undesired reinforcement of harmful self evident truths concerning the implementation of wind power abstract this viewpoint draws attention to a lingering simplistic and faulty interpretation of the complex phenomenon of acceptance of renewables and their implementation in concrete projects by all relevant actors namely the backyard theory during the last decade research that investigated nimby has provided support to disprove the two prime hypotheses proximity and decreasing property value the current mainstream trend in academic circles is clearly towards abandoning nimby explanations however in practice among developers and policymakers nimby thinking still prevails unfortunately there is also some academic writing that persists in recycling the backyard theory despite ample research to the contrary thus feeding this faulty interpretation of implementation problems a recent review of the state of the art of wind power implementation is taken as an example it presents nimby as a common sense self evident truth while to support this explanation it cites publications that actually refute this view and instead support the mainstream move towards abandoning nimby thinking this shift is important because further academic support for this concept would serve to hinder rapid deployment of wind power and also other renewables

do deployment policies pick technologies by not picking applications a simulation of investment decisions in technologies with multiple applications abstract the role of deployment policies that aim to foster technological change has grown considerably especially in the fields of energy and climate however recent research has shown that the adoption of deployment policies carries the potential of locking in the technology that is most cost effective at the point of policy introduction but may be inefficient in the long term the present paper contributes to the emerging literature on the role of deployment policies in creating path dependency and eventually technology lock in while previous studies focused on the relationship between lock in and the technology specificity of deployment policies this paper introduces a new factor the existence of multiple applications for a technology we argue that this factor is highly relevant for technological lock in and should be considered by policy makers to support our argument we simulate the competition among four stationary battery technologies across energy system applications in an investment simulation model this simulation shows that the degree of competition among technologies differs strongly across applications which corresponds with a highly varying lock in probability hence selecting applications in deployment policies very likely corresponds to selecting technologies we discuss the implications of these results for both policy makers and for the academic debate on deployment policies and technological lock in as well as on technology assessment and governance more generally based on the notion that policies can have different technology specificity levels we develop the idea of the application specificity of policies and provide examples of currently enacted deployment policies that vary in terms of their technology and application specificity

on the relationship between firm size and export intensity export marketing literature supports the view that firm size is positively related to export intensity although the empirical findings have been mixed a number of theoretical arguments are used to support this proposition i e international marketing economies of scale limited managerial and financial resources of small firms decisionmaker s risk perception based on a large survey of the italian manufacturing industry the article falsifies the proposition and challenges some widely held assumptions in export marketing literature

peasant supply response in rationed economies abstract when peasants do not have reliable access to goods on the black market government price controls may result in rationing of peasants demand for consumer goods we show that supply response is then perverse and that the economy may collapse as exports fall and rural shortages intensify such a crisis may initially be disguised as peasants sell export goods to build up money stocks we consider the policy options for governments facing such problems

energy based economic development abstract the fields of economic development and energy policy and planning have converged in recent years to form an emerging discipline which we term energy based economic development ebed despite the significant amount of stimulus funds as well as state and local funding that are being allocated to ebed initiatives in the united states the emerging discipline has received scant attention in the energy policy and development literature the link between energy and economic development in the literature is still theoretical mostly focused on the need for and the potential benefits of ebed and rarely applied furthermore funding for ebed has outpaced understanding of the discipline development of rigorous technical approaches and meaningful ways to measure impact such information would not only help practitioners and policymakers more thoroughly understand the confines of the discipline and shape goals and approaches accordingly but also help researchers identify track and evaluate a variety of activities in the field with national and international attention focused on the convergence of these fields researchers and practitioners have a rare opportunity to develop and implement the tools necessary to evaluate and communicate the potentially broader impacts that ebed may hold for society if ways to leverage and sustain the injection of funds in this discipline are not identified the opportunity may end before we can achieve either energy policy or economic development goals in an attempt to respond to this need this analysis explores the connection between energy and economic development beginning with a review of the trends in each field and the goals that each seeks to achieve on the basis of this information we define the discipline of ebed review the existing literature on it and offer insights and perspectives on its emergence

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

the liquidity consequences of the euro area sovereign debt crisis we examine the liquidity effects of the euro area sovereign debt crisis on euro area banks as a group on intra euro area financial flows and on international liquidity the lending capacity of the euro area banking system has been much weakened despite the remarkable growth of the operations of the eurosystem including its greatly increased lending and its intermediation between national central banks in surplus and deficit countries the euro crisis has also created international liquidity stresses

why do firms do basic research with their own money abstractthe question to be addressed is why do private firms perform basic research with their own money interest in this question derives from both analytical and utilitarian considerations there is empirical evidence in the united states which provides the main context for this paper supporting the view that basic research makes a significant contribution to the productivity growth of the economy 4 7 it is widely held that social returns from basic research are significant and higher than private returns and it is for this reason that most such activities continue to be financed by the taxpayer this also implies that measures aimed at increasing basic research by the private sector will be welfare improving in the united states the federal government in the years since the second world war has provided the vast majority of all funds devoted to basic research although the federal share has been declining in recent years and although that share is at its lowest level in about 20 years it still constitutes about two thirds of the total 10 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

income and livelihoods in the war in afghanistan we explore the impact of the insurgency and military deployment on the livelihoods of local communities in afghanistan we use monthly wages and commodity prices at the provincial level over the period 2003 09 and look for their response to conflict events and isaf deployment overall we find that prices are more sensitive to deployment than to attacks commodity prices are not significantly affected by insurgent violence which is consistent with coping strategies already in place on the opposite military deployment is associated with an increase in the levels of wages and commodity prices as isaf is a new source of uncertainty

the price of policy risk empirical insights from choice experiments with european photovoltaic project developers managing the transition to a renewable energy future is an important policy priority in many countries solar photovoltaic pv technology is expected to make an important contribution but due to relatively higher cost its growth to date has been largely driven by public policy notably feed in tariffs feed in tariffs have been implemented in various countries however with widely differing outcomes in terms of installed pv capacity previous research indicates that the level of policy risk may be an important driver for differences in renewable energy policy effectiveness more specifically we suggest that investors who take a decision between pv investment opportunities in different countries carefully weigh feed in tariff induced returns against a set of policy risks and choose the country with the most favorable risk return profile we empirically test this model based on a stated preference survey among european pv project developers consisting of 1575 choice decisions by 63 investors the findings of our study demonstrate that risk matters in pv policy design and that a price tag can be attached to specific policy risks such as the duration of administrative processes or uncertainty induced by an approaching capacity cap governments can build on our empirical results to design policies that will be effective in attracting private pv investment while at the same time maintaining efficiency by providing an adequate compensation for policy risk

