Innovation in the energy sector: Lessons learnt from R&D expenditures and patents in selected IEA countries

Long time series of the IEA and international patent offices offer a huge potential for scientific investigations of the energy innovation process. Thus, this paper deals with a broad literature review on innovation drivers and barriers, and an analysis of the knowledge induced by public research and development expenditures (R&D) and patents in the energy sector. The cumulative knowledge stock induced by public R&D expenditures in 14 investigated IEA-countries is 102.3 bn EUR in 2013. Nuclear energy has the largest share of 43.9 bn EUR, followed by energy efficiency accounting for 14.9 bn EUR, fossil fuels with 13.5 bn EUR, and renewable energy with 12.1 bn EUR. A regression analysis indicates a linear relation between the GDP and the cumulative knowledge, with each billion EUR of GDP leading to an additional knowledge of 3.1 mil EUR. However, linearity is not given for single energy technologies. Further, the results show that appropriate public R&D funding for research and development associated with a subsequent promotion of the market diffusion of a niche technology may lead to a breakthrough of the respective technology.