No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Transition towards a green economy in Europe: Innovation and knowledge integration in the renewable energy sector
Abstract
This paper investigates the fragmentation of the EU innovation system in the field of renewable energy sources (RES) by estimating the intensity and direction of knowledge spillovers over the years 1985–2010. We modify the original double exponential knowledge diffusion model proposed by Caballero and Jaffe (1993) to provide information on the degree of integration of EU countries’ RES knowledge bases and to assess how citation patterns changed over time. We show that EU RES inventors have increasingly built “on the shoulders of the other EU giants” intensifying their citations to other member countries and decreasing those to domestic inventors. Furthermore, the EU strengthened its position as source of RES knowledge for the US. Finally, we show that this pattern is peculiar to RES, with other traditional (i.e. fossil-based) energy technologies and other radically new technologies behaving differently. Our results provide suggestive, but convincing evidence that the reduction in fragmentation emerged as a result of the EU support for RES taking mainly the form of demand-pull policies.
... Table 1. . Gunay et al., 2022;Lee et al., 2022;Jin et al., 2022;Zhang, 2022;Santeramo, 2022;Nandy, 2022;Papoutsoglou et al., 2022;Licastro & Bruno, 2021;D'Amato & Korhonen, 2021;Khan et al., 2021;Neimark et al., 2020;Nanayakkara & Colombage, 2021;Taskın et al. ,2020;Khoshnava et al., 2019;Saum et al., 2018;Conti et al.,2018;Dornan et al., 2018;Gainsborough,2017;Loiseau et al., 2016;Droste et al., 2016;Ge & Zhi, 2016;Pahle et al., 2016;Lindman & Söderholm, 2016;Ürge-Vorsatz et al., 2016;Caprotti, 2016;Pfeiffer et al., 2016;Maria et al., 2015;Dulal et al., 2015;Sutton et al., 2014;Bauhardt , 2014;Gouvea et al., 2013;Oliveira et al.,2013;Chen et al., 2013). ...
... Classification by years is a very important one, as it shows the progress of research in the areas related to the green economy related areas as exhibited in Table 2 . 5 (Gouvea et al., 2013), (Oliveira et al. ,2013), (Chen et al., 2013), (Davies, 2013), (Misso et al.,2013) 2014 5 (Musango et al., 2014), (Diyar et al., 2014), (Lazzat et al., 2014), (Sutton et al., 2014), (Bauhardt, 2014) 2015 6 (Maria et al., 2015), (Lebedev et al., 2015), (Dulal et al., 2015), (Yi & Liu, 2015), (Rueff et al., 2015), (Gibbs & O'Neill, 2015) 2016 15 , , (Ge & Zhi, 2016), (Pitk€anen et al. (Buseth, 2017), (Holger et al., 2017), (Weber & Cabras ,2017), (Antonioli & Mazzanti, 2017), (Mazzanti & Rizzo, 2017), (Georgeson et al., 2017), (Gainsborough, 2017) 2018 9 ) Swainson & Mahanty, 2018(, (Saum et al., 2018, (Knuth, 2018), (Sinnandavar et al., 2018), (Conti et al. ,2018), (Rosenberg et al., 2018), (Dornan et al., 2018), (Higgs & Hill, 2018 ...
... 26% of publications fall in conceptual research category, 42% of publications fall in analytical research category and 32% of publications fall in empirical research category. (Govindaraju et al., 2022;Knuth, 2018;Milne & Mahanty, 2019;Ansah & Sorooshian, 2019;Bhopal et al., 2021;Swainson & Mahanty, 2018;Rosenberg et al., 2018;Diyar et al., 2014;Lazzat et al., 2014;Georgeson et al., 2017;Santeramo , 2022;Licastro & Bruno, 2021;Neimark et al., 2020;Dornan et al., 2018;Gainsborough, 2017;Droste et al., 2016;Ge & Zhi, 2016;Caprotti, 2016;Maria et al., 2015;Sutton et al., 2014;Bauhardt, 2014;Gouvea et al., 2013) Analytical 38 42% (Weber & Cabras, 2017;Antonioli & Mazzanti, 2017;Mazzanti & Rizzo, 2017;Dmuchowski et al., 2021;Davies, 2013;Ying et al., 2021;Sinnandavar et al. ,2018;Lebedev et al., 2015;Yi & Liu, 2015;Cabernard & Stephan, 2021;Sarwar, 2022;Rathore et al., 2022;Ali et al., 2021;Abid et al., 2021;Nhamo & Chipo, 2020;Solaymani, 2020;Matraeva et al., 2019;Momodu et al., 2019;Luukkanen et al., 2018;Shah & Niles, 2016;Dressler et al., 2016;Amankwah-Amoah & Sarpong, 2016;Rueff et al., 2015;Musango et al., 2014;Attahiru et al., 2019;Jin et al., 2022;Zhang, 2022;Nandy, 2022;Papoutsoglou et al., 2022;D'Amato & Korhonen, 2021;Khan et al., 2021;Khoshnava et al., 2019;Loiseau et al., 2016;Ürge-Vorsatz et al., 2016;Pfeiffer et al., 2016;Dulal et al., 2015;Oliveira et al., 2013;Chen et al., 2013) Empirical 29 32% (Macro-Fondevila et al., 2017;Holger et al., 2017;Pitk€anen et al., 2016;Ringel et al., 2016;Gibbs & O'Neill, 2015;Misso et al., 2013;Xu & Gao, 2022;Hou et al., 2022;Zheng et al., 2022;Liu & Dong, 2021;Li et al., 2021;Tian & Feng, 2021;Shuai & Fan, 2020;Zhu et al., 2020;Wu et al., 2020;He et al., 2019;Soomro et al., 2019;Wu et al., 2021;Higgs & Hill, 2018;Buseth, 2017;Law et al., 2016;Gunay et al., 2022;Lee et al., 2022;Nanayakkara & Colombage, 2021;Taskın et al., 2020;Saum et al., 2018;Conti et al., 2018;Pahle et al., 2016;Lindman & Söderholm, 2016) Source: prepared by authors ...
... Similarly, we let µ j E be the multiplier for the evolution of firm j's productivity (equation (13)). Finally, µ K and µ E are the multipliers associated with the distribution of the capital stock across sectors and with the supply of energy (equations (14) and (15)), respectively. ...
... Using (23), we set i = 0.489. 14 We follow GHKT (2014) in our calibration of the environmental damage parameters and the computation of the Pigouvian carbon tax. In particular, we set π = 2.379 × 10 −5 × 10, ϕ = 0.0228, ϕ L = 0.2, and ϕ 0 = 0.393. ...
... Setting E 0 = 14.92, τ f = 0.63 · τ * , and ξ = 0.54, our model matches f 0 = 100 GtC, 17 s 0 = 10.2 percent, and s 0 − s −1 = 2.3 percent. 18 14 For sensitivity, we also set i to levels corresponding to 10 percent and 20 percent slower than the maximum attainable renewable technology growth rate. These slower rates correspond to setting i to 0.449 and 0.408, respectively. ...
We develop a dynamic general equilibrium integrated assessment model that incorporates costs due to new technology adoption in renewable energy as well as externalities associated with carbon emissions and renewable technology spillovers. We use world economy data to calibrate our model and investigate the effects of the technology adoption channel on renewable energy adoption and on the optimal energy transition. Our calibrated model implies several interesting connections between technology adoption costs, the two externalities, policy, and welfare. We investigate the relative effectiveness of two policy instruments-Pigouvian carbon taxes and policies that internalize spillover effects-in isolation as well as in tandem. Our findings suggest that renewable technology adoption costs are of quantitative importance for the energy transition. We find that the two policy instruments are better thought of as complements rather than substitutes.
... Apart from that, the analysis of the ephemerality of the appropriation of innovative knowledge (i.e., the knowledge that can result in innovative products or services) is also very important for policymakers, because the strength (in terms of duration) of the appropriability regime is a critical factor for the innovation-based economic development (Ahuja et al., 2013). At one extreme, if firms' ability to benefit from their technological achievements is weak, then there is a risk that firms will reduce their R&D investments, resulting in a decrease in the overall production of new knowledge and development of new innovations (Conti et al., 2018;Teece, 2018). At the other extreme, a very strong appropriability regime will also negatively affect the ability of an economy to develop innovations due to the fact that strong protection mechanisms obstruct the transfer of new knowledge from one inventor to another, creating disincentives for the R&D activities and hindering knowledge production and economic growth in general (Conti et al., 2018;Yang et al., 2010). ...
... At one extreme, if firms' ability to benefit from their technological achievements is weak, then there is a risk that firms will reduce their R&D investments, resulting in a decrease in the overall production of new knowledge and development of new innovations (Conti et al., 2018;Teece, 2018). At the other extreme, a very strong appropriability regime will also negatively affect the ability of an economy to develop innovations due to the fact that strong protection mechanisms obstruct the transfer of new knowledge from one inventor to another, creating disincentives for the R&D activities and hindering knowledge production and economic growth in general (Conti et al., 2018;Yang et al., 2010). ...
... We used forward patent citations (i.e., patent citations received) to measure Influential Knowledge. Apart from the obvious view that patent citations indicate the importance of the knowledge incorporated within patents, at the same time they can indicate the degree of knowledge flows between firms (Appio et al., 2019;Baruffaldi and Simeth, 2020;Conti et al., 2018;Jaffe et al., 2000). Building on this consideration, De Carolis (2003) examined the knowledge resource's impact on firm performance in the pharmaceutical industry, measuring the inimitability of knowledge resource by employing the number of patent citations. ...
There is a general consensus among scholars that knowledge is probably the most important source of competitive advantage. The influential, novel knowledge incorporated in patented inventions can be considered as a valuable resource for firms. The research questions that are at the heart of this work are how long the effect of influential knowledge on financial performance can last and how this effect interacts with rivals' absorptive capacity. We test our hypotheses on longitudinal data from the chemical industry. Our findings suggest that influential patented knowledge has a negative, though weak, effect on financial performance in the first year after patent application, but the effect becomes strongly positive in the second year, even though it lasts only for one year. Moreover, contrary to our expectations, we find that the effect of influential knowledge on financial performance is positively moderated by rivals’ absorptive capacity.
... The importance of the circular economy relates to changing of the 'end-of-life' mentality of production toward renewable (environment-friendly) forms of product disposal. This study reflects an environmental focus that is shared with other studies included here (Burlinson, Giulietti and Battisti, 2018, Conti et al., 2018, Helveston et al., 2019, Jin, 2019, Wallace and Ràfols, 2018. Although its focus is on environmental aspects of research innovation, it is not taken to accord with the two principles it is tested against here. ...
... Although its focus is on environmental aspects of research innovation, it is not taken to accord with the two principles it is tested against here. Conti et al. (2018) also study the field of renewable energy sources in terms of trends in patent citations. They investigate the extent to which the EU innovation system in the field of renewable energy sources is fragmented, finding that increasing renewable energy sources patent citation patterns are similar post-2000 to those of 3D and robotics research but differ from those of IT and biotechnology, which have decreased (Conti et al., 2018). ...
... Conti et al. (2018) also study the field of renewable energy sources in terms of trends in patent citations. They investigate the extent to which the EU innovation system in the field of renewable energy sources is fragmented, finding that increasing renewable energy sources patent citation patterns are similar post-2000 to those of 3D and robotics research but differ from those of IT and biotechnology, which have decreased (Conti et al., 2018). Whereas these two studies may not reflect the vision of the two propositions, they offer important insights into technology upgrading in relation to environmentally important areas of research innovation. ...
