{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"A Crowdfunding Model for Green Energy Investment","authors":[{"name":"Ronghuo Zheng","slug":"ronghuo-zheng","given":"Ronghuo","family":"Zheng","affiliation":""},{"name":"Ying Xu","slug":"ying-xu","given":"Ying","family":"Xu","affiliation":""},{"name":"Nilanjan Chakraborty","slug":"nilanjan-chakraborty","given":"Nilanjan","family":"Chakraborty","affiliation":""},{"name":"Katia P. Sycara","slug":"katia-p-sycara","given":"Katia P.","family":"Sycara","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"This paper studies a new renewable energy investment model through crowdfunding, which is motivated by emerging community solar farms. In this paper we develop a sequential game theory model to capture the interactions among crowdfunders, the solar farm owner, and an electricity company who purchases renewable energy generated by the solar farm in a multi-period framework. By characterizing a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium, andcomparing it with a benchmark model without crowdfunding, we find that under crowdfunding although the farm owner reduces its investment level, the overall green energy investment level is increased due to the contribution of crowdfunders. We also find that crowdfunding can increase the penetration of green energy in consumption and thus reduce the energy procurement cost of the electricity company. Finally, the numerical results based on real data indicates crowdfunding is a simple but effective way to boost green generation.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/378","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/0378.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/378.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/bibtex/378","volume":{"slug":"2015","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2015","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/","year":2015,"location":"Buenos Aires, Argentina","dates":"25–31 July 2015","editors":"Qiang Yang and Michael Wooldridge","isbn":"978-1-57735-738-4","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Special Track on Computational Sustainability","track":"Special Track on Computational Sustainability","number":378,"pages":{"first":2669,"last":2675},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}