small streams diverse sources who invests in renewable energy in finland during the financial downturn this article addresses the investment gap in renewable energy sources identified by several authors examining the case of a country finland which introduced policy measures to diversify its renewable energy portfolio we analyse the development of investments in renewable heat and power in response to new policy measures and contextual factors during the downturn period 2009 2013 we investigate investor heterogeneity i e the diversity of logics employed by different types of res investors in spite of a severe financial recession we find an emergence of new sources of investment among these new investor types we find diversity in investment drivers and available options these include investors mobilized by the feed in tariff to seek profitable targets and investors such as real estate owners investing in heat pumps for their own use and benefiting from low interest rates we find that the diversification of investors supports the diversification in res sources and brings in new investors undeterred by the financial downturn our findings imply that policy makers should recognize that the responses to distinct incentives and pressures vary by investor types this also means that a mix of policies is required to maximize the contribution of different sectors to filling the renewable energy investment gap

do policy mix characteristics matter for low carbon innovation a survey based exploration of renewable power generation technologies in germany abstract policy mixes may play a crucial role in redirecting and accelerating innovation towards low carbon solutions thus addressing a key societal challenge towards this end some argue that the characteristics of such policy mixes matter greatly yet with little empirical evidence backing up such claims in this paper we explore this link between policy mix characteristics and low carbon innovation using the research case of the transition of the german electricity system towards renewable energy our empirical insights are based on an innovation survey administered to german manufacturers of renewable power generation technologies which builds on the community innovation survey for our purposes we adjusted the survey to better capture companies perceptions of policy mixes employing a bivariate tobit model we find evidence that companies perceptions regarding the consistency and credibility of the policy mix are positively associated with their innovation expenditures for renewable energies and this positive link intensifies when considering the mutual interdependence of these policy mix characteristics in contrast neither the comprehensiveness of the instrument mix nor the coherence of policy processes were found to be related to innovation expenditures overall these findings suggest that future research on low carbon and eco innovation should pay greater attention to the characteristics of policy mixes rather than focusing on policy instruments only finally our findings indicate a need to consider how policy may be measured in innovation surveys to generate better informed policy advice regarding the greening of innovation

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

do national level policies to promote low carbon technology deployment pay off for the investor countries abstract national level policies to promote deployment of low carbon technologies have been suggested and used as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the context of international climate change mitigation the long term benefits of such policies in the context of international climate change mitigation depend on their effects on near term emissions abatement and resultant long term technological change that will reduce abatement costs of achieving global mitigation goals there is also an argument that these policies might foster early mover advantages in international low carbon technology markets we first review the factors that could influence such benefits and use a global integrated assessment model to present an illustrative example to understand the potential magnitude of these benefits we find that reductions in long term abatement costs might not provide sufficient incentives to justify policies to promote the deployment of low carbon technologies in particular the emerging higher risk and currently expensive alternatives we also find that early mover advantages can potentially provide substantial benefits but only if these advantages are both strong and persistent our results suggest a role for international cooperation in low carbon technology deployment to address the existence of free riding opportunities in the context of global climate change mitigation

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

compulsive policy making the evolution of the german feed in tariff system for solar photovoltaic power abstract in recent years policy approaches that build upon the notion of innovation systems have enjoyed increasing attention in science technology and innovation policy but while the usefulness of systemic thinking in policy making has been demonstrated in a large number of empirical settings we still lack a detailed understanding of the dynamics at play when policy makers address systemic problems in this paper we show how complex interdependencies and the uncertain nature of technological change shape the process of targeted policy interventions in socio technical systems toward this end we analyzed the evolution of the german feed in tariff fit system for solar photovoltaic power a highly effective and widely copied policy instrument targeted at fostering the diffusion and development of renewable energy technologies we find that the policy has been subject to a considerable amount of changes many of which are the result of policy makers addressing specific system issues and bottlenecks interestingly however often these issues themselves were driven by unforeseen technological developments induced by previous policy interventions we argue that the pattern of policy serving as both a solution to and a driver of technological bottlenecks shows strong similarities with what rosenberg 1969 called compulsive sequences in the development of technical systems by shedding more light on how the characteristics of socio technical systems affect policy interventions our framework represents a first step toward more closely integrating the literature on innovation systems with the work on policy learning

a network analysis using metadata to investigate innovation in clean tech implications for energy policy abstract clean technology clean tech is a large and increasing sector research and development r d is the lifeline of the industry and innovation is fostered by a plethora of high tech start ups and small and medium sized enterprises smes any empirical based attempt to detect the pattern of technological innovation in the industry is challenging this paper proposes an investigation of innovation in clean tech using metadata provided by crunchbase metadata reveal information on markets products services and technologies driving innovation in the clean tech industry worldwide and for san francisco the leader in clean tech innovation with more than two hundred specialised companies a network analysis using metadata is the employed methodology and the main metrics of the resulting networks are discussed from an economic point of view the purpose of the paper is to understand specifically specializations and technological complementarities underlying innovative companies detect emerging industrial clusters at the global and local metropolitan level and finally suggest a way to realize whether observed start ups smes and clusters follow a technological path of complementary innovation and market opportunity or instead present a risk of lock in the discussion of the results of the network analysis shows interesting implications for energy policy particularly useful from an operational point of view

demand pull and technology push public support for eco innovation the case of the biofuels sector the purpose of this paper is to explore the differentiated impact of demand pull and technology push policies in shaping technological patterns in the biofuels sector the empirical analysis is based on a novel and original database biopat containing patents in the field of biofuels selected using appropriate keywords and classified according to the technological content of the invention our results generally show that technological capabilities and environmental regulation spur innovative activities in the biofuels sector both demand pull and technology push factors are found to be important drivers of innovation in the biofuels sector however technology exploitation activities in first generation technologies are found to be mainly driven by quantity and price based demand pull policies on the contrary the pace of technology exploration efforts in advanced generation biofuels is shown to react positively to price based demand pull incentives but also to technology push policy the clear diversity in the impact of different public support instruments provides new insights which fuel discussion on the optimal policy mix debate and offers new elements for the design of future policy strategies

effects of asset purchases and financial stability measures on term premia in the euro area we study the effects of the announcements of ecb asset purchases and of financial stability measures in the euro area in the wake of the global financial crisis and the euro area sovereign debt cri

is the post fossil era necessarily post capitalistic the robustness and capabilities of green capitalism abstract our central target is to show that capitalism is not only much more robust to crises than presumed by its critics but also features promising capabilities with regard to solving the environmental crisis to elaborate this thesis we analyse how far capitalism can survive given the end of fossil energy carriers and may maintain its productivity under the preconditions of a regenerative energy system in a further step we demonstrate that crises may actually provide the prerequisites of the economy s transformation towards sustainability we argue that especially competitive capitalism as analysed by schumpeter offers excellent preconditions for generating environmental innovations however we will also point out the numerous social problems of green infrastructure projects in the last section we assume that markets alone will not suffice to concertedly solve the global environmental crisis here political action is needed that pools societal forces with regard to the ecological challenges hence specifically promoting desirable innovations the usefulness of state measures is to be judged in correlation to the respective specific national political and economic contexts a generalised opposition to capitalistic social orders disregards the complexity of these contexts and is at danger of omitting decisive determinants of crisis management

economic and policy analysis for solar pv systems in indiana in recent years the energy market in the us and globally is expanding the production of renewable energy solar energy for electricity is also expanding in the us indiana is one of the states expanding solar energy with solar photovoltaic pv systems therefore we conduct benefit cost analysis with several uncertain input variables to determine the economics of adopting solar pv systems in indiana based on policy instruments that could increase adoption of solar pv systems the specific objectives are analyses of the cost distribution of solar pv systems compared with grid electricity in homes and estimating the probability that solar can be cheaper than electricity from grids under different policy combinations we first do the analysis under current policy and then the analysis under potential policy options for a variety of scenarios also the results inform government policy makers on how effective the alternative policies for encouraging solar pv systems are the results show that current policies are important in reducing the cost of solar pv systems however with current policies there is only 50 50 chance of solar being cheaper than electricity from grids if potential policies are implemented solar pv systems can be more economical than grid electricity

demand pull technology push and government led incentives for non incremental technical change abstract rising expectations about future demand for new technologies increase the incentives for investments in innovation by enlarging payoffs to successful innovations how well does this notion of demand pull apply to non incremental technological change when demand is largely attributable to actions by governments in this case inventors of the most important inventions did not respond positively to strong demand pull policies filing of highly cited patents declined precipitously just as demand for wind power created a multi billion dollar market three explanations for this apparent inconsistency with the demand pull hypothesis played a role 1 the rapid convergence on a single dominant design limited the market opportunity for non incremental technical improvements 2 even though the policies implemented were stringent enough to stimulate demand uncertainty in their longevity dampened the incentives for inventions that were likely to take several years to pay off and 3 alternative explanations such as declining r d funding and weakening presidential engagement on energy appear to have been important

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

motivators for adoption of photovoltaic systems at grid parity a case study from southern germany in some countries photovoltaic pv technology is at a stage of development at which it can compete with conventional electricity sources in terms of electricity generation costs i e grid parity a case in point is germany where the pv market has reached a mature stage the policy support has scaled down and the diffusion rate of pv systems has declined this development raises a fundamental question what are the motives to adopt pv systems at grid parity the point of departure for the relevant literature has been on the impact of policy support adopters and recently local solar companies however less attention has been paid to the motivators for adoption at grid parity this paper presents an in depth analysis of the diffusion of pv systems explaining the impact of policy measures adopters and system suppliers anchored in an extensive and exploratory case study in germany we provide a context specific explanation to the motivations to adopt pv systems at grid parity

how do policies for efficient energy use in the household sector induce energy efficiency innovation an evaluation of european countries abstract research on innovation induced by climate mitigation policy has been focused predominantly on the supply side of the energy system despite considerable climate mitigation potential on the demand side less attention is given to the innovation effect of policies addressing the household sector based on a comprehensive data set including 550 policy measures over 30 years 1980 2009 and covering 21 european countries we find based on econometric estimations that policies targeting efficient energy use in the household sector significantly increase the number of patented energy efficiency inventions a comparison of the different policy types reveals a particularly strong influence from financial subsidies and energy labels the results indicate that policies supporting early market adoption of energy efficient technologies are effective in fostering innovation

crop sales shortages and peasant portfolio behaviour an analysis of angola the article focuses on the influence of economic factors on sales of agricultural products in angola between the early 1970s and the mid 1980s the volume of sales declined by around 90 per cent while during the late 1980s there was a significant recovery this was partly due to non economic factors such as war and drought however the rural economy also experienced extraordinary regulatory changes which led to a severe shortage of consumer goods the theory of peasant supply response in a rationed economy therefore provides a starting point for the analysis and is further extended to incorporate features particular to angola

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

strategic choices for renewable energy investment conceptual framework and opportunities for further research this paper introduces the special issue on strategic choices for renewable energy investment which is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in st gallen switzerland in february 2010 substantial private investment is needed if public policy objectives to increase the share of renewable energy and prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change are to be achieved the aim of this paper and the entire special issue is to draw scholarly attention to the processes underlying strategic choices for renewable energy investment and how they are influenced by energy policy we disentangle the role of risk return perceptions portfolio effects and path dependence in explaining energy investment decisions and suggest that the heterogeneous universe of investors requires a segmentation of policies the paper outlines some of the rich opportunities for further research in this emerging area

technology policy and global warming why new policy models are needed or why putting new wine in old bottles won t work in recent years the threat of global climate change has come to be seen as one of the most serious confronting humanity to meet this challenge will require the development of new technologies and the substantial improvement of existing ones as well as ensuring their prompt and widespread deployment some have argued that the urgency of the situation requires a manhattan project or an apollo program this paper examines why such a policy model is inappropriate arguing that the nature of the policy context for confronting climate change necessitates a different kind of technology policy than that for building an atomic bomb or for achieving a manned lunar landing instead it seeks to draw lessons from three sectors that seem to be more pertinent and where government technological development and deployment programs have been pursued with some success in the united states namely agriculture biomedical research and information technology it compares and contrasts these with the policies pursued with regard to the first two of these sectors in the united kingdom the paper concludes by drawing out the implications for the design of policies supporting technological development and innovation to address the problem of global climate change

the renewable energy policy paradox abstract one major avenue for policymakers to meet climate targets is by decarbonizing the power sector one component of which is raising the share of renewable energy sources renewables in electricity generation however promoting renewables in liberalized power markets creates a paradox in that successful penetration of renewables could fall victim to its own success with the current market architecture future deployment of renewable energy will necessarily be more costly and less scalable moreover transition towards a full 100 renewable electricity sector is unattainable paradoxically in order for renewable technologies to continue growing their market share they need to co exist with fossil fuel technologies ignoring these findings can slow adoption and increase the costs of deploying new renewable technologies this paper spots the incompatibility between electricity liberalization and renewable policy regardless of the country location or renewable technologies the paradox holds as long as market clear prices with short term marginal costs and renewable technology s marginal cost is close to zero and not dispatchable

responsive feed in tariff adjustment to dynamic technology development abstract this paper reviews the adjustments of the feed in tariffs for new solar photovoltaic pv installations in germany as pv system prices declined rapidly since 2009 the german government implemented automatic mechanisms to adjust the remuneration level for new installations in response to deployment volumes this paper develops an analytic model to simulate weekly installations of pv systems of up to 30 kw based on project profitability and project duration the model accurately replicates observed market developments and is used to assess different adjustment mechanisms against multiple scenarios for pv system price developments the analysis shows that responsive feed in tariff schemes with frequent tariff adjustments and short qualifying periods reach deployment targets most effectively

the economics of changing course implications of adaptability and inertia for optimal climate policy this paper reviews evidence that energy technologies and systems adapt over time to accommodate external pressures that technical innovation and systemic change in the energy sector is largely induced by need and restrained by potentially large transitional costs a simple integrated model of optimal greenhouse gas abatement over time is presented in which the abatement cost depends on both fixed and transitional elements it is shown that the optimal current response and long run prospects differ radically between the classical economic case in which the cost of a given cutback in emissions is fixed exogenously and the adaptive case in which the response is ultimately adaptive but heavily constrained by inertia ie low fixed but high transitional cost if energy systems are indeed to a large degree adaptive the results demonstrate that as compared with the classical non adaptive case long run stabilization of atmospheric co2 may be optimal even with moderate damages from climate change greater near term abatement efforts are justified and the cost of a given delay in response may be several times higher neglect of the issue of induced technical change and other adaptive responses may invalidate the policy implications drawn from most integrated assessment models developed to date

a social capital paradox entrepreneurial dynamism in a small world clean technology cluster abstract clean tech entrepreneurs have struggled to gain investor confidence because of some particular characteristics and circumstances of the industry this research combines network and sustainable development literature in the clean tech context to support the logic of a new investment approach that may stimulate sustainable investing in clean tech theory is proposed to suggest that there may be an advantageous social capital paradox where strong ties in a cluster lead to dynamism rather than decay the clean tech industry provides a context where strong ties offer network stability in a small world cluster such that it is a value creating organizational form offering greater dynamism two related propositions are developed to support the social capital paradox they lead to a theoretical conclusion that long term integrated partner solutions where partners are also resource constrained lead to successful alliances supporting a dynamic cluster that will grow over time a practical conclusion is that investing in a connected cluster of firms might be less risky compared to investing in a new firm or even a portfolio of well diversified assets de risking clean production investments may be achievable through a small world network cluster backed security

which renewable energy policy is a venture capitalist s best friend empirical evidence from a survey of international cleantech investors governments around the world have adopted ambitious targets to increase the share of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions they pursue a variety of policy approaches to achieve these targets it has been a popular theme for contributions in energy policy to investigate the effectiveness of such policies this article adds a new perspective to the debate namely looking at the policy preferences of private investors in innovative clean energy technology firms we surveyed 60 investment professionals from european and north american venture capital and private equity funds and asked them to assess the effectiveness of various policies in terms of stimulating their interest to invest in innovative clean energy technologies in addition to quantitative rankings we use qualitative interview data to capture additional information on why investors prefer some policies over others the combined analysis compensates for the inherent limitations of a quantitative ranking using generic policy types the results of this exploratory analysis demonstrate that all other things being equal investors in our sample perceived feed in tariffs to be the most effective renewable energy policy the overall preference for feed in tariffs is even more pronounced among investors based in europe and with higher exposure to clean energy

beyond technology push and demand pull lessons from california s solar policy abstract the scale of the technological transformation required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels while minimizing economic impacts necessitates an emphasis on designing climate policy to foster or at least not impede environmental innovation there is only a weak empirical base for policy makers to stand on regarding the comparative innovation effects of various climate policy options however empirical scholarship in environmental innovation is hindered by the complexity of both the innovation process and the interactions between the dual market failures of pollution and innovation that are in play and it appears that the field would benefit from the structure provided by a common lexicon this paper focuses on the issues related to policy categorization in this field these issues have received little attention in the literature despite their importance to making insights gained from empirical studies generalizable the paper reviews the origins strengths and weaknesses of the dominant policy typology of technology push versus demand pull instruments its primary contribution however is to assemble a comprehensive chronology of solar policy in california and its impacts on innovation where known and then use this as a basis for building a new policy categorization that takes advantage of the intuitive resonance of the dominant typology while encompassing the broader range of policy instruments that are employed in practice in order to stimulate environmental innovation the most noteworthy aspect of the new categorization is that it introduces a third category of environmental innovation policy instrument that focuses on improving the interface between technology suppliers and users this reflects developments in the economics of innovation literature as well as considerable evidence in the domain of distributed solar energy technologies that opportunism by some of the actors that work at this interface can be a barrier to innovation

carbon market risks and rewards firm perceptions of cdm investment decisions in brazil and india the carbon market experiences of brazil and india represent policy success stories under several criteria a careful evaluation however reveals challenges to market development that should be addressed in order to make the rollout of a post 2012 cdm more effective we conducted firm level interviews covering 82 cdm plants in the sugar and cement sectors in brazil and india focusing on how individual managers understood the potential benefits and risks of undertaking clean development mechanism cdm investments our results indicate that the cdm operates in a far more complex way in practice than that of simply adding a marginal increment to a project s internal rate of return our results indicate the following first although anticipated revenue played a central role in most managers decisions to pursue cdm investments there was no standard practice to account for financial benefits of cdm investments second some managers identified non financial reputational factors as their primary motivation for pursuing cdm projects and third under fluctuating regulatory regimes with real immediate costs and uncertain cdm revenue managers favored projects that often did not require carbon revenue to be viable the post 2012 cdm architecture can benefit from incorporating these insights and in particular reassess goals for strict additionality and mechanisms for achieving it

war peace and private portfolios abstract during civil wars trading is profitable as markets fragment profits may be saved in liquid form because investment is too risky in a successful economic transition to peace these liquid assets are switched into investment continuing fears of insecurity however may keep portfolios liquid we consider three policy consequences the unpredictable return of confidence causes erratic changes in the demand for money complicating monetary targeting government liabilities become unmarketable except at prohibitive interest rates though the state may be able to sell real assets the government can subsidize the act of investment commitment by temporarily undervaluing the exchange rate

