# Application of the Supercapacitor for Energy Storage in China: Role and Strategy
## 4 Strategy and Innovation Status Quo  
### National Innovative Capacity  
Innovation is primarily measured by the number of patent applications or licensing. Figure 6 shows the trend in the number of patents filed. In the 11 years from 2009 to 2020, there were 1363 domestic patent applications, including 975 invention patents, 370 utility models, 10 registration of designs, and 287 licensing agreements. Obviously, invention IP protection is becoming popular in the domestic sense, which shows that China's original innovation ability of supercapacitors is gradually increasing. Figure 7 shows the distribution of the patents. The proportions of the provinces whose science, technology, and economy are advanced, such as Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Zhejiang, are all over 10%, accounting for 68.26%, over two-thirds of the total patents. Thus, the research and development ability of the domestic supercapacitor pivots on science, technology, and economy-developed provinces. Figure 8 shows the ranking of the applicants and the inventors. The top ten applicants, with a total of 361 patents, accounts for 26.49% of the number of patents in China. The inventors featured in the top ten China rankings applied for 518 patents, as the ratio of 38 percent is close to 40 percent. So, the inventors and applicants who are ranked high contribute enormously to the supercapacitors. The whole industry is mainly powered by them. Figure 6: The total amount of patent application for supercapacitors in China since 2003. Figure 7: Distribution of the patents in China. From Figure 9a, it is clear that in the patent application countries, Japan, China, the United States, and South Korea, the application volume is larger. Among them, the number of patent applications in Japan was high before 2006 and showed a trend of steady rise. It reached a peak in 2006, and then the application speed slowed down or even showed a trend of decline, but the number of patients remained above 400 per year. Before 2006, the application trends of China, the United States, and the Republic of Korea were relatively similar, with slow growth and a small number each year. After 2006, although the patent application volume of the United States and the Republic of Korea increased somewhat, the growth rate was not large, and the overall trend fluctuated. China's patent applications show great changes, with the fastest growth rate and the largest change range. Among them, the annual growth rate between 2007 and 2012 is more than 30%. In 2011, the annual application volume surpassed that of Japan, making China the country with the largest annual patent application volume. It can be predicted that, with the rapid growth in the social demand for new energy and the integration of the global market, more countries will participate in the future, and the annual patent application will remain at a high level. As can be seen from Figure 9b, Japan, China, the United States, and Korea are the main competitors, and their patent applications account for 83% of the total applications. Japan contributed the largest portion. Figure 9c shows that the supercapacitor market continued to expand from 2015 to 2020 in China, showing an upward trend. From 4.01 billion in 2015 to 118.3 billion in 2019, it is expected to maintain a 30% growth rate in the next three years. The prospect of the supercapacitor market size will reach 15.2 billion in 2020. Figure 9d shows the demand for supercapacitors in different aspects, referring to transportation, industry, and new energy from 2014 to 2021. It indicates that transportation is still the largest proportion, such as electric bus and vehicle. At present, new energy vehicles produced for Chinese customers are mainly equipped with lithium batteries, but from the perspective of the entire life cycle, the future development potential of supercapacitors is unlimited. New energy contributes the smallest proportion, but supercapacitors can be used in many aspects of new energy, such as wind power, receiving converters, solar energy, solar light, etc.