Theory and evidence suggests that returns to research and research and development are currently declining. This paper seeks to identify patterns in the use of business research methodologies in certain of the latest articles published at the forefront of the field of business research innovation, from its leading journal. This literature is used to identify the current front line of business research methodologies at the forefront of the field. Propositions are derived from novel theory, and are critically juxtaposed against identified topics and methodologies in these articles. In so doing, the conceptual distance of the front line of empirical research in the field from the radical front line of theory in the broader field is quantified. Methodological implications are discussed and recommendations are made for the development of a future research agenda.
... For instance, Berk, Kasman, and Kilinc (2020) conclude that since 1990 the shares of the renewable energy sources in primary energy use have tended to converge (among a selection of 14 EU Member States). Conti et al. (2018) suggest that EU policy has reduced fragmentation in renewable energy innovation in terms of patenting, and a similar pattern cannot be observed for the fossil-fuel based energy sources as well as for other emerging technologies (e.g. IT, biotechnology). ...
... As noted above, this has most likely contributed to a reduction in the fragmentation in EU renewable energy innovation (i.e. patents) (Conti et al. 2018). Even though this and/or other EU directives do not stipulate how much should be spent on domestic government renewable energy R&D, such top-down policy measures may have influenced the willingness to undertake also such investments. ...
... feed-in tariffs, quota schemes, tendering procedures). However, while this has led to some amount of policy convergence in terms of renewable energy shares, innovation and policy instrument choices (Strunz et al. 2018;Conti et al. 2018), the Member States have full discretion when it comes to deciding how much government expenditures should be spent on encouraging R&D in the renewable energy sector. ...
Although the climate challenge requires proactive policies that spur innovation in the renewable energy sector, various countries commit vastly different levels of support for renewable energy R&D. This paper addresses the question why this may be the case. Specifically, the objective is to analyse the determinants of government support to renewable energy R&D in the European Union (EU), and, in doing this, we devote particular attention to the question of whether the level of this support tends to converge or diverge across EU Member States. The investigation relies on a data set of 12 EU Member States and a bias-corrected dynamic panel data estimator. We test for the presence of conditional β-convergence, and the impacts of energy dependence and electricity regulation on government R&D efforts. The findings display divergence in terms of government support to renewable energy R&D, and this result is robust across various model specifications and key assumptions. The analysis also indicates that countries with a low energy-import dependence and deregulated electricity markets tend to experience lower growth rates in government renewable energy R&D. The paper ends by discussing some implications of the results, primarily from an EU perspective.
... Unlike general innovation activities, green innovation aims to achieve harmonious development of the economy and environment with new technology and knowledge. It requires integrating information on resource consumption and manufacturing systems, and it involves integrating knowledge in different technical fields (Conti et al. 2018). It is challenging to carry out green innovation only by relying on experience and accumulating knowledge in a single technical field (Yin et al. 2021). ...
... On the one hand, digitization can accelerate the flow of information between different economic organizations (Müller et al. 2020), reduce internal and external transaction costs (Vatiero 2022), and increase the enthusiasm for green innovation. On the other hand, digital transformation promotes the integration of innovation resources and knowledge (Conti et al. 2018), which is conducive to transforming the traditional closed innovation model into an open and networked model (Michael et al. 2019). Open innovation provides a scenario for the effective allocation of innovation resources and improves the success rate of collaborative innovation (Roh et al. 2021). ...
The green digital revolution has changed the production mode of enterprises. This article explores the green value of digital transformation. The study calculates the digital transformation index and green total factor productivity (EGTFP) index of Chinese enterprises from 2012 to 2021 and uses a panel data model and intermediary effect to conduct empirical tests. The results show that digital transformation has a positive impact of 0.371 units on the EGTFP. This positive effect is proven to be stable after distinguishing between substantive and tactical digital transformation, where the effect of substantive digital transformation increases over time. At the same time, enterprise property rights and location affect the role of digital transformation; moreover, digital transformation performs better when grouping the nonstate-owned enterprises and the eastern region. In addition, energy efficiency, green technology innovation, and environmental responsibility are important intermediaries, as digital transformation can affect EGTFP by improving energy efficiency, promoting green technology innovation, and strengthening environmental responsibility. These research conclusions help evaluate the economic and environmental effects of digital transformation and provide empirical evidence for the high-quality development of enterprises.
... The main reason for selecting the diffusion of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies as an innovation in this paper is due to its significant position as one of the contemporary topics that have received considerable attention in the literature during the past decade [1,7,29,33,35,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. The literature identifies several motivations for the diffusion of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies such as global warming, energy security, fossil fuel depletion, global pollution, and energy efficiency improvements to reduce CO2 emissions [38]. ...
... While adopting sustainable and energy-efficient technologies is not new [29,41,[49][50][51][52][53][54], research on the association between B2B networking (in the interrelated firms) and the diffusion of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in organisations is remarkably sparse. We still do not know the details of different sources of diffusion channels in the interrelated firms that could contribute to the adoption and transfer of energy-efficient technologies in organisations [33,35,42,44,55]. ...
While the benefits and advantages of using renewable energies are remarkable, and their prices have been decreasing dramatically and are expected to fall further, the diffusion and adoption of renewable energies still lag fossil energies. This paper improves our understanding regarding the role of the interrelationship among businesses (as an example of B2B networking amongst parent and subsidiary firms). Furthermore, it demonstrates the way/s that such interrelationships can contribute to the diffusion and adoption of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies. This study describes four diffusion channels in the interrelated firms which can help with promoting and using renewable and sustainable energies. The paper also reports the actual share of each diffusion channel contributing to implementing sustainable energy-efficient technologies in practice. The findings suggest that parent organisations enforce the majority (over 50%) of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies implemented in a B2B environment. In comparison, inter-subsidiary relationships are responsible for less than 30% of the implemented sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in organisations. The findings are in line with the forced perspective theory. They could, to some degree, explain the differences in the levels of implementation of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in practice. These findings can help practitioners prioritise the diffusion channels when they want to facilitate the implementation of new technologies in their organisations. While some organisations may expect a more successful implementation of innovations initiated by subsidiaries than those enforced by parent organisations, the levels of success of the adoption of sustainable and energy-efficient technologies are not examined in this study. Further research is recommended to investigate the extent of association between different diffusion channels and the levels of success in terms of the adoption of innovation. We did not find similar studies to compare the results, which could be one of the limitations of this study.
... Firms obtain the most frontier technology information through the internet and have increasingly close ties with scientific institutions and universities, which can effectively promote firms' technological innovation (Glavas & Mathews, 2014;Yang & Liu, 2018). Technological innovation makes the input-output ratio of firms more coordinated and improves resource allocation efficiency (Conti et al., 2018;Huang & Chen, 2020;Huang et al., 2021;Stucki, 2019;Voigt et al., 2014). By examining the effect of industrial restructuring and balanced regional development on changes in energy intensity, Lin and Wang (2021) argue that regional technology gaps impede reduction in energy intensity and that technological progress is an important factor in those reductions. ...
China plans to arrive at its peak in the emissions of carbon dioxide and reach carbon neutrality by 2030 and 2060, respectively. What role does internet technology, as a key twenty-first-century technology, play in China's achievement of its two carbon goals? Based on datasets about Chinese prefecture-level cities collected mainly from statistical reports released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), China City Statistical Yearbook, and China Energy Statistical Yearbook in 2006–2019, this paper empirically examines how the development of the internet influencing energy efficiency. This paper uses the policy of “network power nation” strategy and “internet plus” (NPNIP) as a policy impact to construct a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) model for an empirical investigation, and use a mediating effect analysis to test the transmission mechanism involved in industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, and economic agglomeration. Empirical findings show that energy efficiency is improved by the development of internet. But this result has significant regional heterogeneity. Internet development can significantly reduce energy intensity in the eastern region and mature resource-based cities, but not the central and western regions and other resource-based cities. The mediating effect results show that the internet improves energy efficiency in three ways: upgrading industrial structure, stimulating technological innovation, and economic agglomeration. The empirical findings in this paper lead to many policy recommendation, including strengthening the formation of new infrastructure, deepening the organic integration of the internet across industries, and exploring the legal regulations on internet technology in specific application areas.
... Stock market financing was relatively large in 2007, 2009 and 2010, and the scale of asset financing and their share has increased rapidly. From the perspective of investment composition in In 2011, asset financing accounted for 97.5% of the total investment, equity accounted for 2%, and venture capital/private equity investment accounted for 0.5% (Conti et al., 2018). Chart 11 shows my country's new energy investment and financing situation since 2005. ...
The advent of the era of big data not only enables us to have more information that we can use, but also creates conditions for us to create and disseminate information in a timely manner. This article systematically sorts out and analyzes the overall development and investment of new energy in China, as well as the current new energy incentive policies implemented, and points out the problems in the development of new energy. On this basis, the technical risks, policy risks, and market risks faced by this new energy investment are analyzed, and a risk evaluation model based on DHGF and entropy technology is established. It can help investors identify potential investment opportunities. Investors can use the option of investment projects granted by real options to reduce the impact of uncertainty, thereby increasing the value of the company, and making more scientific and reasonable investment decisions. The experimental results of this article show that since 2009, stock market financing has become a financing channel favored by developers.
... Solar, wind, and geothermal energy are among the best-known renewable energies [2], but they are not the only sources. Other solutions such as those based on biomass have also gained greater importance in recent decades, not only as energy providers but also as waste disposers, with this being a clear exponent of the circular economy paradigm [3,4]. This is so in the case of biogas. ...
This piece of work dealt with the concept of ‘biogas upgrading’ or enrichment of the CH4 contained in a sweetened biogas to proportions and features comparable to those of synthetic natural gas (SNG). For this, the behavior of three lab made catalysts (Ni/Al2O3, Ru/Al2O3, and Ni–Fe/Al2O3) was tested in a CO2 methanation reaction (Sabatier reaction) under different feeding conditions (with and without methane). In the first set of experiments (without methane), the good catalytic behavior of the solids was validated. All three catalysts offered similar and increasing CO2 conversions with increasing temperature (range studied from 250 to 400 °C) at a constant WHSV of 30 × 103 STPmL·gcat−1·h−1. The CH4 selectivity remained close to one in all cases. Considering their total metallic load, the Ru (3.7 wt%)-based catalyst stood out remarkably, with TOF values that reached up to 5.1 min−1, this being six or three times higher, than those obtained with the Ni (10.3 wt%) and Ni–Fe (7.4–2.1 wt%) catalysts, respectively. In the second set (cofeeding methane), and also for the three catalysts, a high correspondence between the conversions (and selectivities) obtained with both types of feeds was observed. This indicated that the addition of CH4 to the system did not severely modify the reaction mechanism, resulting in the possibility of taking advantage of the ‘biogas upgrading’ process by using H2 produced off-peak by electrolysis. In order to maximize the CH4 yield, temperatures in the range from 350–375 °C and a H2:CO2 molar ratio of 6:1 were determined as the optimal reaction conditions.
