Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1.4 Research Question
Our research question is based on the above argumentation that (i) there are dif-
ferent rationales for supporting renewables; (ii) for all rationales, long-term cost
reduction is key. Therefore, supporting innovation in renewable energy technolo-
gies is the major policy to achieve each of the policy goals; (iii) literature has
identi
ed deployment policies and RD&D spending policies as effective innovation
policies; (iv) countries use a very heterogeneous set of balance and timing of the
two policies.
The research question is whether innovation in certain renewable energy tech-
nologies (in our case wind and solar) can be best encouraged by a speci
c timing
and balance of deployment policies and RD&D spending. 10
2 Data
We build a panel of 28 OECD countries, covering the time period from 1990 to
2010. The main variables of
interest
patent count, R&D expenditure and
deployment
are provided by the OECD and IEA statistical services. We focus on
the two most prominent renewable energy technologies: wind power and photo-
voltaic solar energy. These two sources accounted for about 64 % of newly installed
capacities in 2012 in the EU, and accounted for roughly 7 % of total cumulative
capacity by 2010. We follow the OECD classi
cations of patenting and spending
into these two categories. 11
Patents in this data set refer to granted patents and the dates referred to are the
priority date, which is the date used by patent examiners to establish novelty. In
effect this is the date of invention. This allows us to focus on the innovative timing
without complications due to delays in different legal systems. However, since the
dataset only includes granted patents, some data in later years is still spotty as, for
example, a patent
led and assigned a priority date in 2010 might only be granted in
subsequent years.
Similar to the literature on learning curves, we use lagged deployment and
RD&D to explain technical change. The difference in our approach is that we proxy
innovation by patents rather than costs. We consider the effects on patenting of (i)
the knowledge stock, (ii) the deployment stock, (iii) technology spillovers, and (iv)
country spillovers.
10
I.e., we will not evaluate individual instruments (such as
'
green certi cates
'
vs.
'
feed in tariffs
'
)
or individual technologies (such as
'
on-shore wind
'
vs.
'
off-shore wind
'
).
11
http://www.oecd.org/env/consumption-innovation/44387191.pdf .
 
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