Environmental Regulations, Market Structure and Technological Progress in Renewable Energy Technology — A Panel Data Study on Wind Turbines

Dirk Rübbelke and Pia Weiss ()

No 2011.32, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: We study the impact of environmental regulations on the patent activities for wind turbines between 1980 and 2008. We explicitly control for energy market liberalisation and take a potential interaction between liberalisation and policy instruments into account. We find a strong and highly significant effect of environmental tax revenues, which we regard as a proxy for the extent to which energy prices changed in favour of renewable energies, as well as foreign demand for wind turbines on innovation activities. In addition, we find that price-based policy instruments are more effective in fostering innovations in the wind turbine technology when energy markets are fully open to competition. In contrast, non-price-based policy instruments such as grants or low interest rate loans are largely independent from whether or not energy markets are liberalised.

Keywords: Environmental Policy; Renewable Energy; Market Structure; Wind Turbines; Innovation; Patents; Technological Change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O34 O38 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-reg
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: Environmental Regulations, Market Structure and Technological Progress in Renewable Energy Technology — A Panel Data Study on Wind Turbines (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fem:femwpa:2011.32

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