... Moreover, in contrast to start-ups dedicating themselves to a green focus and green mission, finding a match between green technology opportunities and internal competences and diversifying into green markets is challenging and complex for most established companies (Wicki and Hansen, 2019). Therefore, eco-innovation requires more input from top managers and managerial environmental awareness (Peng and Liu, 2016), organizational internal capabilities (Salim et al., 2019) and more diversified knowledge resources (Conti et al., 2018;Martínez-Ros and Kunapatarawong, 2019). ...
Climate change represents a significant problem to the planet which raises concerns from stakeholder groups about corporate commitment to climate change issues. In this paper, we explore the effect of eco-innovation and climate governance on corporate commitment to climate change. We develop a unique measure for climate change commitment by considering four components, viz. whether a company supports the Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate action, whether a company is aware that climate change can represent commercial risks or opportunities, whether a company reports Scope 3 CO2 emissions and whether a company sets a target for emission reduction. We measure eco-innovation by using a score collected from the Eikon database that reflects a company's capacity to reduce environmental costs, eco-innovation intensity measured as environmental expenditures over revenues. We also create an index computed as a composite score by totalling five eco-innovation proxies collected from the Eikon database that reflect companies' efforts to reduce environmental impact. Concerning climate governance, we focus on three proxies, namely the existence of an environmental committee, climate incentives and the existence of sustainability reports. Based on a sample of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange for the period of 2014–2020, we find that corporate eco-innovation is positively associated with climate change commitment. We argue that firms that adopt innovative approaches to efficiently control pollution and resource use and reduce their environmental impact are more committed to climate change. We also find that climate governance is positively associated with climate change commitment. We claim that companies that integrate climate change issues in governance can help address climate change risks and opportunities. Our empirical evidence provides recommendations for managers and policymakers to promote the adoption of eco-innovative technologies and integrate climate change issues in governance, which can contribute to corporate commitment to climate change.
... In 2008, UNEP established the Green Economy Initiative and a year later the Global Green New Deal (Merino-Saum et al. 2019). Currently, the concept of green economy is the subject of research in the context of its relationship with sustainable development (Lavrinenko et al. 2019;Aldieri and Vinci 2018;Mikhno et al. 2021), green growth (Hickel and Kallis 2020;Stoknes and Rockström 2018), green finance (Zhang et al. 2021), technologies and innovations, that is the transition to a lowemission and ultimately zero-emission economy (Yumei et al. 2022;Kasayanond 2019;Ying et al. 2021;Zhao et al. 2019;Conti et al. 2018;Liu and Dong 2021). ...
In the twenty-first century, energy resources and production are the basis for efficient operation of the world’s economies. This is why development of the energy sector has become such an important political, economic and social aspect of every country. It guarantees economic development of the country, as well as maintaining or even enhancing the population’s standard of living. This process is accompanied by growing awareness of limited resource availability and the environmental impact of predatory resource management. The use of green energy in the economy is currently one of the major topics of political and social debate, both at the global level and in individual integration formations or countries. The outcome of this debate seems to be an inevitable drift towards climate neutrality. The chapter outlines evolution of policies on the use of energy resources and the major factors influencing the development of green transition policies.
... Furthermore, accepting social responsibility is one of the main paths by which enterprises can realize long-term and intrinsic value, which cannot be measured by short-term financial performance. For some enterprises, especially those from innovative and knowledge-based industries, strengthening green innovation is vital to realizing corporate social responsibility [85]. Even for companies outside of these industries, undertaking corporate social responsibility could also be seen as an indication of sustainable development, thus bringing the financial benefits described above. ...
In recent years, there has been an increase in awareness of the need for green innovation to attain sustainable development. Green innovation has been proven to be one of the ways to achieve sustainable development. Most research on determinants of green business innovation has focused on either personal or regulatory factors. This paper examines whether and how the personal factors of local officials are rarely concerned. While in the context of accelerating the construction of an ecological civilization, China has implemented a series of reforms, including those that concern the achievement of environmental objectives while assessing the performance and supervising the responsibility of officials. As these reforms have been designed on a personalized basis, this paper adopts a micro perspective to measure the political incentives of key local officials. Taking A-share-listed companies as our sample, our empirical investigation shows that the political motivations of key local officials can promote regional enterprises’ green innovation, and the government–enterprise relationship along with the corporate social responsibility of enterprises can strengthen this effect. Our conclusions prove that the reforms mentioned above have been operating effectively, and political incentives have improved local officials’ supervision of regional enterprises’ energy conservation and pollution reduction, which provides new evidence for the “promotion competition” of local officials during the transitional period in China.
... Traditionally, biogas solutions were primarily connected to waste and wastewater treatment [6], but they have increasingly become a part of the efforts of developing alternative renewable energy to mitigate climate change [7][8][9][10]. Concerns for sustainable agriculture [11,12], energy security, rural development and unemployment have also played an important role in motivating the promotion of biogas solutions in many countries [13,14]. This has contributed to the fast and steady growth of biogas production throughout Europe in recent decades. ...
Sweden aims to increase biogas production from anaerobic digestion (AD) from 2 to 7 TWh/year until 2030. This paper investigates the requirements, challenges and implications of such a development through qualitative and quantitative assessment of three scenarios. Seven key elements—national policies and policy instruments, regional policies and policy instruments, mobilization of feedstock, infrastructure for feedstock and gas, mobilization of actors, new production facilities, and stable and increasing demand—were defined for the scenario construction and were also used to structure the comparative analysis. Quantitatively, increasing the biogas production from 2 to 7 TWh is estimated to require up to 5 times larger digester volume and up to 12 times more AD plants, meanwhile producing 6–8 times more biofertilizers. While a centralized production structure would be more efficient, a decentralized structure with small biogas plants would facilitate the logistics of agricultural substrates and biofertilizers. New production capacity could be incentivized through new and increased production subsidies, as well as an increased demand for renewable energy. Regardless of how the goal is to be achieved, it will require collective efforts from both public and private actors to overcome the many challenges on the way.
... Even though the influence of economic activities on the CO 2 emissions has been identified, the impact of a higher global uncertainty on these emissions is not clearindeed, an increase of the volatility of all indicators of global uncertainty have a negative impact on the economic activities (Colombo, 2013), but this context might then reduce CO 2 emissions. However, this negative impact could also lead to another environmental problem: the decreases in investment and output could slow down all initiatives aiming at promoting renewable energy consumption (Conti et al., 2018;Sonnenschein, 2016) or all technological upgrades to reduce energy intensity and emissions intensity. In other words, the negative impact of a higher global uncertainty on the environment is not clearthe aim of this article is to investigate further this matter. ...
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the influences of global uncertainty indicators volatility on the domestic socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability in a sample of 54 developing countries.
Design/methodology/approach
The two-step system generalized method of moments estimator is recruited to deal with autoregression and endogeneity matter in our dynamic panel data. Seven different global uncertainty indicators (US trade uncertainty; world trade uncertainty; economic policy uncertainty; world commodities and oil prices; the geopolitical risk index and the world uncertainty index) have been mobilized and compared for their empirical impact on the economic (growth and GDP), social (the misery index and income inequality) and environmental (CO 2 emissions) vulnerabilities of nations.
Findings
Our empirical estimations suggest that the socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability cannot be solved through the same pattern: all decrease of a particular aspect will necessarily have a cost and an opposite influence on at least one of the other aspects of the nations' vulnerability.
Originality/value
The originality of this article is to combine these three dimensions of vulnerability in the same investigation. To our knowledge, our research is one of the few providing a joint analysis of the influence of global uncertainty on the economic and socioenvironmental countries' vulnerabilities – given the fact social, economic and environmental aspects are at the heart of the UN sustainable goals, our study can be seen as an investigation of the nations' capabilities to work proactively on meaningful sustainable goals in an increasingly uncertain world.
... Additionally, the need for effective demand side energy management considering the right amount (magnitude), time (in relation to investing in new energy supply systems) and type (coordinated with other systems) is also underscored (Shafiei et al., 2016;Say et al., 2018). As mentioned by Conti et al. (2018), "demand-pull" and "technology-push" measures have been seen to be extremely important. Hvelplund and Djørup (2017) emphasize the importance of proper attention to institutional and technical reforms including taxation systems to correspond to the desired RET. ...
Issues of environmental degradation, finite quantity and uneven spatial distribution of fuels in nature, and growing demand accentuated by volatility of oil prices have led to the global clean renewable energy transition (RET). With an objective of examining the current knowledge-stock on RET, we reviewed 248 journal publications pooled from three databases (ScienceDirect, Web of Science and Scopus) using a Systematic Literature Review method. This study does not focus on the specifications of a particular energy technology or regress relations among a limited set of variables. Rather, the key contribution is the critical assessment of the factors that encourage and those that hinder the transition process to provide a wider perspective through seven broad lenses: technological, investment, market, environmental, government and institutional, policy and social. Research, development and implementation of technology is a direct outcome of policy investment. Developed countries are leading the RET research while the global south is far behind. Most of the studies were found to be donor-driven which faced a serious risk of being counter-welcomed in different settings of the world without compromising the objectives of the transition. A strong international collaboration among the rich and poor countries is urgently felt necessary to foster mutual benefits. Research, planning and implementation of the RET would be highly effective and sustainable through a participatory bottom-up approach promoting local technology instead of imposed expensive imported ones. The need for “demand-pull” and “technology-push” policy instruments is stringent for successful transition. We conclude that there is a unanimous agreement among all the studies on the future prospects of renewable energy in the electricity sector; however, some skepticism still exists regarding other high energy demanding areas. Our review recommends updating existing and designing new robust policy mixes to guide the modality and pace of the RET, adhering to local specificities.
... Although patent classifications for energy related technologies are available (See León et al. 2018), there is not a distinct classification as energy sector in patent classification methods of WIPO, EPO, USPTO, and other patenting authorities. So that, studies using knowledge production function modeling specifies technology classification such as renewables, fossil fuel, and storage technology, etc. (Wangler 2013;Conti et al. 2018;Plank and Doblinger 2018). Only a small number of studies use aggregate R&D expenditure/investment as dependent variable to analyze total energy sector R&D activities. ...
Understanding the factors affecting R&D trends in the energy sector has a key role in overcoming environmental concerns such as combating climate change, as well as other economic and political problems related to energy. Based on such concerns, this study aims to analyze fundamental factors that determine the energy R&D trends of 29 International Energy Agency (IEA) countries. The data set, consisting of annual indicators for the period 1990–2015, is analyzed with the Driscoll-Kraay panel data estimator. Empirical findings for overall sample show that efficiency, import dependency, and the share of renewable energy use are positively related with R&D expenditure in energy sector. CO2 intensity is found to be statistically insignificant. When countries are grouped considering their energy composition structures, the dynamics of energy R&D expenditures differ between groups. In overall evaluation, our findings illustrate efficiency and dependency to have greater priority compared to environmental dynamics on energy R&D expenditures for IEA countries during the period.
... Our findings are also consistent with human capital and energy being substitutes in production in the long-run, particularly as economies transition to services, so investment in human capital has the potential to offset reductions in energy consumption in maintaining economic growth (Akram et al., 2020). This is consistent with the transition from fossil fuels to renewables occurring in parallel with the transition to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the two reinforcing each other with feedback effects from the knowledge economy reinforcing energy transition (Conti et al., 2018). ...
