Barriers to the investment in the Concentrated Solar Power sector in Morocco: A foresight approach using the Cross Impact Analysis for a large number of events Eva Medina a, *, Rafael de Arce a , Ramón Mahía a a Department of Applied Economics, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 13 November 2014 Received in revised form 26 June 2015 Accepted 28 June 2015 Available online 2 July 2015 Keywords: Scenarios design Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) SMIC technique Renewable energy CSP sector Foreign investment barriers A B S T R A C T The Scenario Analysis methods have often been used by policy makers as an instrument to manage uncertainty and to support the shaping of long-term economy policies. In this research, we apply Scenario Analysis in order to identify the barriers affecting the decision to invest in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) sector in Morocco. Our results aim at facilitating the process of defining different paths in strategic political and policy actions. Using data from a survey on a panel of experts, the Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) and the Cross Impact Matrix System (SMIC) techniques are applied. The advantage of these techniques is that they allow including in the analysis the interlinkages between the events that will define the future scenarios. However, their limitation is that the number of events analyzed cannot be too high since the information collected from the experts increases exponentially according to the number of events introduced. We thus expand our analysis with a new methodological approach, combining the use of prospective and statistics techniques. This approach allows addressing the mentioned limitation and applying these techniques, initially restricted to 6 events in its common application, to a large number of events. The results show that uncertainty and informality would be key factors in promoting the arrival of companies in this sector. Additionally, regarding companies that already have a presence in Morocco’s renewable energy sector, an increase in activity would be achieved through improvements in the easing of financial and legal barriers. ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Among the methods applied in the prospective literature, the Scenario Analysis is the most commonly used by decision makers as a useful planning tool to guide entrepreneurial and political actions (Godet & Roubelat, 1996; Schwartz, 1996). Based on the opinion of a group of experts, this technique allows defining different future scenarios and their probability of occurrence (Chermack, 2004). The identification of the desired scenario, among all possible, enables to prioritize the list of actions needed to be carried out in the present so as to achieve the desired goal in the future. Thus, the objective is not to project the past into the future but to serve as a link between future perceptions and the current decision-making process, by exploring future possible scenarios (Bañuls & Turoff, 2011; Cairns, Wright, Bradfield, Heijden, & Burt, 2004; Huss, 1988; Martino, 2003). * Corresponding author. Fax: +34 91 497 4887. E-mail addresses: eva.medina@uam.es (E. Medina), rafael.dearce@uam.es (R. de Arce), ramon.mahia@uam.es (R. Mahía). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.06.005 0016-3287/ ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Futures 71 (2015) 36–56 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures journal homepa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures