. It provides insights on how renewable energy ecosystems can promote sustainable socio-economic development for the bottom of the pyramid, an under-researched area. Limited data could be overcome through future large sample studies. Results from these cases can provide insights for government policy makers and businesses on how to establish new sustainable ecosystems for sunrise industries in developing and industrialized countries. Open Access Received: 05 November 2019 Accepted: 10 January 2020 Published: 20 January 2020 Copyright © 2020 by the author(s). Licensee Hapres, London, United Kingdom. This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Journal of Sustainability Research 2 of 30 J Sustain Res. 2020;2(1):e200010. https://doi.org/10.20900/jsr20200010


INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND Introduction
It is well accepted that it is imperative to take the natural environment into account and eschew reliance on excessive and non-sustainable exploitation of natural resources such as fossil fuels to ensure the health of our planet and resources for future generations [1,2]. Moreover, researchers and policy makers have suggested that economic growth should be decoupled from natural resource use to achieve sustainable development [3]. However, reducing the carbon footprint via clean energy from renewable sources [4] requires a transition to new technologies and new business models and corresponding social change to displace currently entrenched carbon-based systems [5].
Over the past decade, emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil have increased investments in renewable energy to reduce reliance on petroleum imports and improve energy self-reliance, reduce environmental degradation and potentially attain global leadership of the renewable energy sector by developing capabilities [6]. Moreover, examining renewable energy ecosystems is especially relevant as the rise of emerging economies has fueled increased demand for electricity and other energy resources. Additionally, the ability to transform waste and residues into energy and upcycled products through innovation to increase the bottom line is appealing [4,7,8].
The UN's (2015) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include providing affordable clean energy, promoting sustainable consumption and production, conserving terrestrial ecosystems and ensuring work and growth [9]. However, globally, 1.06 billion people at the bottom of the pyramid [10] have no electricity and 3 billion people lack clean fuel for cooking [3]. Although the number of people without electricity access fell below 1 billion in 2017, a fall of 97 million compared to 2016, progress is uneven as three-quarters of the 570 million people who gained access since 2011 are concentrated in Asia [11]. Therefore, it is critical to study the renewable energy ecosystems in developing economies. This paper focuses on renewable energy in India. The renewable to basic sanitation as of July, 2019; [13]). Nevertheless, problems remain, including child poverty and hunger, making socio-economic inclusion for bottom of the pyramid populations [10] a key priority of the government.
Increasing access to energy by promoting the adoption of renewable energy is a major opportunity to reduce the burden on the environment.
However, ensuring environmental sustainability through renewable energy ecosystems requires establishing their economic viability.
The paper draws on research on sustainability [1,2] and natural ecosystems [14] to provide insights for ecosystems in new industries [15] such as the renewable energy industry and facilitate the adoption of renewable energy in a manner that is environmentally and socioeconomically sustainable [8,16]. Industrial systems are viewed as ecosystems with companies occupying different hierarchical trophic levels as in a food web and materials and energy forming metabolic linkages among them [14]. Industrial ecosystems are organized around product and material supply chains or in defined geographies [14,17].
Inter-firm linkages within the ecosystem include shared management of common utilities, infrastructure (e.g., energy, water), common services with resource conservation benefits, and by-product reuse [18]. Moreover, sustainable wealth can potentially be created by relying on technology and innovation to create businesses that regenerate regional resources and are simultaneously economically competitive and socially beneficial [4].
The paper examines the following research question: In what ways can ecosystems for renewable energy be established for bottom of the pyramid populations and promote environmental and socio-economic sustainability [10]? A conceptual framework is presented to suggest how renewable energy ecosystems can be established to promote environmental and socio-economic sustainability. Case study methods [19] are used to study renewable energy for the bottom of the pyramid in India. Case data provide empirical insights drawing on developments in India and indicate that establishing the ecosystem requires generating various types of resources through interactions among diverse players to ensure sustainability, support for entrepreneurship and innovative low cost business models to reach the target population.
India is an important global player in renewable energy. Solar Photovoltaic (PV) was India's largest source of new power capacity for the second year running (2018) [6], and, for the first time, it accounted for    institutes as well as institutions relevant for innovation success [5,24] and has also included entire production and consumption systems [25] which must be reorganized to yield more sustainable economic structures [26].
Research on national innovation systems (NISs) highlights that innovation patterns differ systematically across countries due to macro level differences in institutions, policies, and practices to promote industrial and scientific innovations and also includes micro phenomena that shape innovation [27][28][29][30][31][32]. Subsets of NISs include regional innovation systems, sectoral innovation systems, technological innovation systems [31] and industrial innovation systems [14]. More recently, attention has been focused on how to transition from a historically predominant sociotechnical regime to a new socio-technical regime by nurturing and developing niches which allow the new socio-technical regime to mature [33,34]. The niche is a critical concept due to its role in the emergence of  [33].
Additionally, the industrial ecosystems literature [14,35], which applies concepts from natural ecosystems [14,36], emphasizes technology and suggests that wastes and effluents from one process serve as the input material for processes as in natural ecological systems [37]. An industrial ecosystem can develop with intentional, strategic and institutional pursuit of environmental goals [38,39]. Just as species diversity contributes to maintaining resilience in biological ecosystems, analogously in industrial ecosystems the presence of various types of organizations promotes resilience by enhancing the ability to recover from shocks, as each type performs different functions and provides different services in the ecosystem and their interactions promote resource flows in increasingly complex networks as the system matures [36]. Resilience refers to the ability of the system to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks, indicating that the system stays in the same "basin of attraction" [35]. Thus, along with industrial symbiosis and inter-firm resource sharing [18], it should be noted that better management of interfirm exchanges can help to maintain industrial ecosystem resilience [35].
By increasing business competitiveness, reducing waste and pollution, creating jobs and improving working conditions, such industrial ecosystems can stimulate regional development [40].  [51]. Hence, a key concern of developing country governments is to promote new services aimed at involving the bottom of the pyramid (including women and the disabled) to improve well-being as well as economic activity [10,52]. Most developing economy governments view supporting entrepreneurship and innovation as critical to enhancing competitiveness. Additionally, social entrepreneurship, a type of entrepreneurship that focuses on solving socio-economic problems at the bottom of the pyramid [53] is an important mechanism for linking bottom of the pyramid populations with more advanced sectors of the economy.
Such linkages enable the flow of resources, ideas, capital and talent to facilitate the development of new markets [5].