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

going green trade specialisation dynamics in the solar photovoltaic sector abstract the present study aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of trade flows and the domestic value creation of the major solar photovoltaic industry at the world level solar technologies convert light and heat from the sun into useful energy the use of the sun s energy can not only reduce the consumption of conventional fuels thus reducing the emission of detrimental greenhouse gases but it can also enable a gain in enhanced fuel and energy security along with lessening costs in addition green technologies and industries can promote economic growth and international competitiveness and can offer new business and employment opportunities it becomes therefore extremely important to deeply explore the dynamics of the solar photovoltaic sector specifically the present work analyses the main global trends of this sector and sketches the key players on the world market including producers installers and top traders based on an analysis of trade flows at the 6 digit level the international specialisation patterns are investigated and the role of various market and trade drivers including subsidies in the uptake of solar technologies is identified and examined

announcements of ecb unconventional programs implications for the sovereign spreads of stressed euro area countries abstract this paper studies the effects of ecb communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the sovereign spreads of greece ireland italy portugal and spain relative to germany between 2008 and 2012 more than fifty events concerning non standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ecb program the empirical results suggest that the ecb announcements about unconventional monetary policies substantially reduced long term government bond yield spreads relative to german counterparts in all countries except greece particularly among the different types of measures news about the securities markets programme strongly affected the perceived sovereign risk of the five stressed euro area countries while the announcements of the outright monetary transactions seem to have a significant impact only in italy and spain

overcoming the liability of newness entrepreneurial action and the emergence of china s private solar photovoltaic firms abstract this study explores how entrepreneurs introducing a new organizational form can build legitimacy and capabilities to overcome significant liabilities of newness and how their actions and the institutional structure co evolve our multiple case study design enabled us to explicate specific actions that entrepreneurs founding china s private solar photovoltaic pv firms took as they built organizational capabilities and established their legitimacy vis a vis resource holders and global markets we identified three legitimacy based strategies they used leveraging their existing sources of legitimacy aligning their actions with established institutional rules and norms and enacting the institutional environment to change perceptions of what is legitimate we also found a stark contrast between the early and late entrants the early entrants had to build an effective organizational capability and establish their own firm s legitimacy as well as establish the legitimacy of the private chinese solar pv firm as a viable organizational form both domestically and abroad later entrants could leverage the legitimacy established by the early entrants enabling them to more easily and quickly access external resources and become competitive our findings also suggest an important role for government in promoting and supporting entrepreneurship that complements well established approaches namely through its policies and actions the government can create an environment in which experimentation and exploration is legitimate thereby making it easier for entrepreneurs new ventures and new organizational forms to access critical resources and realize their potential

uk innovation systems for new and renewable energy technologies drivers barriers and systems failures abstract a better understanding of the systemic processes by which innovation occurs is useful both conceptually and to inform policy making in support of innovation in more sustainable technologies this paper analyses current innovation systems in the uk for a range of new and renewable energy technologies and generates policy recommendations for improving the effectiveness of these innovation systems although incentives are in place in the uk to encourage innovation in these technologies system failures or gaps are identified in moving technologies along the innovation chain preventing their successful commercialisation sustained investment will be needed for these technologies to achieve their potential it is argued that a stable and consistent policy framework is required to help create the conditions for this in particular such a framework should be aimed at improving risk reward ratios for demonstration and pre commercial stage technologies this would enhance positive expectations stimulate learning effects leading to cost reductions and increase the likelihood of successful commercialisation

the investor specific price of renewable energy project risk a choice experiment with incumbent utilities and institutional investors abstract renewable energy investments in germany have recently soared trebling the output of wind and solar power generation in only ten years while incumbent utilities have lagged behind in terms of investment new entrants have significantly contributed to this growth existing literature has primarily focused on explaining the lethargy of incumbents former investments although there is a growing need to investigate recent investment drivers to secure the necessary power plant capacity at a moderate cost from incumbents and new entrants alike to close this gap a choice experiment involving 1 659 investment choices by 52 european professional investors was conducted in significant contrast to the case with altruistic investors this survey underlines the importance of using financial incentives to attract professional investors given full exposure to electricity price risk incumbent utilities would facilitate projects at a 3 04 risk premium whereas institutional investors demand 6 61 generally incumbent utilities and institutional investors are equally attracted by low risk projects however when risk increases institutional investors are more hesitant to become involved while incumbent utilities confidently navigate these higher risk projects

when do households invest in solar photovoltaics an application of prospect theory abstract while investments in renewable energy sources res are incentivized around the world the policy tools that do so are still poorly understood leading to costly misadjustments in many cases as a case study the deployment dynamics of residential solar photovoltaics pv invoked by the german feed in tariff legislation are investigated here we report a model showing that the question of when people invest in residential pv systems is found to be not only determined by profitability but also by profitability s change compared to the status quo this finding is interpreted in the light of loss aversion a concept developed in kahneman and tversky s prospect theory the model is able to reproduce most of the dynamics of the uptake with only a few financial and behavioral assumptions

the induced innovation hypothesis and energy saving technological change we develop a methodology for testing hicks s induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product characteristics model of energy using consumer durables augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the ine uence of government regulations for the products we explored the evidence suggests that i the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations ii the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others iii energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale iv this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy efficiency product labeling was required and v nonetheless a sizable portion of efficiency improvements were autonomous

the governance of sustainable socio technical transitions a quasi evolutionary model of socio technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures the articulation of pressures and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime define the transition context four alternative contexts are described endogenous renewal re orientation of trajectories emergent transformation and purposive transitions agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed power to affect change depends on regime membership the distribution of resources for change and expectations

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

japan s post fukushima challenge implications from the german experience on renewable energy policy the japanese electricity sector is facing serious challenges in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear disaster the government has responded to the crisis with a new feed in tariff to promote increased utilization of renewable energy and proposed to reduce the dependence on nuclear power in this viewpoint we liken the transition implied by recently updated goals for the diffusion of renewables in japan to the transition in germany in the last decade we argue that some of the lessons learned in germany might prove valuable for the steps japan considers taking in particular we focus on the new japanese feed in tariff for solar photovoltaics in view of the recent developments in germany we emphasize the importance of the scheme s political legitimacy which needs to be maintained through adequate design of both policy instrument and political process we conclude with policy implications and a targeted research agenda

are china s new energy stock prices driven by new energy policies abstract this paper studies the impact of china s new energy policies on expected changes and volatility in new energy stock prices considering different kinds of policies energy legislation binding targets for new energies economic incentives and technological research and development and several new energy indexes china s new energy sector and the solar wind nuclear and lithium battery subsectors we used a regression model with a garch specification and dummy variables to differentiate policy pre and post announcement effects on expected returns and volatility our evidence indicates that pre and post announcement energy legislation policies dampened price volatility in all subsector indexes and that economic incentives had a positive policy announcement effect on all subsector index prices other new energy policies had no significant impact on either the mean or the volatility of the new energy assets the potential implications for policy makers and investors are discussed

