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Regional determinants of biogas production units setup: Evidence from France
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This paper aims to contribute to enlarge a geography of eco-innovation. The objective is to study what kind of spatial externalities (specialization, related and unrelated variety) has the most positive impact on eco-innovation, according to firm’s location (rural, peri-urban, urban). We empirically test this framework using a hurdle negative binomial model on firm-level data drawn from the French Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The results show that spatial externalities have different effects depending on the firm’s engagement and breadth of eco-innovation as well as on its location. Marshallian specialization has a positive effect both on engagement and breadth of eco-innovations unlike unrelated variety, which negatively impacts breadth of eco-innovation. With regard to the firm’s location, related variety is particularly correlated with the eco-innovation breadth of rural firms, whereas specialization is positively correlated with the breadth of eco-innovations of peri-urban firms. As for urban firms, spatial externalities seem to have less impact on their eco-innovation related behavior.
This paper studies the role played by the features of the local knowledge base and the regional environmental support in the entry of new green tech-based firms. We compute a set of specific knowledge indicators which capture the recombination of technologies that make up green technologies in French départements (NUTS3 regions) for the period 2003–2013. By using a rich and unique dataset based on firm-level microdata and patents information, we find that the main determinants of the entry of new green tech-based firms are: (i) the combination of high levels of internal coherence with sufficient diversification into unrelated technological categories other than green and (ii) the regional efforts to reduce the environmental impact of economic activities. Indeed, by applying spatial econometrics we found that the impact of knowledge spillovers mainly accrues within the département of entry. These results suggest that more attention should be paid to the context-specific recombination of technologies constituting green technologies and that environmental regulations may have, an indirect, but important impact when it comes to promote green technological entry in regions.
The circular economy is a new economic model that breaks with the linear model. It is more respectful of the environment and is often presented as an opportunity for sustainable development. From a literature review on this issue, the objective of our article is to focus on the territorial dimension of the circular economy. We present the main issues for future research on territorial innovations, territorial embeddedness, resources and sustainability of circularity.
Facilitating the circulation of resources and knowledge in territories is a key dimension in the transition to a circular economy. The purpose of this article is to identify the factors and dynamics of development of circularity at meso-economic level through the study of the eco-innovations on which it is based. We study collective methanization projects in the South-West of France. We use a mixed method, ‘quantified narrative method’ to characterize the development process of the projects via the nature of the resources mobilized and how they have been acquired. The analysis of the 167 resources mobilized highlights technological and organizational eco-innovation dynamics that support the development of circular economy in rural areas. Our results confirm the role of three eco-innovation factors: local resources, sectoral and institutional environments, i.e. place-based and extra-local factors. They also highlight the importance and interdependence of local and regional networks of project leaders, institutional actors and market actors. The construction of circularity results in exchanges between the agricultural and energy sectors, which intensify throughout the projects, thus reinforcing the effects of related variety. However, this circularity remains incomplete and could be reinforced through public policies designed to help these projects gain a stronger foothold.
The paper contributes to debates on dark phases of regional industry path development processes. We focus on the role of industry legitimacy and study legitimacy spillovers from contextual structures in the case of the biogas industry in Scania, Sweden. Previously presented as a success case, we show how legitimacy spillovers from various contextual structures influenced the path development process, in both the emergence and acceleration phases, and in the recent decline period. The analysis highlights how previously accumulated resources in the form of knowledge, finance and market were insufficient to prevent industry decline when it suffered a loss of legitimacy.
Biogas is a process for producing renewable energy, which has recently gained interest in contributing to a territorial strategy for the deployment of the circular economy. The projects, which are collective in nature, bring together multiple actors or local stakeholders from a wide variety of backgrounds. The article proposes to analyze the territorial governance of this type of project by studying the relations of synergy and cooperation between stakeholders in the case study of the Syndicat Mixte du Point Fort (SMPF) of Cavigny (France). The results of the analysis of interaction and coordination networks show that local stakeholders develop dense relational networks that vary throughout the project. This high density is indicative of the importance of group cohesion in interactions, which is necessary to create a framework of trust and consultation that favors the success of territorial renewable energy projects. The measure of centrality of the interacting actors shows that the project leader (SMPF) plays the role of assembler and facilitator of the interaction networks facilitating the sharing of flows, knowledge, and collective learning.
New green activities in regions tend to build on regional capabilities. This paper makes a first attempt to test the impact of political support for environmental policy at the national and regional scales, besides regional capabilities, on the ability of 95 regions in seven European countries to diversify into new green technologies during the period 2000–12. Evidence is found that related capabilities rather than political support in a region are associated with green diversification of regions. However, while political support at the national scale tends to moderate the role of regional capabilities, political support at the regional scale strengthens it.