We examine the relationship between human capital and energy consumption in the United Kingdom employing time series data dating back to the mid-sixteenth century. We first employ traditional parametric techniques, such as cointegration tests and autoregressive distributed lag models, to examine the long and short-run effects. The findings suggest that there is a negative relationship between total human capital and energy consumption in the long run, with most estimates suggesting that an additional year of schooling reduces energy consumption in the range 15-20%. Given that such a long time series contains non-linearities and structural shifts in the data, we investigate the non-linear properties and find a long-run asymmetric relationship between human capital and energy consumption. We also relax the functional form assumptions and utilise local linear non-parametric regression. The results show a time-varying non-parametric link between human capital and energy consumption, although, consistent with the linear long run estimates, the relationship continues to be negative.
... Conti and others studies the intensity and direction of knowledge flows in renewable energy sources (RES) technologies over the period 1985 to 2010 across the US, Japan and the EU15. They found a fragmented EU innovation space until the beginning of the century, but that fragmentation shrank in parallel and due to increasing stronger EU environmental commitments during the last 20 years, and this went also in with a demand-pull policies (Conti, Mancusi, Sanna-Randaccio, Sestini, and Verdolini, 2018). Shabunina, Shchelkina and Rodionov have worked on the same idea as we do to link environmental performance to knowledge and innovation, but the North-West Federal District (NWFD) of the Russian Federation (RF) for the period of 2000-2014. ...
Our ecosystem and mainly our natural resources represent a vital ecological portfolio. Environment is good for business at a time business is not keen to invest in compliance measures. Sustaining the environment is costly and adds additional burden. The burden not only financial, it is mainly technical and managerial. Producing renewable energy and maintaining freshwater resource, reducing electricity production and emissions depend also on R & D practices such as trademark and patent applications. This also needs engineers, technicians, scientists and human capabilities with continuous knowledge and intellectual capital. The main research hypothesis has tested the effect of environmental protection and compliance on the R&D in intellectual capital creation. Environmental reactions are measured by “renewable internal freshwater resources”, “electricity production from renewable sources”, “access to electricity” and “alternative and nuclear energy”, while R & D practices are measured by “trademark applications”, “technicians in R&D” and “patent applications”. Research hypotheses has been tested using panel regression analysis according to GMM technique. Using data of 94 countries during the period from 2001 to 2019, findings show that there are significant effect of “trademark applications” on “renewable internal freshwater resources” and of “technicians in R&D” on each of “electricity production from renewable sources” “access to electricity” and “alternative and nuclear energy”. Besides, “patent applications” seems to have significant effect on “alternative and nuclear energy”. Results have found that countries that have made environmental improvements are those who have invested in intellectual capital and made significant steps in improving their environmental R&D Capabilities.
... In recent years, renewable energy technologies (RETs) have been considered as a solution to diversify energy supply and reduce dependence on fossil fuels to reduce GHG emissions as well as a way to create new jobs (Conti et al., 2018). Public access to renewable energy is also one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals for transforming the world and creating an equal, fair and secure world for the inhabitants of planet Earth (Fartash et al., 2021). ...
Purpose-This paper aims at identifying knowledge creation and diffusion challenges and explaining their causal relationship in renewable energy technologies in Iran. Design/methodology/approach-By reviewing the literature of renewable energy technologies development, key knowledge creation, and diffusion challenges are extracted. Then, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method is used to investigate the cause-effect relationships as well as the influence structure of aforementioned challenges in Iran. Findings-The results indicate that lack of specialized higher education and research institutions (C4), limited international product development and technological cooperation with international pioneer firms (C8), insufficient international research interactions of institutions and academic research centres (C6), tight and temporary subsidies to domestic institutes (C13), limited and non-systematic government grants (C14), insufficient tax incentives with low impact on investment (C12), weak enforcement of intellectual property rights (C5), low number and relatively poor performance of NGOs and scientific and trade associations (C19) and the limited number of conferences, workshops, meetings and specialized journals (C15) are among the most instrumental challenges of knowledge creation and diffusion of renewable energy technologies development in Iran. Originality/value-This paper identifies knowledge creation and diffusion challenges of renewable energy technologies development in Iran, which is applicable for other developing countries. It also analyses the interrelationship and causal effect between challenges which is a neglected issue in the literature and has beneficial theoretical and policy implications.
... The insertion of renewable energy sources into the global energy matrix is an important challenge for managers and international authorities (Perroni et al., 2016). The lack of energy sources aside from fossil fuels has raised concerns about guaranteed energy supplies and has made searching for new technologies and alternative energy sources essential (Conti et al., 2018;Schmidt and Sewerin, 2019). Conventional energy sources from fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil and coal are closely associated with industrial and economic development. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationships between socioeconomic development, renewable energy and the innovative process by providing: a descriptive analysis; a co-occurrence analysis of terms, thematic mapping and conceptual structure; and the typology of the textual corpus.
Design/methodology/approach
To analyze the relationship between “renewable energies, socioeconomic development and the innovative process,” it is necessary to build a theoretical foundation that contains the relevant scientific studies and reflects the current state of the art on the subject. For this, this study developed a systematic literature review (SLR) using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses research protocol to answer the relationship on the theme.
Findings
Research shows a global understanding of the need to invest in developing studies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve economic growth. The main contributions lie in providing a typology of the state of the art, identifying the joint relationships between themes, insights into the key themes and indicating themes that must be developed. This study may also support future empirical studies as it provides a theoretical foundation for formulating hypotheses, which can be tested through qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Originality/value
The innovative character consists of addressing a shortage of SLRs on this theme. Thus, this paper fills this gap by providing a theoretical foundation for future scientific and academic knowledge generation. Furthermore, regarding the interdisciplinary aspects of this research as contributions, this paper presented different approaches and theoretical perspectives.
... Over the last decades, the interest for biogas has grown rapidly in many countries [8]. Motivated by concerns over climate change, unemployment, rural development and energy import dependence, biogas and other biofuels have been increasingly promoted all over Europe (see, e.g., [9,10]). The number of biogas initiatives has increased and diversified. ...
The biogas sector has expanded quickly in Europe, but the development has been slowing down and the biogas production is still far below the estimated potential. This paper compares and analyzes the relations between the biogas development and the national policy frameworks for biogas solutions in eight European countries. The policy frameworks are compared by applying a generic model for biogas policies, comprising five dimensions: type of policy; administrative area; administrative level; targeted part of the value chain; and continuity and change over time. The studied countries show examples of both increasing and stagnating biogas production, all of which can be associated with changes in national policy frameworks. Many different policy tools—particularly economic instruments—have proven successful for stimulating biogas production, but changing a well-functioning framework risks impeding the development. The most important attributes of economic instruments for biogas are therefore not their form and their target in the value chain, but rather predictability and relevance for the targeted actors. However, targeting specific parts of the value chain can be required to integrate all the benefits of biogas solutions, such as agricultural methane emissions reduction. Moreover, it can be a challenge to design policies and policy instruments that are both effective and sustainable over time, without needs for modifications or adjustments. Finally, biogas policies and policy instruments that are effective in one country would not necessarily lead to the same outcome in another country, as they are dependent on the broader context and policy and economic framework.
... Table 3 shows the econometric results of solar photovoltaic technology using new combinations introduced by inventors from United States. We divide our sample into pre-2000 and post-2000 subsamples following Conti et al. (2018). They observed the acceleration in EU renewable energy patenting at the turn of the century. ...
How we can accelerate the diffusion of new clean energy technologies worldwide is a highly relevant topic for energy and climate policies, as well as industrial policies. We trace the time lag between the introduction and the diffusion of breakthroughs in solar photovoltaic technology and wind power technology. Our results show that both domestic knowledge base and organizational proximity to the country introducing breakthroughs, help latecomer countries catch up by actively innovating in these technologies on their own. Moreover, we find that there are more opportunities for latecomer countries with stronger domestic knowledge base to catch up in solar photovoltaic technology than wind power technology. The results of this paper provide systematic evidence of the technology-sensitive catching-up process in the clean energy technological paradigm.
... Our analysis thus provides suggestive evidence that the commitment of the EU to renewable energy development and deployment supported and promoted stronger integration of the innovation space. As such, climate mitigation comes as an opportunity to strengthen the EU position in the strategic field of RES, eventually resulting in sustainable growth (Conti et al., 2018) Considering the global ecological challenge and the European response to it, it was natural that European universities would play a decisive role in transforming the challenge into an opportunity. Historically, European universities played an essential role in the development of the modern world and the supremacy of the West (Simons, 2006). ...
Sustainability is an increasingly important subject matter for universities, which are faced with the dilemma to either help shape the current debate or risk becoming obsolete in the future. This research presents an overview of the main factors, shaping the future of universities, from climate changes and "going green" trends to entrepreneurship initiatives that can provide real economic growth and development. In this fourth industrial revolution, technological advances profoundly impact higher education initiatives; traditional universities must find creative solutions to thrive and develop in this era. The solution to sustainability that the authors of this chapter propose is to borrow key strategies from tech companies, which could be replicated at a university level. Among the most critical factors in the quest for sustainability is the continuous investment in faculty development, which can result in a culture of entrepreneurship and ecology.
... In the same vein, Liu et al. (2020b) have revealed that the use of industrial robots can significantly promote innovation activities through accelerating knowledge creation; the attendant expenses of research and development, as well as human capital, have also been shown to increase. Meanwhile, technology innovation delivering significant reductions in energy intensity has been widely confirmed (Huang and Chen, 2020;Conti et al., 2018;Stucki, 2019;Voigt et al., 2014). Thus, we can infer that the use of industrial robots may decrease energy intensity through technology innovation. ...
Considering the continuing slowdown of the improvement in energy intensity around the world, it is essential to seek a more effective measure to address the dilemma of energy and sustainable development. To this end, this research attempts to provide fresh insight into the determinants of energy intensity from the perspective of industrial robots and an industry-based view. By applying the dynamic panel GMM estimate methodology to a new data panel that includes 38 countries and 17 manufacturing sectors, this study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the use of industrial robots on manufacturing energy intensity. We found that industrial robots could significantly improve manufacturing energy intensity, and our hypotheses passed a series of robustness tests. Moreover, this improvement effect works through the technology improvement effect and technological complement effect between industrial robots and labor. Finally, we found a heterogeneous nexus exists between industrial robots and manufacturing energy intensity. Specifically, industrial robots can exert influence on non-renewable energy intensity rather than renewable energy intensity. Compared to capital-intensive sectors, we found that the use of industrial robots mainly affected labor-intensive sectors. We also found that Industry 4.0 could promote the improvement effects of industrial robots on manufacturing energy intensity.
... EU countries are considered leaders in the pace of implementation of the foundations of the green economy and are characterized by a high level of environmental and resource productivity [3]. In these circumstances, an important task is to analyze the successful strategies of green development of European countries in order to identify key success factors that can be adapted to the green course of different countries. ...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the indicators of environmental and resource productivity of European countries to identify leaders and outsiders and study their trends over recent decades. The results of the analysis showed that the indicators are characterized by uneven development, due to the characteristics of countries and their green policies. The key indicators of the Europe 2020 policy have been used for the analysis, namely resource productivity, greenhouse gas emissions per capita, recycling rate of municipal waste, eco-innovation index, final energy consumption in households. Linear trends for the period 1995-2019 with indication of trend equations were constructed for each indicator. The slope of the functions has been analyzed in order to identify the dynamics of trends. According to the results of the analysis, all indicators except greenhouse gas emissions per capita were characterized by positive dynamics, ie increased. It has been determined that the problematic indicator for EU countries is final energy consumption in households, which requires further detailed research.