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

characterizing the policy mix and its impact on eco innovation a patent analysis of energy efficient technologies abstract this paper provides an empirical investigation of the role played by selected characteristics of the policy mix in inducing innovation in energy efficiency technologies an original dataset covering 23 oecd countries over the period 1990 2010 combines the full set of policies in the energy efficiency domain for the residential sector with data on patents applied over the same period in this specific technological sector the econometric results suggest that when the policy mix is characterised by a more balanced use in demand pull and technology push instruments its positive effects on eco innovation tend to be greater moreover a more comprehensive policy mix is shown to be able to enhance innovation activities for the generation of new energy efficient technologies however the simple addition of an indiscriminate number of simultaneous policy instruments may reduce policy mix effectiveness finally the empirical findings confirm previous evidence on the importance of policy spillover effects and suggest that policy similarity between countries may represent an important aspect to be accounted for in policy mix design

optimal diversity increasing returns versus recombinant innovation abstract choices regarding diversity play an important role in economics and innovation management but often remain implicit once made explicit the objectives of efficiency and diversity are usually posed as in conflict as efficiency relates positively and diversity negatively to various increasing returns to scale in markets such a perspective however neglects the benefits of diversity in terms of realizing system improvements through recombinant innovation or spillovers the latter implies a contribution of diversity to long term efficiency dominant economic approaches that address diversity such as option value and real options theories regard benefits of diversity as exogenous this paper proposes a simple model of variable endogenous diversity to analyse the optimal balance between increasing returns to scale and recombinant innovation it is discussed under which conditions one of four solutions is optimal complete specialization regardless of which option complete specialization in one specific option symmetric diversity perfect balance and asymmetric diversity the results give rise to a number of policy insights

local implementation for green manufacturing technology diffusion policy in china from the user firms perspectives abstract in recent years china has started to change its growth strategy to a more sustainable model in response to the limits to growth dilemma specifically the national policy advocates to promote the use of green manufacturing technologies through demonstration projects and to incentivize chinese manufacturers to adopt these green technologies that are also encouraged by local governments these green technologies can increase the economic gains of manufacturers by reducing costs on energy consumption and shift away from selling low margin products however the local authorities often encounter obstacles when implementing policies for promoting these technologies among manufacturing firms this paper explores the factors that affect the decision making of user firms throughout the policy implementation process based on the econometric analysis of the survey for china s electric motors upgrading project in guangdong province this study shows that three key factors are helpful in the local government s effort to implement the national project i e manufacturers awareness the understanding of the energy efficiency technology and the long term macroeconomic benefits in addition encouraging the participation of financial institutions is especially useful for local governments to convince small and medium sized firms these findings are beneficial for local implementation of green manufacturing technology diffusion policies in china and have worldwide policy implication as well

assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed in tariffs in european union countries in the last two decades feed in tariffs fit have emerged as one of the most popular policies for supporting renewable electricity res e generation a few studies have assessed the effectiveness of res e policies but most ignore policy design features and market characteristics e g electricity price and production cost that influence policy strength we employ 1992 2008 panel data to conduct the first econometric analysis of the effectiveness of fit policies in promoting solar photovoltaic pv and onshore wind power development in 26 european union countries we develop a new indicator for fit strength that captures variability in tariff size contract duration digression rate and electricity price and production cost to estimate the resulting return on investment we regress this indicator on added res e capacity using a fixed effects specification and find that fit policies have driven solar pv development in the eu however this effect is overstated without controlling for country characteristics and is concealed without accounting for policy design we do not find robust evidence that fit policies have driven wind power development overall we show that the interaction of policy design electricity price and electricity production cost is a more important determinant of res e development than policy enactment alone

an economic analysis for the design of ipp contracts for grid connected renewable energy projects abstract in this paper we undertake an integrated financial economic stakeholder analysis of a grid connected onshore wind project that is owned and operated by an independent power producer ipp in santiago island cape verde this ipp project has received considerable positive publicity and has won many awards cape verde has a very good wind resource but it suffers from high transportation costs for petroleum fuels due to its location hence it would appear to be an ideal site for an ipp investment in a wind farm this analysis is conducted from the perspectives of the electric utility the country s economy the government and the private sector investor the key question is whether the design of the power purchase agreement ppa can simultaneously yield a high enough cash flow for the project to be bankable while at the same time yielding a positive net financial and economic present value to the electric utility and the country respectively the analysis shows that a negotiated ppa results in a negative outcome for the economy of cape verde in almost all circumstances in contrast the owners of the ipp are guaranteed under all circumstances a very substantial return on their investment

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

explaining african economic performance africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital in many respects it has been the most capital hostile region we review and interpret the aggregate level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance there is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence pointing to four factors as being important these are a lack of openness to international trade a high risk environment a low level of social capital and poor infrastructure these problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behaviour and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behaviour

robust incentives and the design of a climate change governance regime in building a governance regime to address climate change should we prioritize the development of global institutions or national ones this paper focuses on two neglected characteristics to inform the governance problem the incentives for investment in low carbon energy technology and the influence of historical policy volatility examining a case study of an important low carbon energy technology wind power this study finds 1 policy volatility has been substantial 2 policy changes were uncorrelated across jurisdictions suggesting that 3 investors could have substantially reduced their exposure to the risk of policy volatility by operating globally while it also has downsides a poorly coordinated international policy regime has the advantage of reducing the risk associated with a global policy failure beyond this case study the importance of this positive effect depends on the probability of policy failures in each country the correlations among them and the probability of a global policy failure

mobilizing private finance for low carbon innovation a systematic review of barriers and solutions this paper analyses the field of innovation studies regarding barriers to low carbon innovation and consequences for finance investment and divestment and contributes to a more holistic understanding of the underlying mechanisms a combination of technological barriers combined with economic barriers institutional and political barriers contribute to sub optimal low carbon investment all along the innovation cycle policy makers need to take a systemic approach to enable the redirection of diverse private financial sources instruments range from cutting dirty r d subsidies and support for clean technology innovation and diffusion levelling the institutional playing field and making risks of high carbon and low carbon technologies transparent to providing a consistent but adaptive long term transition strategy this would allow financiers to gradually shift their investments away from high carbon mainstream markets and scale low carbon technology niche markets however financiers also need to sharpen their competencies with regard to new clean technologies and markets

the policy implications of the different interpretations of the cost effectiveness of renewable electricity support abstract the cost effectiveness of support for renewable electricity is a main criterion to assess the success of policy instruments together with effectiveness the costs of support are also a source of significant concern for governments all over the world however significant confusion exists in the literature on the cost effectiveness of public support for renewable electricity while some authors define the concept of cost effectiveness as that which complies with the equimarginality principle many others including documents from relevant organisations european commission international energy agency intergovernmental panel on climate change define it as the lowest costs of support generally equating it with the minimisation of consumer costs the aim of this paper is to clarify the differences between both approaches and their policy implications regarding the choice of instruments and design elements it is shown that they partly overlap and that their policy implications clearly differ leading to very different policy prescriptions while the former favours technology neutral instruments and design elements the minimisation of consumer costs approach favours instruments and design elements which adjust support levels to the costs of the technologies

inventor networks in renewable energies the influence of the policy mix in germany technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in germany since the 1980s we examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co inventor networks based on patent data our results indicate notable differences between the technologies the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments while in photovoltaics demand pull is decisive for network growth by and large the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments the structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies systemic instruments increase interaction especially in the wind power network and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

