Journal
APPLIED ENERGY
Volume 179, Issue -, Pages 1351-1359Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.10.128
Keywords
Green economy; Patent counts; Wind power; Innovation; Public policy
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Funding
- Swedish Research Council Formas
- Ragnar Soderberg Research Foundation
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The green economy policy discourse has devoted a lot of attention to the design of public policy addressing low-carbon technologies. In this paper we examine the impacts of public R&D support and feed-in tariff schemes on innovation in the wind energy sector. The analysis is conducted using patent application data for four western European countries over the period, 1977-2009. Different model specifications are tested, and the analysis highlights important policy interaction effects. The results indicate that both public R&D support and feed-in tariffs have positively affected patent application counts in the wind power sector. The (marginal) impact on patent applications of increases in feed-tariffs has also become more profound as the wind power technology has matured. There is also some evidence of policy interaction effects in that the impact of public R&D support to wind power is greater at the margin if it is accompanied by the use of feed-in tariff schemes. These results support the notion that technological innovation requires both R&D and learning-by-doing, and for this reason public R&D programs should typically not be designed in isolation from practical applications. The paper ends by outlining some important avenues for future research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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