... Innovation activities are essential for RES development because they could decrease the prices for green technologies and increase their feasibility. Innovation activities can stimulate a green economy (Conti, Mancusi, Sanna-Randaccio, Sestini & Verdolini, 2018), and policymakers should thus create mechanisms that spur innovation activities (Frank et al., 2018). ...
Renewable Energy Systems (RES) have been proposed as an effective solution for sustainable development. However, the impact of municipal contextual conditions on the development of RES is still unclear. One of the literature gaps is the lack of understanding of whether the balanced development of economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainability – the triple bottom line (TBL) perspective – can support RES policy. We conducted a quantitative analysis of 727 medium- and largesized German municipalities to understand whether municipalities should create contextual conditions around the TBL dimensions to support RES policy. Furthermore, we applied a cluster analysis to establish the patterns of RES adoption supported by the TBL. Our results document that advanced adopters of RES are more advanced regarding the economic and environmental aspects of the TBL, and their RES development outperforms in the development of a knowledge-base and social cooperation. In contrast, regions with less RES development primarily emphasize reducing energy dependency and increasing social acceptance. As the main contribution, the study provides a novel view on how sustainability and RES development work together by providing details about the connection between specific 3 TBL dimensions and elements with different maturity levels of RES policy implementation.
... Patent data can be used to detect global trends in the development of CCMTs, as they provide insights on the technological progress generated by nations and their innovation systems [7]. Patent data is one of the fundamental sources of quantitative and qualitative information available for the analysis of the different layers in the innovation process of CCMTs: patterns of innovative activities [8,9], impact of environmental policies [10,11], role of private and public funding [12], R&D expenditure [13,14], knowledge and technology transfer [15][16][17], knowledge spillover [18], internationalisation of green R&D activities [19], networks of scientific knowledge creation [20], technology improvement [21,22] and international climate negotiations [23]. Furthermore, there is a body of literature that studies the economics of intellectual property and climate change, highlighting the need to review intellectual property laws to enable transfer of CCMTs [24,25]. ...
Recent international climate agreements ask for an acceleration of innovation in climate change mitigation technologies (CCMTs). To design and plan efficient and effective actions, evidence is needed on what has been achieved up to now in terms of technological development. This paper provides an objective and evidence-based overview of the status of global inventiveness in CCMTs. Thanks to a detailed methodological approach, able to capture and exploit the information potential of patent data, this paper proposes a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the global inventive activity. Several indicators are defined and used to measure trajectories of technology development, globalisation of inventions, and networks of collaborations. The study focuses on four major international economies: Europe, China, Japan and USA. Findings show that these major economies have substantially advanced their inventive activity, but continuous and common effort is needed to combat climate change. In particular, the emergence of China as a major economy has been very relevant, since it has opened important market opportunities for incumbent players, but has also introduced competitive restrictions. The degree of internationalisation of CCMT-related activity has increased, as well as the number of collaborations among countries. The comparative analysis of two renewable technologies, solar PV and wind, shows that international inventiveness is technology-dependent and reflects country specialisation. Based on this evidence, international climate agreements need to be further supported to foster clean energy innovation, thereby shaping international collaboration and boosting positive competition.
... In order to avoid subjective overlap of indicator quality, reveal these key elements, and reflect innovation, this paper chooses a method of maximizing bias to determine indicator weights. e maximum deviation method is to compare the deviation of the indicator with the total deviation of all indicators and then describe the significance of the indicator; the larger the comparison value, the greater the weight of the indicator [18,23,24]. ...
Complex adaptation systems are the main development direction of China’s current green innovation research. New material industry is one of the key entry points to accelerate the construction of modern industrial system and promote innovation, green, and efficient development. Under the requirements of China’s current low-carbon development, China’s green innovation system is developing rapidly. Green innovation complicates traditional innovation models and their functions and improves economic development. The purpose of this paper is to study the theoretical analysis framework of applying complex adaptive systems and to analyze and calculate the characteristics of the current status of green innovation systems in multiple industries in China’s manufacturing industry. Analysis is as follows. The experimental group and the control group are set for comparison, and the data are organized by applying complex adaptive system theory and data analysis methods. Experimental data show that the coordinated development of the green innovation systems in various industries in China is not balanced, with a difference of more than three times; the parameters of the various green innovation systems within the industry are unbalanced, and the difference is more than five times. The experimental results show that the green innovation subject can strategically interact by adjusting the ratio of resource allocation through the constructed green innovation system model. The green innovation system with complex adaptive system theory is conducive to the development of the green system. It can save about 23% of green innovation time and improve efficiency by about 15%, to promote the development of green innovation in China.
... This arose at the turn of the century after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, which led to the creation of a single world space and the introduction of a stronger and more coordinated train of measures as a result of the 1997 White Paper. In Japan, energy efficiency is the best strategy, the basis of which includes not only the demand and supply policy, but also both activities aimed at technology, provide direct incentives to invest in innovative activities (Mancusi et al., 2018). ...
... The increasing dependence of European countries on fossil resources has motivated several governments to support research activities in the energy sector (Conti et al., 2018;Kang and Hwang, 2016;Skeete, 2019). The argument that a government budget in energy RD&D can help to foster renewable energy deployment is not new (Porter and van der Linde, 1995). ...
... Stemming from concerns over climate change, unemployment and energy import dependence, there has been a strategic policy development in many countries to promote biofuels in recent decades [13,14]. This work has been a key driver for increasing the number of biogas initiatives, which were previously mainly focused on waste management [1], but are nowadays often mentioned in the context of renewable electricity and heat (see e.g. ...
Biogas solutions typically span across several sectors, such as waste handling, energy and transport. While this can be an advantage in comparison to other alternatives, it also creates an intricate policy structure that is challenging to overview, making it difficult to evaluate consequences of different policy changes that might not be directly related to biogas. This article presents an attempt to describe the institutional conditions for biogas solutions in the EU by defining the dimensions and characteristics of policies and policy instruments influencing biogas. A five-dimensional model of biogas policies is proposed: type of policy; administrative area; administrative level; targeted part of the value chain; and continuity and change over time. This reflects the complexity of the conditions for biogas solutions and constitutes a platform for describing, discussing and developing biogas policies. From the proposed model, it becomes clear that biogas policy is a very dispersed and incoherent policy area. Thus, there is an apparent risk that the responsibility for biogas policy is diffuse and has no obvious owner among the involved actors, making the framework of biogas policies patchy and ineffective. This model can contribute to an improved overview of biogas policies, and can be used as a tool for comparing the policy landscapes in different countries.
... Implementation of the SET-Plan currently includes 17 joint programs in the European Energy Research Alliance; these programs set research priorities for various renewable technologies and encourage coordination among researchers in different countries and different sectors, including industry (European Energy Research Alliance n.d.). Since the inception of the SET-Plan in 2006, EU researchers have become more integrated, as demonstrated by increasing rates of patent citations among EU researchers in different countries (Conti et al. 2018). A consortium of states could similarly pool funds for energy R&D, both allocating it among researchers in member states and setting aside a share of funding specifically for cross-state collaborations. ...
Innovation is an important part of energy policy, and encouraging clean energy innovation is often an explicit goal of policy makers. For local governments, promoting clean energy innovation is seen not only as a pathway to a cleaner economy but also as a tool for promoting the local economy. But is such optimism warranted? There is a substantial literature examining the relationships between innovation and environmental policy, but few studies focus explicitly on innovation at the state and local level. In this paper, I provide key lessons from research on clean energy innovation, focusing on lessons relevant for state and local governments. I then summarize the results of a recent working paper by Fu et al. (2018) that studied wind energy innovation across individual states in the United States. While state-level policies can promote clean energy innovation, it is overall market size that matters most. Thus, innovation need not occur in those states most actively promoting clean energy. I conclude with lessons for state and local governments drawn from both this work and the broader literature on energy innovation.
This study examines the impact of barriers to knowledge diffusion in energy technologies in 29 countries from 1990 to 2015, distinguishing between efficient fossil-based generation and mature renewable options, namely wind and solar. We show that knowledge flows are higher in countries with similar technological profiles, particularly for mature renewables. The study finds that international knowledge spillovers have increased in intensity for wind and solar, while the opposite is true for fossil-based technologies. That means that foreign knowledge has increasingly informed domestic investors and points to the key role that knowledge flows from abroad had in promoting innovation in low-carbon technology options. Integrated assessment models should account for the role international knowledge spillovers play in the generation of new knowledge and in contributing to rapid decrease in costs.
This research aims to determine the prime energy security criteria and indices in the case of India. The energy security indices are determined through literature review and energy portfolio experts. This study explores five new perspectives about India's energy security; energy flow risk, operational risk, financial risk, strategic risk, and environmental risk. The study uses integrated methodology hesitant fuzzy set and regret set theory for energy security indices evaluation and selection. This integrated approach emphasizes the psychological characteristics of experts and the variation in decision making. The study reveals that Government has to focus on alternative fuel selection (wj = 0.1077), geopolitical risk (wj = 0.1042), and less capacity of strategic reservoir (wj = 0.0987). Further, the results show that for long term energy security India have to focus on the strategic risk; policies formulation for new fuels, more strategic reservoir, and diversity their energy sources.
With the transition of the global economy toward a green economy, it is important to analyze the elements that can either support or impede this transformation. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to evaluate the potential of the green economy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries by analyzing the correlation between economic and environmental factors. The objective of this study is to explore the potential of the green economy in MENA countries by analyzing key factors such as access to clean fuel, GDP, and CO 2 emissions. The study aims to distinguish between long‐ and short‐term effects, assess the presence of a long‐run relationship or co‐integration between the parameter estimates, and evaluate the progress of MENA countries toward a green economy based on the impact of economic, and environmental factors. Using quarterly and seasonally adjusted data from 2000 to 2018, the auto‐regressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was employed to examine the co‐integration of the factors in the long and short terms. Multiple cointegration techniques were also used to determine the feasibility of a green economy by analyzing the relationship between access to clean fuel for technology and cooking, GDP, and CO 2 emissions. The study's findings indicate a clear long‐ and short‐term relationship between the analyzed factors, as confirmed by the error correction model (ECM) which suggests that the variables are cointegrated and potentially relevant. Additionally, the result of the autoregressive distributed lag bound test shows that the green economy variables, GDP, CO 2 emissions, and access to clean fuel, are cointegrated in the long‐term.