energy consumption and co2 emissions convergence in european union member countries a tonneau des danaides abstract as the consumption of energy is responsible for approximately 80 of ghg in eu iea 2008 the impact of energy activity on the environment has received increasing attention over the last decades from scholars researchers politicians and society as a whole within eu member countries it is commonly accepted that the design of energy and mitigation policies either at national or at european level require a detailed and integrated investigation of convergence divergence pattern among the participating countries in this paper we examine the distribution dynamics of energy consumption and co2 emissions their intensities as well as the carbonization index in 23 european countries over a forty one year period in particular from 1970 to 2010 for this purpose we used quah s methodology which is based on the dynamics of cross section distributions the main conclusion is that for all the examined variables the hypothesis of convergence patterns for the eu sample is not valid moreover regarding each examined variable different groups of polarization established important differences occur across eu countries according to the climate type with respect to the examined variables our analysis provides strong evidence supporting the fact that national and european energy and mitigation policies should be implemented according to the non convergence paradigm the body of evidence provided by our analysis is of great importance to energy policy makers and for issues related to climate change

measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes an empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes balance and design features in nine countries abstract complex societal or environmental problems require fast and substantial socio technical transitions for instance in the case of climate change these transitions need to take place in the energy transport and several industry sectors to induce and accelerate such transitions numerous policy interventions are required which interact with each other in policy mixes while several conceptual studies on policy mixes have been published recently there is very little empirical research apart from single case or small n studies it has been prominently argued that the debate about policy mixes has reached an impasse partly due to this lack of empirical work this paper addresses this gap by providing a first analysis of the temporal dynamics of complex policy mixes to do so we develop a conceptualization and measurement of policy mix balance across instrument types as well as policy mix design features in the form of intensity as a general and technology specificity as a technology focused design feature this allows us to answer the question how temporal dynamics of policy mixes differ between countries regarding their balance and design features our measurement approach is developed bottom up i e policies are assessed individually and then aggregated systematically at the policy mix level this enables overcoming the dependent variable problem in the study of policy change i e the problem of measuring policy output more specifically we develop a comparative dataset of 522 renewable energy policies in nine oecd countries our analysis shows that countries policy mix dynamics vary strongly regarding some variables e g technology specificity but less regarding others e g balance as a validity check we also test the effects of these mix dynamics on policy outcome in the form of renewable energy technology diffusion we reflect our findings in light of the theoretical debates around policy mixes and policy design and discuss how our results provoke an agenda for the new generation of research on policy mixes we specifically discuss avenues for future research with a particular focus on the politics of policy mixes

central bank communication and monetary policy a survey of theory and evidence over the last two decades communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy these real world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication mostly empirical and almost all of it written in this decade we survey this ever growing literature the evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank s toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions and potentially to help achieve central banks macroeconomic objectives however the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

modeling renewable energy company risk abstract the renewable energy sector is one of the fastest growing components of the energy industry and along with this increased demand for renewable energy there has been an increase in investing and financing activities the tradeoff between risk and return in the renewable energy sector is however precarious renewable energy companies are often among the riskiest types of companies to invest in and for this reason it is necessary to have a good understanding of the risk factors this paper uses a variable beta model to investigate the determinants of renewable energy company risk the empirical results show that company sales growth has a negative impact on company risk while oil price increases have a positive impact on company risk when oil price returns are positive and moderate increases in sales growth can offset the impact of oil price returns and this leads to lower systematic risk

the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments a typical case of the blind men and the elephant abstract in this paper we examine the innovation effects of environmental policy instruments in four literatures theoretical models on incentives for eco innovation econometric studies based on observed data survey analysis based on stated information and technology case studies the aim of this paper is to critically examine the methods and the results we argue that the case studies literature even when its results are specific and difficult to generalise is a necessary source of empirical evidence about policy impacts and the factors responsible for these impacts pointing to issues that are neglected in the theoretical and econometric literature such as the specifics of the innovation context and policy interaction effects the paper states five synthesised findings and makes a plea for multi method analysis one other important synthesised finding is that the influence of market based instruments on innovation such as emission trading and taxes is far weaker than assumed

when bureaucrats meet entrepreneurs the design of effective public venture capital programmes recently public efforts to finance small high technology firms have proliferated we review the motivations for these efforts and make some preliminary observations about their design we explore the underlying challenges that the financing of young growth firms poses the ways that specialised financial intermediaries address them and the rationales for public efforts to finance these companies the final section makes a set of observations about the ways in which the structure of these efforts can most effectively complement private sector activity a frequent fault in programme design is the presumption that technological criteria can be divorced from business considerations when evaluating firms the federal government has played an active role in financing new firms particularly in high technology industries since the soviet union s launch of the sputnik satellite in recent years european and asian nations and many us states have adopted similar initiatives while these programmes precise structures have differed the efforts have been predicated on two shared assumptions i that the private sector provides insufficient capital to new firms and ii that the government either can identify investments which will ultimately yield high social and or private returns or can encourage financial intermediaries to do so in contrast to other government interventions designed to boost economic growth such as privatisation programmes these claims have received little scrutiny by economists the neglect of these questions is unfortunate while the sums of money involved are modest relative to public expenditures on defence procurement or retiree benefits these programmes are very substantial when compared to contemporaneous private investments in new firms government programmes in this arena have been divided between those efforts that directly fund entrepreneurial firms and those that encourage or subsidise the development of outside investors in this paper i will focus on public venture capital initiatives programmes that make equity or equity like investments in young firms or encourage other intermediaries to make such investments in some such programmes such as the advanced technology program and the small business innovation research programmes discussed below the funds are provided as a contract or outright grant while these efforts have proliferated a consensus as to how to structure these programmes remains elusive while the design of regulatory agencies has been extensively studied from a theoretical and empirical perspective little work has

evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules abstract photovoltaic pv module costs have declined rapidly over forty years but the reasons remain elusive here we advance a conceptual framework and quantitative method for quantifying the causes of cost changes in a technology and apply it to pv modules our method begins with a cost model that breaks down cost into variables that changed over time cost change equations are then derived to quantify each variable s contribution we distinguish between changes observed in variables of the cost model which we term low level mechanisms of cost reduction and research and development learning by doing and scale economies which we refer to as high level mechanisms we find that increased module efficiency was the leading low level cause of cost reduction in 1980 2012 contributing almost 25 of the decline government funded and private r d was the most important high level mechanism over this period after 2001 however scale economies became a more significant cause of cost reduction approaching r d in importance policies that stimulate market growth have played a key role in enabling pv s cost reduction through privately funded r d and scale economies and to a lesser extent learning by doing the method presented here can be adapted to retrospectively or prospectively study many technologies and performance metrics besides cost

