Comparing the International Knowledge Flow of China’s Wind and Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Industries: Patent Analysis and Implications for Sustainable Development

Climate-relevant technologies, like wind and solar energy, are crucial for mitigating climate change and for achieving sustainable development. Recent literature argues that Chinese solar firms play more active roles in international knowledge flows, which may better explain their success in international markets when compared to those of Chinese wind firms; however, empirical evidence remains sparse. This study aims to explore to what extent and how do the international knowledge flows differ between China’s wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) industries? From a network perspective, this paper develops a three-dimensional framework to compare the knowledge flows in both explicit and tacit dimensions: (i) inter-country explicit knowledge clusters (by topological clustering of patent citation network); (ii) inter-firm explicit knowledge flow (patent citation network of key firms); and, (iii) inter-firm tacit knowledge flow (by desktop research and interviews). The results show that China’s PV industry has stronger international knowledge linkages in terms of knowledge clustering and explicit knowledge flow, but the wind power industry has a stronger tacit knowledge flow. Further, this study argues that the differences of global knowledge links between China’s wind and solar PV industries may be caused by technology characteristics, market orientation, and policy implementation. This suggests that these industries both have strong connections to global knowledge networks, but they may involve disparate catch-up pathways that concern follower-modes and leader-modes. These findings are important to help us understand how China can follow sustainable development pathways in the light of climate change

The Chinese innovation system for wind energy: structure, functions and performance

Energy technology innovation is critical to transitioning to a sustainable energy system. The energy R&D expenditure worldwide has increased recently to combat the challenges of climate change, energy security and energy affordability. Emerging economies play an increasingly important role in energy technology innovation. As the largest energy producer and consumer, China’s energy technology innovation has an influential impact on the global energy system. China has emerged as the largest investor and user of renewable energy technology. The country accounts for 33% of the global wind power capacity, far ahead of the USA (17%) and Germany (11%). Among the world’s ten largest wind turbine producers, half of them are Chinese enterprises. China’s rapid development of wind technology attracted wide interest. The two key questions are a) how does China compare with leading countries in wind technology innovation, and b) what factors have been responsible for China’s successes and failures. This thesis draws upon innovation systems theory and innovation metrics to answer these two questions. It is found that China has caught up fast in inputs and certain outputs but significantly lags the leading countries in other aspects especially outcomes. The relative weakness in invention capability represents China’s most obvious bottlenecks. It demonstrates that the country’s system performance is highly related to the fulfilment of the system functions which are affected by the presence and capability of the structural elements. The thesis is offered as a comprehensive study on China’s wind energy innovation system. It presents useful lessons on facilitating the generation, adoption and diffusion of renewable energy technology as well as the challenges that need to be addressed to smooth the energy transition globally. The research makes methodological, empirical and theoretical contributions to the innovation systems literature.Open Acces

Cost performance and risk in the construction of offshore and onshore wind farms

This article investigates the risk of cost overruns and underruns occurring in the construction of 51 onshore and offshore wind farms commissioned between 2000 and 2015 in 13 countries. In total, these projects required about $39 billion in investment and reached about 11 GW of installed capacity. We use this original dataset to test six hypotheses about construction cost overruns related to (i) technological learning, (ii) fiscal control, (iii) economies of scale, (iv) configuration, (v) regulation and markets and (vi) manufacturing experience. We find that across the entire dataset, the mean cost escalation per project is 6.5$63 million per windfarm, although 20 projects within the sample (39%) did not exhibit cost overruns. The majority of onshore wind farms exhibit cost underruns while for offshore wind farms the results have a larger spread. Interestingly, no significant relationship exists between the size (in total MWor per individual turbine capacity) of a windfarm and the severity of a cost overrun. Nonetheless, there is an indication that the risk increases for larger wind farms at greater distances offshore using new types of turbines and foundations. Overall, the mean cost escalation for onshore projects is 1.7% and 9.6% for offshore projects, amounts much lower than those for other energy infrastructure