European regions are currently implementing smart specialisation strategies trough the capitalisation of their knowledge assets to drive innovation in promising sectors, fields or technologies. However, there is a lack of understanding behind the knowledge development process of smart specialisation strategies targeting renewable energy technologies. Especially so in the creation of complex knowledge, which is more difficult to replicate and it therefore provides a greater competitive advantage. This research aims to fill that gap by exploring the patterns of complex knowledge production in six renewable energy technologies. By making use of quantitative methods and building upon the theoretical foundations of Evolutionary Economic Geography and the Smart Specialisation literature, this research attempts to test the relationship between the ability of a region to create complex knowledge and four mechanisms of path and place dependency linked to the knowledge creation process. Scientific publications cited in patents are used as an indicator for regional knowledge production to capture the role that scientific knowledge plays in technological development. A set of quantitative analyses revealed that scientific
relatedness is the most important driver for the creation of complex knowledge. That is the extent to which a region’s scientific profile is related to the knowledge base of a given technology. Contrary to what was expected, the results showed that the infrastructural and technological carbon lock-in of fossil fuel technologies either constrain or encourage the creation of complex knowledge. Moreover, it was
found that the ability of a region to create complex knowledge does not depend on its ability to accumulate scientific knowledge, solar PV technology being the exception, possibly due to the high level of analyticity of its knowledge base. Unexpectedly, access to complementary knowledge trough interregional linkages does not have a strong impact on the creation of complex knowledge. Instead, it is possible that complex knowledge is more likely to be geographically bounded. This is supported by the spatial distribution of complexity scores, in which high-score regions tend to cluster next to each other. To conclude, the findings of this research suggest that European regions implementing smart specialisation strategies targeting renewable energy technologies are more likely to be successful when
they diversify into scientific or technological fields that are related to their scientific profile, regardless of their capacity to contribute to the knowledge stock or the knowledge and specialised skills accumulated in fossil fuel technologies.
Financing the green transformation constitutes another vital area for countries around the world. Many governments are allocating ever-increasing funds for financing green technologies and the decarbonisation of their economies. By 2050 the European Union is supposed to become the world’s first bloc of climate-neutral countries. This requires substantial investment on the part of the EU and the domestic public sector, as well as the private sector. The investment plan for the European Green Deal presented last year aims at a significant increase in the activity of EU countries in this area. The chapter presents the most relevant possibilities of financing the green transformation, also providing examples of similar regulations introduced in EU member states.
We suggest two boundary conditions for the positive role of patent protection in attracting inward foreign R&D investments. Patent protection is less effective in limiting the leakage of nonpatented knowledge through interfirm mobility of employees, and a gradual strengthening of patent protection worldwide diminishes its effect as countries get closer to the intellectual property rights (IPR) frontier. We provide evidence in an empirical analysis of 3393 multinational firms’ R&D location choices for 8015 greenfield R&D investments in 105 (potential) host countries, during 2003–2014. The relationship between R&D investment location choices and IPR protection is subject to declining marginal effects and negatively moderated by inventor mobility.
Several policies promote the adoption of renewable electricity among incumbent utilities. Yet, the scale of consumer adoption appears limited by accessibility. The underlying factors inhibiting accessibility are exacerbated with low- and middle-income (LMI) consumers who not only have substantial income disparities but also make up a significant proportion of a utility's customer base. While prior research demonstrates that policies can help in scaling participation hurdles in solar, the extent to which utility efforts help to unlock the market potential for LMI participation is not evident. We contribute to distributional effects of environmental policy by evaluating utilities' efforts to provide consumer access to clean energy. Reviewing solar initiatives of utilities, as reflected on their website enhanced with secondary archival data, we find that the role of accessibility particularly for LMI households, either through community solar projects (CSP) or rooftop solar installations, is shaped by policy and complementary factors. Such factors include ownership models either through subscriptions or rooftop panel ownership, income disparity, the regulatory regime, and a combination of these factors. Our findings further suggest that utilities are more likely to support LMI accessibility to their CSPs in the presence of policy intervention such as solar incentives and retail choice markets when their customer base is significantly LMI households. In fact, LMI access by subscription is stronger in retail choice markets, whereas access to rooftop solar panels is an increasing function of income.
Confronted with the constraints of carbon dioxide reduction, R&D improves the production efficiency of enterprises. However, China's diversified economic entity structure makes enterprises with different attributes exhibit different R&D behaviors under the constraints of external carbon dioxide reduction. This paper takes Ten Thousand Enterprises Plan as an example, which belongs to the front-end policy and restricts the enterprise's carbon emission rights, reveals the impact of carbon dioxide reduction constraint on enterprises' R&D investment and alleviates the endogenous bias of previous research. Moreover, this paper explores the moderating effect of ownership structure on the relationship between carbon dioxide reduction policy and enterprises' R&D investment. The results show that the relationship between carbon reduction policy and enterprises' R&D investment in China is manifested as a significant “cost effect”, that is, mandatory carbon emission reduction policy limits the expansion of enterprises' R&D investment scale. Comparing state-owned enterprises with non-state-owned enterprises, carbon dioxide reduction policy can hardly stimulate the R&D investment in non-state-owned enterprises, while the state-owned enterprises can easily obtain factor resources, which decreases carbon emission reduction costs and improve R&D investment intention, resulting in stronger R&D behaviors.
Due to the fact that the potential of the transition of the Eurasian Economic Union to a green economy has not been sufficiently studied, the analysis of the applicability of the EU experience in the field of green innovations for the EAEU countries is being conducted for the first time. The study aims to analyze the potential of the EAEU in achieving the goals of green growth, the ability of the EAEU to compete with alternative projects of the European Union with the post-Soviet countries, and the possibility of joint activities of the EAEU with the EU in the field of green innovations. In this work, we used empirical methods-operations in the study of documents of the organizations and the scientific literature devoted to them. Based on the narrative method, the author considered how plans for the introduction of green technologies into the production process are being implemented in the EAEU countries. When analyzing trends in the sustainable development of the EAEU based on green growth, an analytical forecasting method was used, as well as a scenario writing method. As a result of the study, the author identified the leading directions of the transition of the EAEU countries to a green economy. The study allowed us to identify both the main obstacles to cooperation between the EAEU and the EU based on green growth, and factors that can bring these organizations closer together economically, primarily joint projects in the field of green innovation.
This paper investigates the intensity of international collaborations in energy-related technologies across OECD and BRIICS countries, by disentangling the role of the distance in environmental policy stringency between countries, controlling for the more traditional measures of technological, social, institutional and geographical distance. In doing so, it distinguishes between the stringency in demand-pull and the stringency in technology-push policy instruments. The analysis relies upon an original dataset, with data on patents and co-patents in climate change and mitigation technologies over the period 1995–2014, with a focus on technologies related to energy generation, transmission or distribution. The results show that the distance in the stringency of environmental policy between countries hinders the intensity of technological collaborations in energy-related technologies and this occurs specifically with reference to demand-pull policy instruments. We also find that while the availability of local technological capabilities positively affects the intensity of international collaborations, if two countries are distant in terms of technological development, the co-patenting activity is hindered. Finally, BRIICS countries display a lower ability to participate in international co-patenting activity, particularly so in collaboration with other BRIICS countries.
This study aims to contribute to the long-standing debate on technology-push versus demand-pull mechanisms to support the creation and diffusion of innovations. We argue that in addition to the traditional push–pull dichotomy, technological change drivers must be differentiated by whether they are exogenous or endogenous to the economic system and must be assessed against their contribution to both the creation and the diffusion of innovation. We apply this perspective to study innovation in the renewable energy (RE) industry in 15 European Union countries. We find that public R&D investments, public policies, and per capita income positively affect either innovation creation or diffusion. However, impacts differ depending on the innovation dimension considered. Economic growth is relatively ineffective at stimulating innovation creation. In contrast, it is a strong driver of RE diffusion with a nonlinear, U-shaped impact that has both a direct cause and an indirect cause. Our findings highlight the importance of deploying diverse policy instruments simultaneously to enhance the effectiveness of clean energy policies.
Graphic abstract
CD-LINKS insights critically informed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, as well as other reports on the assessment of investment and finance needs. Through continued inter-disciplinary global research efforts such as CD-LINKS, we can strategically and systematically work to achieve objectives of energy poverty eradication, increased well-being and welfare,
biodiversity, optimal air quality, and sufficient availability of food and water. We would like to thank all external and internal project partners, as well as the project Advisory Board members for their dedicated efforts. It is their concerted efforts that help move us another step closer to a secure and sustainable future for all in the face of an ever-changing climate.
Providing more affordable and cleaner energy for all raises complex and significant financial, political, technical, and institutional issues, which must all be addressed to ensure sustainable development. Energy technology innovation has a critical role to play as one of the best pathways to achieve the transition to a global clean energy system. This paper is an endeavor to study the impact of government energy technology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budget, which is the primary input of energy technology innovations on cleaner energy supply and carbon footprints (CFP). In this study, a cleaner energy supply is measured as the contribution of renewable energy to total primary energy supply (RE). We assumed that the effect of energy innovation is not uniform but varies according to the descending and ascending movements in a government’s energy technology RD&D budget. To this end, we distinguished the impact of the descending and ascending movements in government energy technology RD&D budgets on cleaner energy supply, and CFP in Europe over the period 1985 to 2016. Additionally, we carried out a comparative examination of the effects of energy technology RD&D expenditures on RE and CFP under both linear and nonlinear panel techniques. To increase room for policy implications, we also controlled for the role of economic growth and trade openness and performed several robustness check analyses. We found that the reduction of carbon footprints associated with an increase in public support to energy technology RD&D is more pronounced than the contribution of energy technology innovation to the deployment of renewable energy in Europe. This study provided little evidence in favor of the effectiveness of a government energy technology RD&D budget to substantially boost renewable energy in Europe. Following these results, we suggest that the knowledge of the asymmetric linkage between public energy technology innovation, RE, and CFP is a starting point to achieve win-win solutions that favor clean energy and environmental sustainability.
The locus of knowledge externalities and the cost of knowledge. Regional Studies. This paper provides an extended Crépon–Duguet–Mairesse (CDM) approach to analyse jointly the simultaneous effects of knowledge spillovers in the knowledge-generation and technology production functions. It introduces the distinction between imitation and knowledge externalities and articulates the hypothesis that spillovers yield their effects via three well-distinct mechanisms: (1) knowledge externalities that exert positive and direct effects on the knowledge-production function and (2) indirect effects on the technology-production function via their effects on the cost of knowledge; and (3) imitation externalities that exert direct and positive effects on productivity in the technology-production function. We test our hypotheses on a large panel of Italian companies distributed in NUTS-2 regions for the period 2005–09. The econometric analysis consists of a model comprising a system of equations that test the simultaneous role of spillovers in the knowledge-generation and technology-production functions with the inclusion of endogenous knowledge costs. The results confirm that the access to external knowledge – as an input in the knowledge-generation function – plays a key role in increasing the knowledge output and – as an input in the technology-production function – has positive indirect and direct effects on the productivity of firms.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the presence of international knowledge spillovers in the wind power sector. Specifically, the paper investigates whether successful invention efforts in one country, measured by way of granted wind power patent counts, have had positive effects on the neighboring countries’ abilities to generate patents of the same category. Data on the number of patents granted at the European Patent Office during the period 1978–2008 are used for the eight national technological leaders in the western European wind power sector. The few comprehensive wind power studies that exist have only found limited evidence of international knowledge spillovers. However, in this paper, we find that international spillovers are statistically significant determinants of a country’s wind power patenting outcomes. Geographical distance is also taken into consideration, and the knowledge spillover effects are shown to become stronger with decreases in this distance. The results should have important policy implications, for example, for a national government when it comes to applying an investment strategy in wind power or, alternatively, free-riding on other countries’ invention efforts.