start up sustainability an insurmountable cost or a life giving investment abstract an outstanding question in the entrepreneurship literature reigns given recent emphases on sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility if small start ups are generally stretched for time and resources does it enhance their chances for survival and success to be sustainable and socially responsible new firms can aid in rectifying pressing environmental and social issues by being more sustainable while many entrepreneurs like a sustainable business model and or mission investment may not follow so willingly this paper examines a sample of 300 start ups across thirty cities around the world to consider whether sustainability is rewarded by investors investors signal confidence in start ups when they infuse life extending investments into them this analysis also considers whether a more sustainable national context affects investor confidence and whether a sustainable firm within a sustainable national context gains more investor attention and investment results show that investors avoid sustainable firms particularly those that are environmentally sustainable moreover investors enjoy national contexts that are socially responsible but pay no attention to those that are environmentally conscious in addition firms that are sustainable in a sustainable national context are not better off for attracting investment insights for policy are that mainstream investors are attracted by national social policies but these investors are unlikely to be the main force behind sustainable venture growth under today s conditions

the economic viability of battery storage for residential solar photovoltaic systems a review and a simulation model battery storage is generally considered an effective means for reducing the intermittency of electricity generated by solar photovoltaic pv systems however currently it remains unclear when and under which conditions battery storage can be profitably operated in residential pv systems without policy support based on a review of previous studies that have examined the economics of integrated pv battery systems in this paper we devise a simulation model that investigates the economic viability of battery storage for residential pv in germany under eight different electricity price scenarios from 2013 to 2022 in contrast to previous forward looking studies we assume that no premium is paid for solar photovoltaic power and or self consumed electricity additionally we run the model with a large number of different pv and storage capacities to determine the economically optimal configuration in terms of system size we find that already in 2013 investments in storage solutions were economically viable for small pv systems given the assumptions of our model the optimal size of both residential pv systems and battery storage rises significantly in the future higher electricity retail prices lower electricity wholesale prices or limited access to the electricity wholesale market add to the profitability of storage we conclude that additional policy incentives to foster investments in battery storage for residential pv in germany will only be necessary in the short run at the same time the impending profitability of integrated pv storage systems is likely to further spur the ongoing trend toward distributed electricity generation with major implications for the electricity sector

evolutionary economics and technology policy in this brief paper i propose to explore the economics of technology policy from an evolutionary perspective as with any evolutionary argument the central concern is with the mechanisms of economic change in this case in relation to the development of new technologies and patterns of organisation and their spread into the wider economic system in this sense we build upon one of the major stylized facts of modern growth structural change at all levels from the microeconomic to the macroeconomic to any observer of the policy making process let alone a practitioner the contrast between the theory which underpins policy and the implementation of policy will seem acute as nelson and winter i982 have rightly insisted research into policy is shaped by policy questions not by an agenda relating to how economic theory can be developed to deal with innovation setting priorities designing instruments and evaluating outcomes do not link easily with the general ideas dealt with below among the general points we will stress two will be of critical importance first that the innovation activities of firms involve a wider range of other institutions supplying the knowledge and skills which underpin the efforts of individual firms we term this the systems perspective on innovation nelson i993 secondly it is not helpful to treat innovation and the diffusion of innovation as separate categories in fact they are inseparable with feedback from diffusion being one of the critical elements shaping how a technology is developed we begin with a brief review of the familiar market failure perspective on policy and build from this into a brief overview of the evolutionary approach the paper concludes with an outline of the systems perspective on technology policy it is taken as read that virtually any economic policy can have implications in principle for the process of innovation however we treat technology policy in a narrow sense even though it spills over into questions of education policy science policy and competition policy

jurisdiction shopping and foreign location choice the role of market and nonmarket experience in the european solar energy industry several countries provide policy support to specific sectors in order to facilitate industry transitions while industry support policies stimulate the growth of their target sectors little is known about how such policies engender heterogeneous international strategies in this article we investigate how industry support policies influence foreign location choices we argue that firms engage in jurisdiction shopping choosing to invest in countries with more generous policy support but that this tendency varies markedly across firms specifically we suggest that firms nonmarket experience exacerbates the effect of policy support on location choice whereas market experience has less of an impact further we propose that some firms view generous policies more skeptically than others depending on the nature of their nonmarket experience we test and find support for our predictions using a longitudinal dataset of foreign investments of firms entering the solar energy industry in the european union our findings indicate that supportive policies stimulate the energy transition attracting in particular foreign entrants diversifying into renewables or having more policy experience at the same time they suggest that adverse policy changes in one country affect how firms assess policies in other countries highlighting the need for policy coordination at a supranational level

green investment trends and determinants abstract this paper fills a gap in the macroeconomic literature on renewable sources of energy it offers a definition of green investment and analyzes the trends and determinants of this investment over the last decade for 35 advanced and emerging countries we use a new multi country historical dataset and find that green investment has become a key driver of the energy sector and that its rapid growth is now mostly driven by china our econometric results suggest that green investment is boosted by economic growth a sound financial system conducive to low interest rates and high fuel prices we also find that some policy interventions such as the introduction of carbon pricing schemes or feed in tariffs which require use of green energy have a positive and significant impact on green investment other interventions such as biofuel support do not appear to be associated with higher green investment

clean energy policies and green jobs an evaluation of green jobs in u s metropolitan areas state and local governments in the u s are actively promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency to seek economic development opportunities and create green jobs this study evaluates the employment effects of state and local clean energy and climate policies in u s metropolitan areas msas in 2006 the regression analysis shows that both state and local clean energy policies have positive and statistically significant impacts on green jobs at the metropolitan level the results from two stage probit least squares 2spls indicate that every additional state clean energy policy tool adopted is associated with 1 more green jobs in the msa on average msas with iclei membership maintain 9 3 more green jobs than msas without iclei membership ceteris paribus

evolutionary approaches for sustainable innovation policies from niche to paradigm fostering technological innovation is considered as an important element of policies towards sustainable development in the past 10 years evolutionary policy approaches have been increasingly advocated for several reasons they seem well equipped to underpin sustainable innovation policies they focus on dynamics of change and their drivers they allow for a substantive perspective on technologies beyond mere input output relations taking into account trajectories and different characteristics of innovation and they are able to describe circumstances under which established technologies might persist even when they are to some extent inferior to their new competitors lock in however the policy effectiveness of evolutionary approaches in cases in which radical or systemic changes are involved is not yet proven in this paper we assess the theoretical rationale instrumental aspects and the coping with policy constraints of three evolutionary policy approaches which have also been used in empirical studies strategic niche management transition management and time strategies each approach has its strengths and specific problems and all three have to be further developed and tested out but they hold promise for contributing to non incremental change with economic and environmental benefits by shaping processes of variation selection and retention with the outcomes feeding back into policy they may also be used in other areas in which innovation direction is important for instance health care or food