Funding renewable energy innovations: crowdsourcing as means to facilitate innovative sustainable technologies in the energy sector

Sammanfattning: Technological innovations within the field of sustainable energy production require a substantial amount of capital investment in order to conduct research and development. Crowdsourcing represents an innovative and new approach to raising the capital investment needed for sustainable technological innovations in the sustainable energy sector and is inherently entrenched with Transition Theory. The capacity for crowdsourcing to play a viable role for fundraising purposes was conducted using the Kvasir Project, which is a small-scale renewable energy innovation that generates energy from rainwater in storm drains. The crowdsourcing campaigns included a donation based website, Indiegogo™ campaign, viral media marketing strategies, and two search engine optimization campaigns (SEO). The results of the Kvasir Project crowdsourcing campaigns were negligible, as no donations were received, despite over 1,200 page views. The lack of donations stem from a privation of initial capital needed in order to conduct the viral marketing media campaigns, SEO, and crowdsourcing specific activities. In addition, a lack of emotional appeal in sustainable energy issues and subsequent innovations likely played a role in the lack of donations. As a result, sustainable energy innovations should be funded by traditional investment means, unless there is a specific emotional appeal that can be exploited by viral media marketing techniques.