Technology transfer is an important channel of technological change and sustainable development for countries with less innovative ability than technological leaders. This paper studies whether domestic environmental policies affect the inward technology transfer of cleaner innovation from abroad. We focus specifically on the power sector, for its important role in the decarbonization process, by looking at zero-carbon (renewable) and carbon-saving (efficient fossil) technologies for energy production. Using data on cross-country patent applications, we provide evidence that environmental policy contributes to attracting foreign cleaner technology options to OECD markets but not to non-OECD markets. We show that this is due to the nature of the implemented policy instruments. Market-based approaches positively impact technology transfer to both OECD and non-OECD economies, while non-market based approaches have at best only a weak effect in OECD countries. Domestic environmental policies may provide too weak a signal for foreign innovators in countries off the technological frontier. This calls for a strengthening of policy incentives for technology transfer in light of pressing climate change objectives.
This book highlights the interaction between science and politics and between research in economics and European Union policy-making. It focuses on the use of Quantitative tools, Top-down and Bottom-up models in up-stream European decision-making process through five EU policy case studies: energy taxation, climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and internalisation of external costs. The author reveals how the European Commission grounds part of its legitimacy on the «objectivity of the figures» and on its «technical charisma». Faced by strong stakeholders, an elected European Parliament and a Council representing the national interests, the Commission defends the credibility of its policy initiatives (e.g. energy and environment targets, new market mechanisms) by scientific reports. Through an in-depth analysis of the preparatory legislation (Commission White Papers, Communications, Directive Proposals, Staff Working Documents, Impact Assessments), the author explains how the European Commission justifies economically and supports politically its initiatives. This book offers a new way of understanding the EU decision-making process with special reference to the energy and environment fields.
The paper offers sector-based qualitative evidence concerning the climate and energy policy effects on eco innovations in the EU. Through interviews with industry associations of Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) sectors, it analyses the extent to which past innovation adoption dynamics were influenced by policy and regulatory levers, by looking at the single and interaction effects of policies. As could be expected from the neo-Schumpeterian theory on innovation, differences emerge across sectors. Policies appear to be relevant in some sectors, namely energy, coke and refinery, and paper, but energy costs considerations dominate over the potential effects of CO2 targeted policies. Overall, technological and organisational levels are both relevant: organisational innovations emerged as important in most sectors, often operating as a leading force in technological development. We expect this 'complementarity' to play a crucial role in the future path towards 2030 and 2050 aims, whose achievement is possible only by integrating technological, organisational and behavioural innovations.
Cohen and Levinthal (1989) introduced the notion of absorptive capacity and demonstrated that knowledge spillovers can induce complementarities in R&D efforts. We show that this idea has rich implications when analysing important aspects of the growth process such as cross-country convergence and divergence, the international co-ordination of climate change policies, and the role of openness in the production of ideas. We also show that the notion of absorptive capacity sets an agenda for new empirical and theoretical analyses of the role of R&D spillovers in innovation and growth.
This paper compared and contrasted patent counts by examining the inventor country and the assignee country. An empirical analysis of the patent data revealed how assignment principles (i.e. by the inventor country and by the assignee county) and counting methods (i.e. whole counts, first country and fractional counts) generate different results. Quadrant diagrams were utilised to present the patent data of the 33 selected countries. When countries had similar patent counts by inventor country with patent counts by assignee country, all the countries allocated along the diagonal line in the quadrant diagram were developed countries. When countries had more patent counts by inventor than by assignee, developed countries were more likely to sit in the right upper section of the quadrant diagram, while more developing countries were situated in the left lower section. Countries with higher patent counts by assignee than by inventor were more likely to be tax havens. A significant contribution of this paper resides in the recommendation that patent counts be analysed using both the inventor country and the assignee country at the same time if meaningful implications from patent statistics are to be obtained.
This paper examines the effect of environmental policies on technological innovation in the specific case of renewable energy.
The analysis is conducted using patent data on a panel of 25 countries over the period 1978–2003. We find that public policy
plays a significant role in determining patent applications. Different types of policy instruments are effective for different
renewable energy sources. Broad-based policies, such as tradable energy certificates, are more likely to induce innovation
on technologies that are close to competitive with fossil fuels. More targeted subsidies, such as feed-in tariffs, are needed
to induce innovation on more costly energy technologies, such as solar power.
Market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies. These combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives, and can be cost-effectively harnessed through the use of economic-incentive based policy. In the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies, investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable. Positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives. While environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties, a long-term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success.
This paper reports a search for general tendencies among models that look at spillovers in innovative activities. A number of inferences are detailed that appeared in a wide class of settings, including stochastic racing models, (static) stochastic models, dynamic and static commitment models, and strategic investment models. They include: •- the role of a critical spillover level that drives the comparison between symmetric cooperative and non-cooperative efforts;•- the disincentive effect of symmetric spillovers for strategic investments and the positive effect of such spillovers for investment commitments and cooperative efforts;•- the fact that innovative output in many cases is highest when appropriation is neither perfect nor free, although circumstances also emerge where any lack of appropriation will discourage innovative efforts.
Empirical research on complementarity between organizational design decisions has traditionally focused on the question of existence of complementarity. In this paper, we take a broader approach to the issue, combining a "productivity" and an "adoption" approach, while including a search for contextual variables in the firm's strategy that affects complementarity. Analysis of contextual variables is not only interesting per se, but also improves the productivity test for the existence of complementarity. We use our empirical methodology to analyze complementarity between innovation activities: internal research and development (R& D) and external knowledge acquisition. Our results suggest that internal R& D and external knowledge acquisition are complementary innovation activities, but that the degree of complementarity is sensitive to other elements of the firm's strategic environment. We identify reliance on basic R& D--the importance of universities and research centers as an information source for the innovation process--as an important contextual variable affecting complementarity between internal and external innovation activities.
We compare the geographic location of patent citations with that of the cited patents, as evidence of the extent to which
knowledge spillovers are geographically localized. We find that citations to domestic patents are more likely to be domestic,
and more likely to come from the same state and SMSA as the cited patents, compared with a “control frequency” reflecting
the pre-existing concentration of related research activity. These effects are particularly significant at the local (SMSA)
level. Localization fades over time, but only very slowly. There is no evidence that more “basic” inventions diffuse more
rapidly than others.
The extent to which new technological knowledge flows across institutional and national boundaries is a question of great importance for public policy and the modeling of economic growth. In this paper we develop a model of the process generating subsequent citations to patents as a lens for viewing knowledge diffusion. We find that the probability of patent citation over time after a patent is granted fits well to a double-exponential function that can be interpreted as the mixture of diffusion and obsolescense functions. The results indicate that diffusion is geographically localized. Controlling for other factors, within-country citations are more numerous and come more quickly than those that cross country boundaries.
This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Japan. We find (1) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooner than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approximately 100 times as likely to cite each other as patents from different patent classes there is not a strong time pattern to this effect; (3) patents whose inventors reside in the same country are typically 30 to 80% more likely to cite each other than inventors from other countries, and these citations come sooner; and (4) there are clear country-specific citation tendencies; e.g., Japanese citations typically come sooner than those of other countries.
We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis. In addition to widely used VaR and ES models, we also study the behavior of conditional and unconditional extreme value (EV) models to generate 99 percent confidence level estimates as well as developing a new loss function that relates tail losses to ES forecasts. Backtesting results show that only our proposed new hybrid and Extreme Value (EV)-based VaR models provide adequate protection in both developed and emerging markets, but that the hybrid approach does this at a significantly lower cost in capital reserves. In ES estimation the hybrid model yields the smallest error statistics surpassing even the EV models, especially in the developed markets.
Addressing the widespread desire to better understand how climate change issues are addressed in the United States, this book provides an unparalleled analysis of features of the US economic and political system that are essential to understanding its responses to climate change. The introductory chapter presents a firm historical context, with the remainder of the book offering balanced and factual discussions of government, business and public responses to issues of energy policies, congressional activity on climate change, and US government involvement in international conferences. Abundant statistical evidence illustrates key concepts and supports analytic themes such as market failures, free riders, and the benefits and costs of alternative courses of action among industry sectors and geographic areas within the US. Written for audiences both outside and within the US, this accessible book is essential reading for anyone interested in climate change, energy, sustainable development or related issues around the world.
The diffusion of renewable energy in the power system implies high supply variability. Lacking economically viable storage options, renewable energy integration is possible thanks to the presence of modern mid-merit fossil-based technologies, which act as back-up capacity. This paper discusses the role of modern fossil-based power generation technologies in supporting renewable energy investments. We study the deployment of these two technologies conditional on all other drivers in 26 OECD countries between 1990 and 2013. We show that moving from the first to the third quartile of the distribution of modern fossil technologies is associated with an increase in yearly renewable energy investment of between 6 and 14 kW per thousand people, on average and ceteris paribus. This is a sizeable effect, considering that average yearly renewable capacity addition in our sample are around 12 kW per thousand people. These findings are robust to different econometric specifications, various definitions of modern fossil technologies and are stronger for wind, which is more intermittent and for which the mismatch between supply and demand is more marked. Our analysis points to the substantial indirect costs of renewable energy integration and highlights the complementarity of investments in different generation technologies for a successful decarbonization process.
This paper studies the knowledge spillovers generated by renewable energy technologies, unraveling the technological fields that benefit from knowledge developed in storage, solar, wind, marine, hydropower, geothermal, waste and biomass energy technologies. Using citation data of patents in renewable technologies filed at 18 European patent offices over the 1978–2006 period, the analysis examines the importance of knowledge flows within the same specific technological field (intra-technology spillovers), to other technologies in the field of power-generation (inter-technology spillovers), and to technologies unrelated to power-generation (external-technology spillovers). The results show significant differences across various technologies. Overall, patents in wind, storage and solar technologies tend to be more frequently cited than other technologies. While wind technologies mainly find applications within their own field, a large share of innovations in solar energy and storage technologies find applications outside the field of power generation. The paper discusses the implications of these results for policymaking.
Technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support. Various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push, demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies. Our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in Germany since the 1980s. We examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co-inventor networks based on patent data. Our results indicate notable differences between the technologies: the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments, while in photovoltaics, demand pull is decisive for network growth. By and large, the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments. The structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies. Systemic instruments increase interaction, especially in the wind power network, and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration.
This paper studies the diffusion of knowledge and its consequences for local innovation production. In a common framework, we analyze the geographic reach of different channels of knowledge flows that thus far have been studied separately in the literature. To jointly estimate these flows, we develop and apply novel econometric techniques appropriate to the nature of the data. We find that geographic along with technological proximity to be more essential to the operation of market than to non-market channels of knowledge flows. External accessible disembodied knowledge has a strong positive effect on local innovation production that is larger than that of embodied knowledge.
The aim of this study is to examine public expenditures for energy R&D in Europe and the resulting energy knowledge stock. After the first oil shock energy R&D became more and more important in Europe. The energy R&D distribution among technologies of the EU member states and the European Commission was similar in the 1980s with a strong focus on nuclear energy. Nowadays,
energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies are of growing importance. The new program Horizon 2020 is expected to have an equal distribution between nonnuclear and nuclear energ y R&D expenditures. The cumulative energy knowledge stock induced by public R&D expenditures amounts to approximately 36 billion EUR in 2013, where upon the EU member states’ share
is more than three times larger than the European Commission’s share. The study provides knowledge stock scenarios for the next years under business as usual and changing conditions. According to the scenarios, the knowledge stock will increase to 48.5–55 billion EUR by 2023. For the first time, such comparison between the EU member states’ and the European Commission’s R&D expenditures has been performed for a period of more than 30 years, obtaining a clear picture of the induced energy knowledge stock.