Inclusive growth
Inequality has been rising in both advanced and developing economies, inter-alia, due to globalization and technological change. Inclusive growth refers to both the pace and distribution of economic growth and can be J Sustain Res. 2020;2(1):e200010. https://doi.org/10.20900/jsr20200010 accounted for by capturing both changes in growth and income distribution [54]. Past research has argued that high inequality dampens growth through various mechanisms, including by decreasing the purchasing power of a large part of the population, demotivating the average worker leading to decreased performance and commitment, and due to diminished access to health and education [54]. Income inequality was found to impede economic growth in OECD member countries [55]. In contrast to research suggesting a trade-off between economic and income inequality [56], new perspectives [57] suggest that ensuring equality is critical for sustainable growth [54] and that redistribution is not inherently detrimental for growth [58].
Aoyagi and Ganelli [54] note that although poverty reduction in Asia over the past two decades has happened faster than anywhere else in the world, the bulk of the population still lives in countries with rising inequality. They also find that the effect of expanding fiscal redistribution on inclusive growth could lead to an estimated improvement in inclusive growth ranging from 1% to about 8% points.
Sen examines episodes of growth in developing countries and argues that inclusive growth is influenced by institutions (such as the rule of law, changes in corruption, democratic accountability) in different economic growth regimes classified as four types [59]: (1) a regime of "miracle growth" (average increase in per capita of 5% per annum or more); (2) one of "stable growth" where average increase in per capita income is between 0% and 5% per annum; (3) a regime with "stagnant growth" where average increase in per capita income is around 0% per annum; (4) a growth regime which is called "growth crisis" where the average change in per capita income is negative [59]. His analysis of 24 developing countries reveals that inclusive growth is more likely to be observed when economic growth has accelerated and the country is in growth maintenance phase and when inclusive institutions have emerged [59]. Thorat [10]. These markets exist in rural and urban settings and access to the market is a major problem in places like India and Brazil.
Commitment to building awareness of products and services, ensuring affordability, access, and availability are critical for innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. Products and services must be designed for local markets with deep immersion into consumers' lives to obtain insights [10].
Additionally, to scale innovations, global standards must be met. Solutions are likely to be specific to different locations and industries and new ecosystems specific to markets can be created to economize on capital requirements. Profitability depends on large volume, low capital intensity, low margin per unit and high return on capital employed. Consequently, business model innovation is critical [10].

