Policy and Legal Foundations for Sustainable Development of Solar Energy in Iran

There is no shortage of information in Iran, with about 300 clear sunny days in a year, about setting policies promoting solar energy. The need to limit the use of hydrocarbons and to increase solar renewable energy, due to ensuring an increase in safety and a decrease in pollution, raises the policy and legal questions concerning sustainability and regulation. From this point of view, this paper addresses the question of solar energy development based on the principle of sustainable solar energy development. Sustainable solar energy development is a complex concept covering a multidisciplinary wide range of social, technical, economic and environmental issues; and without analyzing appropriately all these dimensions, sustainable solar energy development (SSED) would not be complete. There are many legal and economic realities about renewables that are often not considered or simply ignored, such as not having a comprehensivelaw. These realities would cause the transition from fossil fuels to renewables to take much longer and cost considerably more than might be realized. The transition from fossil fuels to renewables, which is a worldwide goal to reduce GHG or CO2 emissions, requires the adoption of integrated regulation nationwide, taking a multidisciplinary approach, which includes legal, technical, social and environmental opportunities for multidisciplinary discussions. This integrates energy into legal, technical, environmental and social steps, programs and policies. It also involves converging properly multiple disciplines to redefine solar energy development problems outside normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations. This paper exemplifies and considers a U.S. law on solar energy and shows how solar-energy-regulation could contribute to the sustained development of solar energy in a country. This would help the development of solar energy regulation in Iran.