The pace of industrial innovation and growth is shaped by many forces that interact in complicated ways. Profit-maximizing firms pursue new ideas to obtain market power, but the pursuit of the same goal by others means that even successful inventions are eventually superseded by others; this is known as creative destruction. New ideas not only yield new goods but also enrich the stock of knowledge of society and its potential to produce new ideas. To a great extent, this knowledge is nonexcludable, making research and inventions the source of powerful spillovers. The extent of spillovers depends on the rate at which new ideas outdate old ones, i.e., on the endogenous technological obsolescence of ideas, and on the rate at which knowledge diffuses among inventors. In this paper we build a simple model that allows us to organize our search for the empirical strength of the concepts emphasized in the preceding. We then use data on patents and patent citations as empirical counterparts of new ideas and knowledge spillovers, respectively, to estimate the model parameters. We find estimates of the average annual rate of creative destruction in the range of 2-7% for the decade of the 1970s, with rates for individual sectors as high as 25%. For technological obsolescence, we find an increase over the century from about 3% per year to about 12% per year in 1990, with a noticeable plateau in the 1970s. We find the rate of diffusion of knowledge to be quite rapid, with the mean lag between one and two years. Last, we find that the potency of spillovers from old ideas to new knowledge generation (as evidenced by patent citation rates) has been declining over the century; the resulting decline in the effective public stock of knowledge available to new inventors is quite consistent with the observed decline in the average private productivity of research inputs.
Global climate change presents one of the most difficult problems the international community has ever faced. Recent events at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference suggest that the United Nations is not yet equipped to address the issue, and national politics reveal that, in most cases, domestic politicians have neither the political will nor the regulatory tools at their disposal to structure effective policy regimes. Against this daunting backdrop, the experiences of United States and European Union climate policy over the last two decades offers instructive lessons. The historical evolution in US and EU climate policy exemplifies how climate change has risen to the top of political agendas in divergent contexts while the spans separating US and EU climate policy to date epitomize the struggles inherent in on-going global efforts to address climate change. Neither the EU nor the US offer unqualified lessons in success, but both offer many lessons, some of which reveal successes but all of which offer opportunities to learn from social, political, and regulatory experiments. Premised on the notion that US and EU efforts to address climate change are closely linked to global climate change politics, this book explores the content and process of climate change law and policymaking in the US and the EU to reveal policy convergences and divergences, and to examine how these convergences and divergences influence the ability of the global community to structure a sustainable, effective, and equitable long-term climate strategy.
This paper investigates empirically the effect of market regulation and renewable energy policies on innovation activity in different renewable energy technologies. For the EU countries and the years 1980 to 2007, we built a unique dataset containing information on patent production in eight different technologies, proxies of market regulation and technology-specific renewable energy policies. Our main findings show that lowering entry barriers is a more significant driver of renewable energy innovation than privatisation and unbundling, but its effect varies across technologies, being stronger in technologies characterised by the potential entry of small, independent power producers. Additionally, the inducement effect of renewable energy policies is heterogeneous and more pronounced for wind, which is the only technology that is mature and has high technological potential. Finally, the ratification of the Kyoto protocol – determining a more stable and less uncertain policy framework - amplifies the inducement effect of both energy policy and market liberalisation.
This paper contributes to the development of renewable energy innovation metrics through an exploration of innovation patterns across the European countries in 2010. The identified localized innovation capabilities describe the health of the wind, solar and bioenergy sectors, highlighting a concentrated RES innovation activity within four countries: Germany, France, United Kingdom and Denmark. The association of technological capabilities along the innovation composite indicators allows the extraction of useful insights of the role of environmental policies on employment and technological change. Briefly, the corporate research investment per patent is lower for wind energy (EUR 0.61 million) and higher for PV and biofuels (approximately EUR 1 million). Important lever of innovation capabilities across Europe is identified within public support to deployment, which provides significant insights in terms of economic efficiency of generation technologies; the investigation finds job ratios which are higher for wind and lower for PV technology. As the evolution of the market drives the patterns of innovation activities for all selected technologies, considerable financial consequences are identified in the context of delocalization of clean technology manufacturers.
The CRIOS-PatStat is a patent database made by a team of researchers active at Bocconi University (Milan).
In this database the user can find, for European patent office based applications, disambiguated inventors and applicants' names as well as other standardized information that are often difficult to find in other patent databases.
This paper was written with the aim to provide a complete explanation of its content and also an overview on the steps that led to the creation of this source of information.
With the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) expiring in 2020, the EU needs to revisit its energy technology policy for the post-2020 horizon and to establish a policy framework that fosters the achievement of ambitious EU commitments for decarbonization by 2050. We discuss options for a post-2020 EU energy technology policy, taking account of uncertain technology developments, uncertain carbon prices and the highly competitive global market for energy technologies. We propose a revised SET Plan that enables policy makers to be pro-active in pushing innovation in promising technologies, no matter what policy context will be realized in the future. In particular, a revised SET Plan should include a more technology-specific focus, provide the basis for planning and prioritization among decarbonization technologies, and should be based on a comprehensive approach across sectors. Selected technology targets and EU funding of innovation should be in line with the SET Plan prioritization.
In this paper we extend work previously undertaken in industries such as semiconductor and flat panel displays to investigate knowledge flows from advanced countries (US, Japan and Europe) to catch-up follower countries (Taiwan, Korea and China), this time in the emergent solar photovoltaic industry. The solar photovoltaic industry is of particular interest in that it is poised between exploitation of first generation (crystalline silicon technologies) and new thin film and organic compound technologies, thus providing distinct sources of knowledge flow as measured by patent citations and linkage. For this study, we deploy a new database of 19,105 solar photovoltaic patents taken out by Taiwan, Korea and China at the USPTO over the 24 years 1984–2008, and analyse the knowledge flows revealed in these patents using a set of 12 International Patent Classification technology categories that we constructed. We demonstrate commonalities in patterns of knowledge flow between solar photovoltaic and earlier industries, but also suggestive differences, such as rising dependence of the catch-up countries on their own intra-national knowledge generation and flow, indicating their shift from imitation to innovation.
As the world’s third leading economy and a major importer of fuels, the choice of future energy paths and policies that Japan makes in the next few years will have a significant influence on the energy security of the world as a whole, and of the Northeast Asia region in particular. In this article we describe the current status of and recent trends in the Japanese energy sector, including energy demand and supply by fuel and by sector. We then discuss the current energy policy situation in Japan, focusing on policies related to climate change targets, renewable energy development and deployment, liberalization of energy markets, and the evolution of the Japanese nuclear power sector. The final section of the article presents the structure of the Japan LEAP (long-range energy alternatives planning software system) dataset, describes several alternative energy paths for Japan – with an emphasis on alternative paths for nuclear power development and GHG emission abatement – and touches upon key current issues of energy policy facing Japan, as reflected in the modeling inputs and results.
This paper studies innovation dynamics in efficiency improving electricity generation technologies as an important means of mitigating climate change impacts. Relevant patents are identified and used as an indicator of innovation. We find that patenting in efficiency improving technologies has mostly been stable over time, with a recent decreasing trend. We also find that majority of patents are first filed in OECD countries and only then in non-OECD or BRIC countries. Conversely, non-OECD and BRIC countries apply for patents that are mostly marketed domestically. This result shows that there is significant technology transfer in the field of efficiency improving technologies for electricity production. This flow of know-how is likely to contribute to mitigation of greenhouse gases emissions in emerging economies in the long run.
This paper estimates the international diffusion of technical knowledge using patent citations. We control for self-citations and for procedural differences between patent offices using equivalent patents. We find that (1) there are clear biases in patent examination processes that generate citations in the two offices; (2) at the EPO there is a strong localization effect at the country level, and the size is comparable to that found at the USPTO; (3) technological fields have different properties of diffusion in the two patent offices that do not depend on a patent office bias; (4) using EPO data, the US is not the leading country in terms of citations made and received, as occurs at the USPTO. Copyright © The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2010 .
The focus in this paper is on knowledge spillovers between high-technology firms in Europe, as captured by patent citations.
The European coverage is given by patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO) that are assigned to high-technology
firms located in Europe. By following the paper trail left by citations between high-technology patents we adopt a case–control
matching approach to test the extent of localisation of knowledge spillovers at two geographic levels, the region and the
country level. This approach views a finding of disproportionate co-location of patent citations relative to co-located control
patents as evidence of localised knowledge spillovers. To disentangle border from geographic distance effects the paper adopts
a Poisson spatial interaction modelling perspective. The findings of the study not only indicate that localisation of knowledge
spillovers exists, but also that national border effects are more important than geographical distance effects. Thus, knowledge
flows within European countries more easily than across. Not only geography matters, but also technological proximity. Interregional
knowledge flows are industry specific and occur most often between regions located close to each other in technological space.
The amount of cost reduction or effective R&D that results in a symmetric sequential Nash equilibrium with quadratic payoffs and differentiated goods, is shown to increase with spillovers in oligopolies with a ‘few’ rivals and to achieve a maximum for spillovers that are not perfect in industries with ‘many’ firms. Similar tendencies apply for consumer surplus, profits and static welfare. More rivals typically lead to reduced investments, output and profitability, while consumer surplus and welfare increase, or at least do not decrease. Limited entry in markets with a ‘few’ rivals may enhance innovative investments, profitability and consumer surplus, if only product differentiation and spillovers are sufficiently high and R&D costs sufficiently low. Too many rivals will then again lead to reductions and a decrease in static welfare.
When studying solutions to long-term environmental problems such as climate change, it is important to consider the role that technological change may play. Nonetheless, to date few economic models of environmental policy explicitly model the link between policy and technological change. There is a growing body of evidence that the incentives offered by prices and environmental regulations have a strong influence on both the creation and adoption of new technologies. In several recent papers, I have used patent data to examine the links between environmental policy and technological change. In addition, I have used the results of this research to calibrate the ENTICE model (for ENdogenous Technological change) of climate change, which links energy-related R&D to changes in the price of carbon. Drawing on my experiences from empirical studies on innovation and from modeling the climate change problem, in this paper I review some of the key lessons from recent empirical work using patents to study environmental innovation and diffusion, and discuss its implications for modeling climate change policy. I conclude by offering suggestions for future research.
This paper estimates the effect of research externalities in generating innovation. We use R&D and patent data for European Regions in the 1977–1995 period. We find that spillovers are very localized and exist only within a distance of . The estimates are robust to simultaneity, omitted variable bias, different specifications of distance functions, country and border effects. However the size of these spillovers is small. Doubling R&D spending in a region would increase the output of new ideas in other regions within only by 2–3%, while it would increase the innovation of the region itself by 80–90%.
This paper examines patterns of knowledge diffusion from the U.S. and Japan to Korea and Taiwan using patent citations as an indicator of knowledge flow. We estimate a knowledge diffusion model using a data set of all patents granted in the U.S. to inventors residing in these four countries. Explicitly modeling the roles of technology proximity and knowledge decay and diffusion over time, we find that it is much more likely for Korean patents to cite Japanese patents than U.S. patents, whereas Taiwanese inventors tend to learn evenly from both. We also find that both Korea and Taiwan are surprisingly reliant on relatively recen