Three essays on energy efficiency innovation

Abstract

ESSAY 1 Mapping innovation systems through patent analysis. The case of technologies for energy efficiency in the residential sector: This work is an attempt to shed some light in the poorly explored field of residential energy efficiency technologies. Recent efforts by advanced economies, and especially European Union, are directed towards enhancing energy efficiency performances in all economic fields. Although attempts for mapping green technologies have intensified recently, the specific field of energy efficiency in electrical appliances for the residential sector mostly remains uncovered. In order to overcome this problem, in this work an ad hoc classification method based on a combination of semantic and class-based search has been developed. By using Boolean operators, specific search strings were used for searching patent applications, following a multi-level top-down approach applied to European Patent Office applications. Patent collection has been also integrated with the new Cooperative Patent Classification in energy efficiency technologies. Interesting trends in terms of distribution across countries and technologies emerge from the dynamics of such patents. Further specific investigation upon the drivers of such patterns should help policy makers in designing proactive support tools fostering innovation and efficiency for achieving the challenging environmental goals envisaged by the international agenda. ESSAY 2 Policy Inducement Effects in Energy Efficiency Technologies. An Empirical Analysis on the Residential Sector: Energy efficiency technologies represent a key driver for the reduction of the energy demand, leading to environmental and economic benefits. This aspect appears to be particularly relevant in the residential sector, where the demand for energy has not showed a decreasing trend over the last two decades. The study provides a wideranging empirical analysis of the drivers of innovation, with a particular focus on the policy side, in residential energy efficiency technologies. The panel analysis of 23 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010, confirms the importance of adopting a systemic perspective when eco-innovation is under scrutiny. In particular, the innovation system, both national and sectoral, together with the environmental and the energy systems, spurred the propensity to innovate and significantly shaped the rate and direction of technical change in the residential sector. A general policy inducement effect is found to be relevant, but the size of its contribution for new EE technologies changes if disaggregated policy instruments are investigated. It can be noted a positive and significant impact not only driven by standard regulations, but also by policies aimed at improving the level of consumer’s information and awareness. The role of policy mix as well as of policy coordination and coherence also positively affect the innovative activity in EE residential technologies. These evidences lead to noteworthy policy implications and suggest the way to further develop research in this field. ESSAY 3 Home Green Home. Unveiling eco-innovation in energy efficient domestic appliances: Residential energy efficiency (EE) is considered a crucial economic and environmental long-run objective and its performances intrinsically relies on technological innovation as a mean for improving productivity of the energy input. Among all the residential EE technologies, domestic electrical appliances seem to be particularly interesting to investigate, representing an important share in the final energy consumption but showing, at the same time, a high potential in terms of EE gains as well as growing level of technology integration. By taking advantage of the flourishing eco-innovation literature on patent analysis, the present study uses an original dataset on four large energy-efficient appliances and provide a methodology for i) identifying specific clusters of EE technologies; ii) mapping their evolution over time; iii) discovering niches of technological fungeability. My model exploits the wellknown concept of technological relatedness using co-occurrences analysis of patent classes as an input for Self-organising maps, an unsupervised artificial neural network able to represent high-dimensional data in visually-attractive and low-dimensional maps. The results confirm the pervasive nature of EE to be bested in many technological niches. Moreover, a de-materialisation process affected the evolution of EE technologies over time, in a technological space characterised by high level of complexity and variety. Lastly, the hypothesis of technological fungeability has been confirmed for a set of EE technological niches identifying digital components, showing an interesting case of general purpose technology.