Biogas as an energy carrier can play an important role in low carbon energy transitions. However, in some countries, biogas technologies are just starting to be used, while in others a more mature stage has been reached. Such heterogeneous development raises a basic question: what are the driving forces behind biogas technologies? In order to address this question, we conduct a systematic literature review on seven mature biogas markets: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. As a result, we synthesize our findings under a typology of what we call system drivers – i.e. drivers of technological innovation systems – and conceptually explain their potential links to system functions. Based on the findings from 42 systematically selected publications and some grey literature, we categorize the system drivers under four interrelated groups (1) proaction to challenges, (2) policy support, (3) cooperation and (4) capability of technology. We argue that the notion of ‘system drivers’ sheds some light on why socio-technical transitions are ahead in particular sectors in certain countries. In doing so, we extend the previous literature on the functions of technological innovation systems, which previously has offered limited explanations on the causal mechanisms behind socio-technical transitions. In addition, we offer some suggestions for policymakers and practitioners who seek to initiate or expand the diffusion of biogas technologies.
In a context where anaerobic digestion is a controversial subject, it is not surprising to see that between 20% and 30% of anaerobic digestion projects are abandoned, mainly for reasons of local opposition, problems of coordination between stakeholders and the implementation of real territorial governance capable of facing the challenges encountered during the setting up of the project. We can consequently question the role that local territorial authorities could play to encourage the development of biogas in France. We used semi-structured interviews conducted with anaerobic digestion stakeholders to identify the main functions of territorial intermediation (and their specific elements) that local authorities could have to encourage the deployment and success of these projects. Local authorities play the role of intermediation by (i) ensuring spatial and cognitive proximities between actors, (ii) mobilizing territorial resources and favoring local anchorage (iii) installing trust among the local stakeholders and (iv) having a role of instigator by participating in the supply (inputs) of biogas plants and the purchase of the energy produced (outputs).
Despite the climate emergency, there is still no consensus on renewable energies, which have to confront forms of social opposition that may well affect the success of any project (especially wind energy and biogas). We propose an original analytical framework to go beyond the nimbyist approach, combining the proximity theory and the exit-voice model. This enables us to examine the thinking adopted by biogas production stakeholders and the ensuing associations in order to identify and understand the obstacles to the development of joint biogas production projects. Taking further other theories that highlight the importance of place attachment and place identity, we show that the challenges linked to a project's territorial governance can explain conflicts that may lead the project initiators to abandon a biogas plant's construction. We show that considering the local residents' interests and including them in the participative procedures are not the only factors that count, but also, more generally, coordination between all of the stakeholders. Our paper also highlights the need for an intermediary actor to play the role of facilitator in organising different types of proximity.
In this paper, we investigate the impact of large- and farm-scale biogas plants on the rural residential property values. We use data from 11,279 rural housing transactions in the period 2007–2015 and trace spatial effects of biogas plants on the local property market. Our results show that large biogas plants have a significant negative impact on rural residential property values while farm-scale biogas plants have a significant positive impact. The findings suggest that preferences for or against biogas plants cannot be explained by either a NIMBY or a PIMBY phenomenon and the paper explores potential reasons for the observed disparity in valuation of farm- and large-scale biogas plants. An economic impact assessment of the choice of facility type, based on a concrete case study, indicates that the impact on residential property values may tip the scale in favor of farm-scale biogas plants. Based on these results, policy implications for planning and expansion of biogas production are discussed.
Technological innovation is essential to achieve simultaneously economic, environmental and social goals (i.e. the green growth). Indeed, many studies found that environmental innovation spurs overall innovation. However, this topic has not been investigated by taking into account the geographical context. Therefore, our paper seeks to investigate whether ‘green regions’, with an increased public and private commitment in environmental issues, are related to innovation of local firms. Using data on Spanish manufacturing firms and regions, we find that environmental technologies (especially in green energy), environmental investments, and environmental management at the level of regions are positively associated to local firms’ innovation.
There is wide consensus about the importance of green technologies in achieving superior economic and environmental performances. However, the literature on their determinants has neglected the creation of green start-ups as a way of introducing green technologies onto the market. Drawing upon the knowledge spillovers theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE) and on previous literature on the complex and systemic nature of green technologies, we have tested the relevance of local knowledge stocks, distinguishing between clean and dirty stocks, in the creation of green start-ups. Moreover, the effects of the technological composition of local stocks have been investigated, by focusing on both related and unrelated technological variety, as well as on coherence. Consistently with the recent literature, green start-ups are associated with higher levels of variety, thus pointing to the relevance of diverse and heterogeneous knowledge sources, although in related and complementary technological fields.
Towards a theory of regional diversification: combining insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography and Transition Studies. Regional Studies. This paper develops a theoretical framework of regional diversification by combining insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography and Transition Studies. It argues that a theory of regional diversification should not only build on the current understanding of related diversification but also account for processes of unrelated diversification by looking at the role of agency in processes of institutional entrepreneurship, and at enabling and constraining factors at various spatial scales. This paper proposes a typology of four regional diversification trajectories by cross-tabulating related versus unrelated diversification with niche creation versus regime adoption, and it develops a number of propositions.
There is consensus among scholars and policy makers that knowledge is one of the key drivers of long-run economic growth. It is also clear from the literature that not all knowledge has the same value. However, too often in economic geography and cognate fields we have been obsessed with counting knowledge inputs and outputs rather than assessing the quality of knowledge produced. In this article we measure the complexity of knowledge, we map the distribution and the evolution of knowledge complexity in US cities, and we explore how the spatial diffusion of knowledge is linked to complexity. Our knowledge complexity index rests on the bimodal network models of Hidalgo and Hausmann. Analysis is based on more than two million patent records from the US Patent and Trademark Office that identify the technological structure of US metropolitan areas in terms of the patent classes in which they are most active between 1975 and 2010. We find that knowledge complexity is unevenly distributed across the United States and that cities with the most complex technological structures are not necessarily those with the highest rates of patenting. Citation data indicate that more complex patents are less likely to be cited than less complex patents when citing and cited patents are located in different metropolitan areas.
Biogas will constitute a significant fraction of future power supply, since it is expected to contribute a large share of the EU renewable energy targets. Biogas, once produced, can be combusted in traditional boilers to provide heat, or to generate electricity. It can be used for the production of chemical compounds, or fed into a pipeline. This review paper will briefly analyze the current most promising emerging biogas technologies in the perspective of their potential uses, environmental benefits, and public acceptance; draw a picture of current conditions on the adoption of a biogas road map in the several EU Member States; analyze incentive and support policy implementation status and gaps; discuss non-technological barriers; and summarize proposed solutions to widen this energy's use.
Geographic research on firm-level innovation is generally premised on the idea of open innovation, suggesting that innovation occurs more readily in urban settings or clusters, which generate local buzz and allow access to external actors. However, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that firms also introduce first-to-market innovations in remote locations. In this exploratory paper, building upon work by Philip McCann, we outline a conceptual framework that connects innovators (differentiated by information source and frequency of interaction with interlocutors) and location (distance from a metropolitan area): slow innovators, relying on non-market-sourced information and infrequent contacts, will be overrepresented in isolated locations. Fast innovators, relying on market-sourced information and frequent interactions, will locate closer to cities. Our results confirm this. Our interpretation of these results – slow innovators are more reliant on technological information which loses value more slowly than faster decaying market-oriented information – requires further investigation.
This paper aimed at investigating the relationship between the features of local knowledge bases and the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship has here been combined with the recombinant knowledge hypothesis in order to derive a theoretical framework that could emphasize the heterogeneous nature of knowledge and identify some key dimensions. The empirical analysis has been focused on the patterns of new firm formation in Italian NUTS 3 regions using data on the creation of innovative start-ups that have followed the implementation of a new Italian regulation. The results of the analysis confirm that not only does the size of the knowledge stock play a key role in shaping the creation of innovative start-ups, but also the characteristics of such knowledge, in terms of variety and similarity.
The lack of tax incentives for biomethane use requires the optimization of both biogas production and upgrading in order to allow the full exploitation of this renewable energy source. The large number of biomethane contaminants present in biogas (CO2, H2S, H2O, N2, O2, methyl siloxanes, halocarbons) has resulted in complex sequences of upgrading processes based on conventional physical/chemical technologies capable of providing CH4 purities of 88–98 % and H2S, halocarbons and methyl siloxane removals >99 %. Unfortunately, the high consumption of energy and chemicals limits nowadays the environmental and economic sustainability of conventional biogas upgrading technologies. In this context, biotechnologies can offer a low cost and environmentally friendly alternative to physical/chemical biogas upgrading. Thus, biotechnologies such as H2-based chemoautrophic CO2 bioconversion to CH4, microalgae-based CO2 fixation, enzymatic CO2 dissolution, fermentative CO2 reduction and digestion with in situ CO2 desorption have consistently shown CO2 removals of 80–100 % and CH4 purities of 88–100 %, while allowing the conversion of CO2 into valuable bio-products and even a simultaneous H2S removal. Likewise, H2S removals >99 % are typically reported in aerobic and anoxic biotrickling filters, algal-bacterial photobioreactors and digesters under microaerophilic conditions. Even, methyl siloxanes and halocarbons are potentially subject to aerobic and anaerobic biodegradation. However, despite these promising results, most biotechnologies still require further optimization and scale-up in order to compete with their physical/chemical counterparts. This review critically presents and discusses the state of the art of biogas upgrading technologies with special emphasis on biotechnologies for CO2, H2S, siloxane and halocarbon removal.
This paper addresses interactions between technological innovation systems (TIS) and wider “context structures”. While TIS studies have always considered various kinds of contextual influences, we suggest that the TIS framework can be further strengthened by a more elaborated conceptualization of TIS context structures and TIS–context interactions. For that purpose, we identify and discuss four especially important types of context structures: technological, sectoral, geographical and political. For each of these, we provide examples of different ways in which context structures can interact with a focal TIS and how our understanding of TIS dynamics is enhanced by considering them explicitly. Lessons for analysts are given and a research agenda is outlined.
Boschma R. Towards an evolutionary perspective on regional resilience, Regional Studies. This paper proposes an evolutionary perspective on regional resilience. It conceptualizes resilience not just as the ability of a region to accommodate shocks, but extends it to the long-term ability of regions to develop new growth paths. A comprehensive view on regional resilience is proposed in which history is key to understand how regions develop new growth paths, and in which industrial, network and institutional dimensions of resilience come together. Resilient regions are capable of overcoming a trade-off between adaptation and adaptability, as embodied in related and unrelated variety, loosely coupled networks and loosely coherent institutional structures.
Ever since the first major environmental regulations were enacted in the 1970s there have been concerns about their impacts on businesses. The recent economic downturn, combined with increased competition from emerging economies, has heightened these concerns, particularly in relation to climate change policies. This review of the growing body of peer-reviewed evidence from the United Kingdom, United States and other countries concludes that environmental regulations only have a marginal impact on productivity and employment, and can boost economic growth by encouraging innovation by businesses.
Key findings:
Environmental regulations can reduce employment and productivity by small amounts, in particular in pollution- and energy-intensive sectors, at least during the transitory period when the economy moves away from polluting activities and towards cleaner production processes.
There is little evidence to suggest that strengthening environmental regulations deteriorates international competitiveness. The effect of current environmental regulations on where trade and investment take place has been shown to be negligible compared to other factors such as market conditions and the quality of the local workforce.
The benefits of environmental regulations often vastly outweigh the costs. For instance, even when job losses at polluting businesses are taken into account, the estimated health benefits from the introduction of the Clean Air Act in the United States in 1963, and subsequent amendments to it, are more than 100 times greater than the employment costs of the regulation.
There is ample evidence that environmental regulations induce innovation in clean technologies and discourage research and development in conventional (polluting) technologies. Thus, environmental regulations can help economies break away from a polluting economic trajectory and move to a ‘clean’ one.
There is evidence that low-carbon innovations induce larger economic benefits than the ‘dirty’ technologies they replace because they generate more knowledge in the economy, which can be used by other innovators to further develop new technologies across various sectors of the economy. This makes it plausible that the switch from ‘dirty’ to ‘clean’ technologies could generate economic growth and justifies strong public support for clean technology development.
A key area for future research is to identify where environmental regulations can be strengthened to deliver clear social benefits, in terms of health or new technologies, with little risk of reducing competitiveness.
In light of an emerging bioeconomy, fading boundaries between the so far distinct agricultural and energy sector indicate a convergence process leading to a new competitive setting between established value chains requiring dynamic capabilities of the affected firms. On the basis of understanding convergence as a process within research-intensive industries, patent analyses can be applied to identify whether there are trends of convergence associated with the emerging bioeconomy. This study focuses on examining the nexus of agricultural and energy sector with regard to German biogas technologies. Although different disciplinary activities within the field of biogas can be confirmed, for now, biogas (as well as other bioenergy) applications rather seem to build a sub-segment within the energy value chain than to form a new inter-industry segment.
It is widely accepted that firms in peripheral regions benefit to a lesser extent from local knowledge spillovers than firms located in agglomerations or industrial clusters. This paper investigates the extent to which innovative firms in peripheral regions compensate for the lack of access to local knowledge spillovers by collaborating at other geographical scales. So far, the literature predominantly suggests that collaborations complement rather than compensate
for local knowledge spillovers. Using data on the collaboration patterns of innovative firms in Sweden, this paper provides evidence that firms with low access to local knowledge spillovers tend to collaborate more. This effect, however, depends on firm size and in-house capabilities. Our findings suggest that firms with strong in-house capabilities do indeed compensate for a lack of local knowledge spillovers with collaborations while firms with weaker in-house capabilities depend more on the regional knowledge infrastructure.
We investigate the extent to which firms’ propensity to eco-innovate, adopt Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and leverage them to eco-innovate varies with their location. We maintain that urban firms should be more prone to eco-innovate and adopt I4.0 technologies than rural ones, and more capable to make the latter functional to the former. Using a large sample of European firms, we test and confirm these hypotheses only partially. Firms in rural areas display a higher capacity to eco-innovate notwithstanding their lower digital propensity. However, an urban location reinforces the eco-innovative impact of digital technologies, irrespectively from its size.
Anaerobic digestion has recently gained interest in contributing to territorial strategy regarding the deployment of the circular economy and energy transition. Most projects bring together multiple actors from a wide variety of backgrounds. The article analyzes the evolution of synergies and cooperative behaviors between local stakeholders over the period 2010–2020 in an anaerobic digestion cluster in France. The study draws on social network analysis and proximity theory, which have recently been used for analyzing regional innovation systems, local clusters, territorial governance, and rural development. We reveal that local stakeholders develop dense relational networks that vary and evolve throughout the project. Different groups exist and behave in a semi-autonomous manner. All the actors are located in close geographical proximity. Still, their links in terms of organized proximities are related to various types of relations, resulting from cognitive resemblances or common origins. This explains the persistence and resilience of local relationships and how they maintain a collaborative dynamic over time.
Despite the global consensus about the growing significance of renewables, the regional drivers of innovation in these unique and novel technologies have been widely neglected in the literature. In this paper, we show that renewable energy (RE) inventions differ from other green inventions in the knowledge recombination processes leading to their generation as well as in their impact on subsequent inventions. The evidence on these specificities of RE technologies allows us hypothesizing that regional branching in renewables may rely on relatedness differently than other non-RE green technologies. In checking this hypothesis, we use a data set spanning the period 1981-2015 covering 277 European NUTS2 regions in the EU28 countries plus Norway. We obtain that relatedness is highly relevant in explaining regional specialization in RE, and more relevant than for other green technologies, which we associate to the lower generality in their impact and the narrower scope of the knowledge from which they nurture. This conclusion is maintained when considering separately regions with high and low development levels. However, the impact of relatedness increases for RE as the regional economic development decreases, signalling that a low endowment of resources and capabilities does not allow the region to break from its past technological specialization, depending more on relatedness. This would not be the case for other green technologies, probably due to their higher level of generality and wider scope.
The degree of social acceptance of biogas as a renewable green energy source is still somewhat disregarded. Although many initiatives have focused on the construction of new biogas plants around the world, local protests on the construction of new plants often arise. This study aims to analyse the determinants of citizens’ perceptions regarding the construction of new biomass plants in their neighbouring areas. In particular, the focus is on prior knowledge of the production process of biogas as well as on other individual characteristics. The investigation is based on two repeated surveys conducted among the population living in two Italian areas where the construction of new large biogas plants were planned (the provinces of Oristano and Andria). The first survey analyses the main variables correlated with the degree of biogas acceptability particularly the biogas knowledge. The second survey (differentiated in two waves) focuses on the role of participatory processes and information campaigns undertaken by policy makers and environmental associations to increase the social acceptance of communities regarding the construction of new biogas plants.
The future European "Green Deal" will set ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2030. Reaching these targets will partly rely on the decarbonization of the gas sector and the development of the biomethane. In this context, this article aims to provide a vision of the European biogas sector development from 2020 towards 2030 and beyond. It appears that the biogas sector is facing a shift in its development paradigm. Indeed, this sector is still mainly dominated by a model based on energy crops, high feed-in tariffs and local electrical production via combined heat and power units. However, biogas sector is now moving towards a different model, where organic wastes, agricultural by-products as well as sequential crops are mainly used as feedstocks, biogas is upgraded to biomethane for various applications (transportation, chemical production, heat, etc.) and subsidy schemes are progressively reduced. Overall, current European policies are pushing the sector to increase its sustainability and to reduce biogas production costs. To answer these challenges, the main improvement tracks are identified and discussed. In the future, it is believed that the biogas sector should address these aspects to ensure its growth towards 2030 and beyond.
This paper elaborates an empirical analysis of the temporal and geographical distribution of green technology, and on how specific country characteristics enable or thwart environmental inventive activities. Using patent data on 63 countries over the period 1971–2012 we identify key drivers of cross-country diversification and specialisation. Our first finding is that countries diversify towards green technologies that are related to their existing competences. Notably, the degree of green technology maturity matters more than a country`s level of development. The second main result is that countries move along cumulative paths of specialisation, and towards more mature green technologies. Interestingly, the complexity of green technologies is not an obstacle to further specialisation. This holds also for developing countries that are most exposed to climate change hazards.
The article analyzes whether and to what extent regional related and unrelated variety matter for the development of green technology, and whether their influence differs over the technology life cycle. Using patent and socioeconomic data on a thirty-year (1980–2009) panel of US states, we find that unrelated variety is a positive predictor of green innovative activities. When unpacked over the life cycle, unrelated variety is the main driver of green technology development in the early stages, while related variety becomes more prominent as the technology enters into maturity.
The paper investigates the nature and impact of green technological change. We focus on the search and impact spaces of green inventions: we explore the knowledge recombination processes leading to the generation of inventions and their impact on subsequent technological developments. Using a large sample of patents, filed during the period 1980-2012, we employ established patent indicators to capture the complexity, novelty and impact of the invention process. Technological heterogeneity is controlled for by comparing green and non-green technologies within narrow technological domains. We find that green technologies are more complex and appear to be more novel than non-green technologies. In addition, they have a larger and more pervasive impact on subsequent inventions. The larger spillovers of green technologies are explained only partially by novelty and complexity.
A growing literature highlights the development of specific innovative patterns in peripheral areas and the need to better understand how and why firms can innovate despite the absence of agglomeration effects. These peripheral areas can, among other things, offer local resources (material and immaterial) for developing environmental innovations. Thus, the aim of this article is to gain a more in-depth understanding of innovation processes in peripheral areas by analyzing the dynamics of utilization of local (i.e. place-based) and extra-local resources for the building and development of eco-innovative projects. We adopt an evolutionary framework inspired by the literature on eco-innovation and geography of innovation, which articulates internal organizational factors and those external to eco-innovative organizations, including place-based factors. We use and enhance a mixed method borrowed from economic sociology that enables us to quantify the external resources utilized throughout the innovation process (nature, means of acquisition and location), through narrative analysis. We analyze five agro-food projects located in rural areas. Based on in-depth interviews, we identify 196 external resources that were utilized for developing these projects. We find that these projects are strongly embedded in their local environment and rely, to a large extent, on local resources and networks, which shows that, even in peripheral areas, the local context can be conducive to innovation. However, these eco-innovation processes are not confined to the local sphere; indeed, their stakeholders are able to tap into specific, more-distantly located resources and market opportunities, and do so increasingly as the projects develop. The results also point to the different roles of institutional and market actors in the acquisition of resources, according to their nature and location, and highlight the importance of institutional actors at the regional level.
This paper investigates the green diversification of regional technologies and its consistency with the Smart Specialisation logic of related diversification. It also analyses the role that key enabling technologies (KETs), as a key pillar of Smart Specialisation Strategies (RIS3), have in green branching. Working on a patent-based panel (1981–2013) of 240 European regions, it is found that the relatedness to pre-existing knowledge makes a new green-tech specialization more probable. This holds true for the relatedness to both green and non-green pre-existing knowledge, but to a greater extent for the latter. Thus, the ‘hybridization’ of non-environmental technologies seems to require lower cognitive proximity than ‘pure’ green branching. Regional KETs also facilitate the transition towards sustainable technologies and negatively moderate the green impact of the relatedness to pre-existing technologies, both green and non-green. The results confirm that Smart Specialisation policies and the support to KETs could also help regions move towards environmental sustainability.
