The rise of science in low-carbon energy technologies

Kerstin H\"otte, Anton Pichler and François Lafond
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Kerstin Hötte

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Successfully combating climate change will require substantial technological improvements in Low-Carbon Energy Technologies (LCETs), but designing efficient allocation of R\&D budgets requires a better understanding of how LCETs rely on scientific knowledge. Using data covering almost all US patents and scientific articles that are cited by them over the past two centuries, we describe the evolution of knowledge bases of ten key LCETs and show how technological interdependencies have changed over time. The composition of low-carbon energy innovations shifted over time, from Hydro and Wind energy in the 19th and early 20th century, to Nuclear fission after World War II, and more recently to Solar PV and back to Wind. In recent years, Solar PV, Nuclear fusion and Biofuels (including energy from waste) have 35-65\% of their citations directed toward scientific papers, while this ratio is less than 10\% for Wind, Solar thermal, Hydro, Geothermal, and Nuclear fission. Over time, the share of patents citing science and the share of citations that are to scientific papers has been increasing for all technology types. The analysis of the scientific knowledge base of each LCET reveals three fairly separate clusters, with nuclear energy technologies, Biofuels and Waste, and all the other LCETs. Our detailed description of knowledge requirements for each LCET helps to design of targeted innovation policies.

Date: 2020-04, Revised 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-ore, nep-reg and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.09959 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The rise of science in low-carbon energy 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:arx:papers:2004.09959

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().