Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-020-02826-6 ORIGINAL PAPER A business environment analysis model for renewable solar energy N. Massihi 1  · N. Abdolvand 1  · S. Rajaee Harandi 1 Received: 18 March 2020 / Revised: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 24 June 2020 © Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2020 Abstract With the reduction in fossil fuels and their environmental impacts, the use of solar cells as green energies in various coun- tries is expanding. It is certainly neither efective nor necessarily possible to generalize a single specifc model for diferent countries considering their diferent conditions. Therefore, this study, with the aim of providing a business environment analysis model for the third-generation solar energy market in Iran, frst, used a systematic search by using the meta-synthesis method to extract important factors. Thirty-four variables in eight dimensions were found to be efective in the solar energy business in Iran. Then, an interpretive structural modeling was provided to derive a priority diagram. Finally, the causal graph and the stock and fow diagram were drawn and the behavior of the variables was examined under three scenarios. The results indicated that using solar cells to generate electricity is economically efcient in the long run and can help to protect the environment. Keywords Solar cells · Renewable energy · Environmental analysis model · Meta-synthesis · Interpretive structural modeling · System dynamics Introduction Environmental sustainability is known as one of the great- est challenges in the world (Espinosa et al. 2008). The trend of population growth in developing countries has led to an increase in demand for various types of energies. Due to the high costs of supplying these resources, the grow- ing importance of sustained environmental resources with renewable energies and at a lower cost than resources would attract more attention from people and active businesses in this feld (Macintosh and Wilkinson 2011; Hamelink and Opdenakker 2019). With the reduction in fossil fuels and their environmental impacts, the use of solar cells as green energies in various countries is expanding (Lunz et al. 2016) and covers more than 1% of the world’s electrical energy demand (Zhang et al. 2016). Yet, there has been no incen- tive, a legal energy development framework or supporting scheme to regulate the renewable power generated through private ownership (Mohandes et al. 2019). According to reports, the share of renewable energy in global energy consumption in 2014 and 2015 was 19.2% and electricity production was 23.7% (Ren21 2010). Moreo- ver, in 2015, global investment in renewable technologies was $286 billion, with the largest share of wind, water, sun and natural resources, and solar power has the largest share of employment in the renewable energy industry (Renew- able Energy Agency 2016). Researchers have focused on the efciency of solar cells and the improvement in their technical and structural mechanisms, and the subsequent commercialization of these emerging technologies has been underestimated. Therefore, both developed and developing countries such as Latvia (Blumberga et al. 2016), Finland (Aslani et al. 2014), UK, Spain, Italy, USA (Firozjaei et al. 2018), India (Macintosh and Wilkinson 2011; Firozjaei et al. 2018), China (Firozjaei et al. 2018; Yu and Popiolek 2014) and Germany (Yu and Popiolek 2014) have been studying the potential of existing facilities and identifying their weak- nesses and strengths at a macroscale. Given the role of business models in knowledge creation, they have received increased attention in upscaling novel technologies (Müller and Welpe 2018). Therefore, various researchers looked at facilitating factors and barriers in this Editorial responsibility: Q. Aguilar-Virgen. * N. Abdolvand n.abdolvand@alzahra.ac.ir 1 Department of Management, Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran