Knowledge spillovers from renewable energy technologies, Lessons from patent citations

Joëlle Noailly and Victoria Shestalova

No 262, CPB Discussion Paper from CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis

Abstract: 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. A CPB Background Document accompanies this CPB Discussion Paper. Using citation data of patents in renewable technologies at seventeen European countries over the 1978-2006 period, the analysis examines the relative 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 renewable technologies. While wind technologies mainly find applications within their own technological field, a large share of innovations in solar energy and storage technologies find applications outside the field of power generation, suggesting that solar technologies are more general and, therefore, may have a higher value for society. Finally, the knowledge from waste and biomass technologies is mainly exploited by fossil-fuel power-generating technologies. The paper discusses the implications of these results for the design of R&D policies for renewable energy innovation.

JEL-codes: O33 Q42 Q48 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ene, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-reg and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpb:discus:262

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