Social Enterprise Risks

1. Potential for the SE-RE innovations

SE-RE is a fairly new concept but many researches proves the high potential of its development.

First of all, embracing the social values is the aim of social enterprises, including the environmental sector such as using green energy, recycling or tracking the fuel poverty.

Moreover, growing state support for developing RET and the “technical reserve” of RETs (like unmanaged woodlands, garden waste going to landfill, etc.) (Kellett, 2007), are giving SE a potential market to explore (Van der Horst, 2008). ‘The Northern Periphery Programme energy cluster has highlighted that social entrepreneurship has not been yet fully utilized in renewable energy solutions (SECRE, 2013).’ Like in UK, though combatting carbon emissions and climate change is a promising, the social enterprise activity is still an undeveloped area (Hinnells, 2012).

Lastly, social enterprises may create a competitive advantage over private enterprises by innovating in RE utilisation (Van der Horst, 2008). Nonstandard RE systems where the energy supplier and consumer both agree to a mutually beneficial arrangement can de-risk a new/untested distribution network. Van der Horst also gave seven models (Appendix D) in his research about the innovations in SE-RE, which can also track the chosen SE-RE in this paper.

• The “manufacturer led” model is used in Makani

• The “EfW contractor” model and the “self-use” model are shown in Bio-bean

• The “generic ESCO” model is followed by Solarkiosk

2. SE-RE innovation risks

2.1 Social enterprises

Running a social enterprise is generally harder than running a mainstream business. As mentioned in Section 2.1, more constraints may appear including finance, staff, management, marketing, legal status, etc.

Many case studies state, as most investors prefer established and commercially viable enterprises more than start-ups and smaller enterprises, it is difficult to access capital (Smith, at el., 2014). Moreover, many...