Sustainability in renewable energy ecosystems
A major benefit of renewable energy is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impact and use of fossil fuels [61]. Although renewable resources are often seen as sustainable resources, this is not always the case as renewable refers to the energy resource and not to the processes associated with the extraction and refining of the resource [61].
In many instances, extracting energy from a renewable resource still requires fossil input which will have an impact on the environment and, therefore, on sustainability. Other factors that influence the environmental sustainability of a renewable resource include materials and production processes used and the energy system in which it is Research also notes the importance of promoting entrepreneurship to enable the adoption and diffusion of innovations [5]. accessible and available when addressing BOP markets [10]. Moreover, environmental sustainability can be built into the system to ensure that products and services are sustainable, particularly as reducing waste and re-using waste outputs as inputs over the life cycle can help to reduce cost [61].
Finally, to reach the target population, it is critical to develop low-cost business models as affordability is of utmost importance for BOP markets.
Often new infrastructure must be built to reach the target population, so relationships with new constituencies must be created. For example, many J Sustain Res. 2020;2(1):e200010. https://doi.org/10.20900/jsr20200010 low cost innovations in the new digital economy include users as part of the process, as for example, in the hospitality industry [65], or include sharing resources (e.g., Uber, Lyft, AirBnb). Thus, strategies such as sharing resources, reducing waste and reusing outputs as inputs for new products and services, can be used to develop frugal innovations that provide value to BOP populations. Scaling these will require embedding quality standards and processes in organizations to ensure reliability and continuous availability of the product/service.
The following three propositions are derived from the theoretical background above: 1. Fostering collaboration and innovation across the ecosystem is necessary to promote adaptation.

Nurturing entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship is necessary
to promote participation and exchange and enable emergence of new niche markets (such as renewable energy for BOP populations).

Developing low cost business model innovation is necessary to
facilitate niche creation.
Together, they help in the development of the ecosystem and enhance its resilience and stability. Figure 2 below provides a representation of the framework.  and when the phenomenon is rare, unique or critical for theory creation [19]. New theory is developed by extending existing theory [66] by linking the literatures on sustainability with industrial ecosystems and renewable energy. Inductive case analysis is used to provide rich context and helps to understand how a renewable energy ecosystem can be designed for sustainability. Finally, the methodology helps to make concepts and processes concrete [67].
The case findings reported in this paper were drawn from interviews focused on using non-food feed-stocks raised on degraded land for biofuel production. The government also made use of rural employment schemes to facilitate feedstock production and processing for the nascent biofuels sector [5].
Interviews were transcribed and the data were analyzed by using categorization and pattern-matching techniques [19,69,70]. First the literature on sustainability, industrial ecosystems, entrepreneurship and inclusive growth and renewable energy was studied. Propositions were developed by iterating from theory to data and vice versa and pattern matching was used in conjunction with theories noted above [19]. These analyses and propositions yielded a conceptual model of ecosystem creation for renewable energy at the bottom of the pyramid that takes into account environmental and socio-economic sustainability. The results from case studies are presented in the next section.

RESULTS
The framework presented earlier is applied to provide insights on the creation of niche ecosystems for innovative, renewable energy-based sustainable products and services in India. Findings are analysed in light of the three propositions outlined in the framework and presented accordingly.

Similarly, a Smart Farming Collective was incubated by an alumnus at IIT
Madras, the founder of Aibono. The company focuses on providing precision farming input and end-to-end management advice for fruit and vegetable farmers using sensors, cloud applications, data analytics, social and ambient sensors, and drone imaging to assess crop stress [72]. to serve as a manufacturing hub for rural development. The printer will initially use recycled plastic for printing components and will graduate to testing composites (plastic and natural fibres) and ceramic components.
This innovation was developed in collaboration with partners.
Additionally, the organization has created teaching centres at the National

Institute for Wind Energy and other locations in India and other countries.
Similarly, Solar Lighting India (the name of the company has been disguised for confidentiality), another enterprise serving the rural poor, provided solar lighting systems for BOP customers in villages that lack or have limited access to the grid. Realizing that, despite their willingness to pay for products, obtaining financing is hard for the poor because they have no credit history, the founder CEO built small-scale solar lighting systems. He also worked with rural banks to create affordable "lease-toown" schemes to make capital-intensive PV systems affordable, thereby facilitating financial inclusion of the rural poor.

Developing Low-Cost Business Model Innovation
Catering to the rural population and other BOP segments requires developing low-cost business models. As BOP consumers are extremely cost-sensitive, innovations must be frugal. Moreover, making the product/service accessible is a challenge as channels for after-sales service and maintenance are often lacking. In many cases large multinationals have not provided sufficient service and maintenance to meet the requirements of this population. Thus, both business-model innovation and product/service innovation are required to meet their needs.
In the case of Mini Wind, the founder and his team created small, low cost turbines that were suitable for use in villages. The typical turbine system consists of a turbine, a tower to raise it above trees and other obstacles, and a battery bank to store power and electronics. sustainability could also be examined to improve our understanding of how to accelerate ecosystem creation for sustainability.
In conclusion, enabling inclusive growth and sustainability is imperative for developing countries given the large number of people at the bottom-of-the-pyramid currently excluded from the market economy and unable to access the benefits of technology and globalization.
Additionally, as energy consumption at the base of the pyramid increases, building sustainability into business models via use of renewable energy or by transforming waste into new products is critical to reduce environmental degradation and reduce the cost of energy. Finally, innovations aimed at the BOP segment would lead to the creation of innovative business models to reach target markets and create new markets that might serve as engines of future growth.