In recent years, more and more countries enact a variety of policy targets for future shares and amounts of renewable energy. This article explores existing policy directives on renewable literature and in so doing, it demonstrate policy gaps. In contribution to a plethora of existing literature on renewable energy policies it argues that there is more than one way of reaching policy targets. In carrying this forth it explores the South African renewable energy plan and its implementation. It proceeds to discuss case-studies of several independent power producers in South Africa, some parts of Africa and Indonesia, who go beyond governments' plans and offer renewable energy solutions. These case-studies are lessons to the South African government and the rest of the society that, with some innovation, more independent power producers could do more to assist the governments in achieving their policy targets. The article concludes by suggesting that, beyond policy directives, there is more scope for renewable energy development. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.