This work investigates the knowledge generation mechanisms underlying the creation of green technologies (GTs) in Italian NUTS 3 regions. We hypothesise that local knowledge spillovers from non-green technological areas positively influence the generation of inventions in green domains, since the latter occur as the outcome of a recombination process among a wide array of technological domains. In addition, we hypothesise that the involvement of academic inventors in patenting activity bears positive effects on the generation of GTs, because inventors are able to manage the recombination process across different, and not necessarily related, technological domains. We also investigate whether academic inventors mitigate the impact of local spillovers from non-green knowledge on the generation of GTs. The results suggest that local spillovers from non-green technological domains as well as the involvement of academic inventors in patenting activity bear positive direct effects on the generation of GTs. We also find that academic inventors compensate for local scarcity of spillovers from non-green technological areas.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for assessing the science related to climate change. It provides regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. This IPCC Special Report is a comprehensive assessment of our understanding of global warming of 1.5°C, future climate change, potential impacts and associated risks, emission pathways, and system transitions consistent with 1.5°C global warming, and strengthening the global response to climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. It serves policymakers, decision makers, stakeholders and all interested parties with unbiased, up-to-date, policy-relevant information. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Despite biogas is considered a renewable source of energy, the social acceptability of biogas
plants is controversial due to resistance from local communities who are afraid of potential local
negative externalities. This paper aim at investigating this claim using evidence from the
housing market by means of a diff-in-diff model. Indeed, if households evaluate the presence of
biogas plant such as a disamenity, this should be incorporated in the housing values. To this
purpose I use data on the housing market of Piedmont provinces where 167 biogas plants have
been opened between 2006 and 2015. Results show no significant impact of the opening of a
biogas plant on the housing values.
This article reviews the empirical literature on the impacts of environmental regulations on firms’ competitiveness as measured by trade, industry location, employment, productivity, and innovation. The evidence shows that environmental regulations can lead to statistically significant adverse effects on trade, employment, plant location, and productivity in the short run, in particular in a well-identified subset of pollution- and energy-intensive sectors, but that these impacts are small relative to general trends in production. At the same time, there is evidence that environmental regulations induce innovation in clean technologies, but the resulting benefits do not appear to be large enough to outweigh the costs of regulations for the regulated entities. As measures to address competitiveness impacts are increasingly incorporated into the design of environmental regulations, future research will be needed to assess the validity and effectiveness of such measures and to ensure they are compatible with the environmental objectives of the policies.
Mitigating the increasing effects of climate change requires extreme policy measures such as reducing global carbon dioxide emissions, expensive abatement policies and the immense costs associated with developing green technologies. While literature on environmental-innovation has been focusing on how innovation contributes to alleviating climate-change impacts by examining existing mitigation technologies and programs, this paper does so via a reverse approach. It examines how innovation responds to climate change. By employing various econometric methods on a panel dataset of 70 countries, patent count as a proxy for innovation, and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions as proxies for climate change, this study finds that the number of climate-change-related-innovations is responding positively to increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions from gas and liquid fuels – mainly from natural gases and petroleum respectively; and negatively to increases in carbon dioxide emissions from solid fuel consumptions (mainly from coal) and other greenhouse gas emissions. It also finds that government investment does not always influence decisions to develop and patent climate-technologies. Empirical findings from this study contribute to the environmental-innovation literature by providing extended knowledge on how innovation reacts to changes in major climate change factors. Based on this, certain policy implications can be drawn such as diverting public funds to areas where innovative activities contribute the most to combating climate change.
Over the past few years, a growing body of work in economic geography and innovation studies has enhanced our understanding of forms and determinants of regional industrial path development. The importance of policy, however, has received limited attention and accordingly, the role of policy for the emergence and development of new regional industrial growth paths remains largely unexplored. This paper takes an institutional perspective and suggests that the regional innovation system approach can contribute to conceptualising and analysing the role of policy for new regional industrial path development. We argue that in order to turn regional preconditions into new growth paths, regional innovation systems require strong policy capacities, consisting of formal and governance capacities. In the empirical part, we analyse the emergence and further development of two new growth paths in the region of Scania in southern Sweden, namely biogas and new media. Based on personal interviews with policy makers, representatives from knowledge and supporting organisations and firms as well as a document analysis, we investigate how policy interventions have influenced the rise and evolution of these two industries. We show that in both cases, policy-led initiatives have played an important role in enabling new path development. We find that policy can play multiple roles in nurturing and maintaining new growth paths and that these are closely interlinked with particular policy capacities of regional innovation systems.
This article examines the case of a Chinese firm that has upgraded to lead firm position in the global biomass power plant
industry mainly through acquisitions of technological frontier firms in Denmark. Sustaining the lead firm position was, however,
challenged by difficulties in developing innovative capability. Drawing on the literature on (i) firm-level technological
capability and (ii) knowledge transfer in international acquisitions, we explain the reasons for insufficient innovative capability
building. Based on these empirical findings, we suggest maintaining the existing upgrading framework but applying it analytically
in a more flexible manner that avoids linearity, hierarchy and segmentation while stressing the co-existence of and inter-relationships
between the different types of upgrading.
