Global trends in the invention and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies

Benedict Probst, Simon Touboul, Matthieu Glachant and Antoine Dechezleprêtre

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Increasing the development and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies on a global scale is critical to reaching net-zero emissions. We have analysed over a quarter of a million high-value inventions in all major climate change mitigation technologies patented from 1995 to 2017 by inventors located in 170 countries. Our analysis shows an annual growth rate of 10% from 1995 to 2012 in these high-value inventions. Yet, from 2013 to 2017, the growth rate of these inventions fell by around 6% annually, likely driven by declining fossil fuel prices, low carbon prices and increasing technological maturity for some technologies, such as solar photovoltaics. Invention has remained highly concentrated geographically over the past decade, with inventors in Germany, Japan and the United States accounting for more than half of global inventions, and the top ten countries for almost 90%. Except for inventors in China, most middle-income economies have not caught up and remain less specialized in low-carbon technologies than high-income economies.

JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Nature Energy, November, 2021, 6(11), pp. 1077 - 1086. ISSN: 2058-7546

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112775/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Global trends in the invention and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies (2021)
Working Paper: Global trends in the invention and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112775

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().