The present contribution addresses the results of a longitudinal study in a ‘bioenergy-region’ concerning the public acceptance of biomass plants and the corresponding influencing factors. Using a standardized questionnaire, 423 persons were polled between 2009 and 2011 on three points of measurement in four places in the bioenergy-region Altmark. One main result of the study is that the reported public acceptance remains constantly high over time; nevertheless it became evident that the respective influencing factors differ in their strength, whereas the perceived regional benefit shows a strong connection to the reported public acceptance of biomass plants at each point of measurement. Concluding the research results, the acceptance of biomass plants doesn't seem to be a fixed construct, but has to be seen in context of the respective experiences with plants on a local level over time.
In addition to the local population, key actors of the regional biomass sector were also interviewed (N = 26). The analyses show significant differences in the perception and evaluation of the current informational level between the population and the key actors. Furthermore, the key actors estimated the utilisation of biomass even more positively and expected a greater ‘signal function’ of the bioenergyregion-project compared to the population.
This paper reviews the literature on environmental innovation (EI) and systematizes it by means of an original methodology identifying the main directions in which the literature on EI has developed over time. In order to do so, two algorithms are adopted and used to analyse a citation network of journal articles and books. The main path analysis reveals that this literature revolves around the following topics: i) determinants of EI; ii) economic effects of EI; iii) environmental effects of EI and iv) policy inducement of EI. Each of these topics is discussed and implications from the main findings as well as possible future research extensions are outlined.
After the Swiss government's decision to decommission its five nuclear power plants by 2035, energy production from wind, biomass, biogas and photovoltaic is expected to increase significantly. Due to its many aspects of a direct democracy, high levels of public acceptance are necessary if a substantial increase in new renewable energy power plants is to be achieved in Switzerland. A survey of 502 citizens living near 19 biogas plants was conducted as the basis for using structural equation modeling to measure the effects of perceived benefits, perceived costs, trust towards the plant operator, perceived smell, information received and participation options on citizens' acceptance of "their" biogas plant. Results show that local acceptance towards existing biogas power plants is relatively high in Switzerland. Perceived benefits and costs as well as trust towards the plant operator are highly correlated and have a significant effect on local acceptance. While smell perception and information received had a significant effect on local acceptance as well, no such effect was found for participation options. Reasons for the non-impact of participation options on local acceptance are discussed, and pathways for future research are presented.
This review covers the recent literature on the geography of sustainability transitions and takes stock with achieved theoretical and empirical insights. The review synthesises and reflects upon insights of relevance for sustainability transitions following from analyses of the importance of place specificity and the geography of inter-organisational relations. It is found that these contributions focus on the geography of niche development rather than regime dynamics, and that there is an emphasis on understanding the importance of place-specificity at the local level. While there is a wide consensus that place-specificity matters there is still little generalisable knowledge about how place-specificity matters for transitions. Most contributions add spatial sensitivity to frameworks from the transitions literature, but few studies suggest alternative frameworks to study sustainability transitions. To address this, the review suggests promising avenues for future research on the geography of sustainability transitions, drawing on recent theoretical advancements in economic geography.
This paper investigates the mechanism of locally induced innovation activities in the field of renewable energy technologies (RET). A panel data analysis from 1998 to 2007 across 20 Italian regions identifies the primary drivers of renewable energy patenting activity. As expected, the localised stock of knowledge, local researchers and regional public research subsidies contribute significantly to the development of innovation activities. Additionally, regional characteristics, such as regional energy dependence and hydroelectric resources, are effective in determining the RET innovation patterns. Specifically, regional hydroelectric power acts as a substitute input and hence hampers the innovation activities in the field of RET. Finally, RET innovation activities depend to a limited extent on the political orientation of regional councils, thereby confirming prior research on the role of social acceptance of and political support for technology development. Highlighting the role of local resources and local policies for RET innovation activities, the present research has potential implications for economies that strive to become more self-reliant and less import intensive in the knowledge sector.
This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level focusing on nanotechnology, an infant technology whose evolution can be traced on the basis of patent application filings. We employ a methodological framework based on the ‘product-space’ approach, to investigate whether the development of new technologies is linked to the structure of the existing local knowledge base. We conduct a 15 EU country analysis at NUTS 2 level using patent data for 1986–2006. The results of the descriptive and econometric analysis support the idea that history matters in the spatial development of a sector, and that the technological competences accumulated at the local level are likely to shape the future patterns of technological diversification.