1. Francesco Nicolli| francesco.nicolli@unife.it
Heterogeneous Policies, Heterogeneous Technologies: The Case of Renewable Energy
Francesco Nicolli
University of Ferrara – CERIS/CNR & SEEDS
Francesco Vona
OFCE Sciences-Po

2. Motivation
Empirical literature on environmental innovation focuses on the inducement effect of policies and energy prices (e.g. Popp 2002; Johnstone et al. 2010; Jaffe et al., 2003 )
Nesta et al. (2014) found a significant effect of energy market liberalisation on innovation in renewable energy technologies (RETs).
Another strand of literature examines the direction of technical change, and the role played by factor such as: price, size of the market and path dependency (Aghion et. Al., 2012; Calel and Dechezleprêtre, 2012)

3. Motivation
less attention has been paid, however, to the heterogeneous effects an equal policy or market stimulus exerts on the different RETs.
Lee and Lee (2013), proposed a taxonomy of RETs according to a set of indicators derived from the innovation
They identify six types of innovation patterns depending on the market structure and the degree of technological maturity and potential.

4. Aim of the paper
Assessing the heterogeneous effect of policy inducement and market regulation on 8 different Renewable energy technologies
We expand previous literature:
By allowing the effect of Renewable energy policies and market regulation to vary across technologies
By studying the effect of the single components of regulation (ENTRY – OWNERSHIP – VERTICAL INTEGRATION)
employing a dynamic specification that accounts for the accumulated stock of past knowledge
using the ratification of the Kyoto protocol as an exogenous shock for national-level policies in a diff-in-diff setting

5. Factors influencing renewable energy technology
Inducement hypothesis:
The negative effect of regulation on competitiveness in the short-term might be offset by the positive effect of regulation on innovation (seminal works of Porter, 1991 and Porter and Van der Linde, 1995).
Both quota systems and demand subsidies, which increase the market for renewable energy, are expected to stimulate innovation thanks to the higher expected return of R&D investments (Popp et al., 2009)
In presence of multiple externalities (pollution+ knowledge), a mix of policies is the optimal way to spur innovation (Jaffe et al., 2005; Acemoglu et al. 2011).

6. Competition
Schumpeterian effect: the entry of new players into downstream power production reduces the profitability of the incumbents, reducing their demand for upstream equipment manufacturer and consequently inhibiting upstream innovation. Escape competition effect: this reduction in the demand for upstream innovation would incentivise the equipment manufacturer to increase its innovative effort to escape competition. Appropriation effect: The entry of new players increases the overall demand for new technologies, increasing the incentive to innovate.

7. Heterogeneous effects - Competition
The effect of lowering the entry barriers depend on the level of each technology’s ‘developer intensity’, which measures the degree of concentration of innovation between firms
Low developer intensity  innovation activities are spread among firms and there are no technological leaders  escape competition effect prevail
High developer intensity  the industry is unlevelled, with few leaders and several followers  a Schumpeterian effect to prevail in the second
We expect the magnitude of the appropriation effect described in previous section to differ across technologies, and be stronger in RETs where the renewable energy production is decentralised into small- or medium-sized units.
H1: The effect of lowering entry barriers on innovation activities is expected to be positive for Wind, Solar Thermal and Waste technologies, which are characterised by both a lower developer intensity and the entrance of many independent producers.

8. Heterogeneous effects - Policies
Quantity-based and broad policies (like RECs), letting the producer free to pick the preferred options, tend to promote more mature and cost-effective technologies, such as wind, geothermal and solar thermal technologies, which guarantee lower short-run compliance costs. On the other hand, technology-specific policies, such as public R&D, and technology-specific price systems, such as feed-in tariffs, that allow differentiation and the specific pricing of individual technologies might be able to support emerging technologies such as solar PV. H2: The effect of broad policies is stronger for mature technologies, while emerging technologies are more responsive to technology-specific instruments

9. Heterogeneous effects
We expect, in particular, that technologies associated with a high technological potential are highly responsive to market conditions and, consequently, reacted more promptly and positively to an increase in the demand for clean energy, which can be driven by REPs, or to an increase in electricity consumption. technological potential, which measures the average patent growth rate of a technology (Holger, 2003) and is a rough proxy of its innovative potential. H3: The magnitude of the policy inducement effect, or more generally, of an increasing size of the energy market, is stronger for technologies with high technological potential such as wind, solar, marine and biofuel technologies and weaker or not present for technologies with low technological potential.

10. Other Factors Persistency of Past innovation (KNOW-STOCK )
Electricity prices (ELECT PRICE)
Per capita income levels (GDP_pc)
Electricity consumption (ELECT CONS)
New EU Countries

11. Data
We use patent counts (at the EPO) as our proxy for innovation performance. 8 sub-fields: wind, marine, solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, hydroelectric, waste, biofuel & geothermal. 19 EU Countries for years
Policies: we use the database compiled at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and previously used by JHP 2010.
Continuous data on RECs, FEED-IN and R&D.
Regulation: Index of Product Market Regulation developed by the OECD. Average of three sub-indices: entry barriers, vertical integration and privatization

12. PATENT TREND

13. PATENT by Country

14. Level of price guaranteed
INSTRUMENT
DESCRIPTION
CONSTRUCTION
Feed-in Tariff
Guaranteed price that may vary by technology. (Wind, Solar, Ocean, Geothermal, Biomass, Waste, Hydro).
Level of price guaranteed
Public Research and Development
Public financed R&D program disaggregated by type of renewable energy..
R&D (USD, 2006 prices and PPP).
Tradable Certificate
Renewable energy Certificates (REC) are used to track or document compliance with quota system and can generally be traded in specific markets.
Share of electricity that must be generated by ren or covered with a REC.
Kyoto Protocol
Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
Dummy Variable

15. Investment incentives
INSTRUMENT
DESCRIPTION
CONSTRUCTION
Investment incentives
Capital Grants and all other measures aimed at reducing the capital cost of adopting renewable energy technologies.
Dummy Variable
Tax Measure
Economic instruments used either to encourage production or discourage consumption. They may have the form of investment tax credit or property tax exemptions, in order to reduce tax payments for project owner.
Voluntary program
These programs generally operate through agreement between government, public utilities and energy suppliers, that agree to buy energy generated from renewable sources.
Obligations
Obligation and targets take generally the form of quota systems that place an obligation on producers to provide a share of their energy supply from ren energy. These quota are not necessarily covered by a tradable certificate.

16. Empirical analysis: knowledge stock
The inclusion of past knowledge stock accounts for path-dependency (Popp 2002).
As in Popp 2002, where β1, the rate of decay, and β2, the rate of diffusion.

17. PMR – Entry - Selected Countries

18. PMR – Vertical integration

19. & Public Ownership

20. Empirical strategy
Negative binomial fixed effect estimator, extended for dynamic by including the lagged knowledge stock.
The baseline specification refers to 19 EU Countries over the period 1977–2005.
EPO_PATit=f(β1 Log ELECT PRICEit + β 2 Log ELECT CONSit + β 3 Log GDP _pcit + β 4 PMRit + β 5 KNOW-STOCKit-1 + β 6 Log R&Dit + β 7 Log FEED-INit + β 8 KYOTO + β 9 Log RECsit + β 10 OTHER POLit + β 11 ENLARGit + β i+ β t)

21. Wind
Solar_th
Solar_PV
Marine
Hydro
Biofuel
Geotherm
Waste
K STOCK
0.0054***
0.0092** ** * *
0.0195***
PMR ENTRY
-0.322*** **
0.0959
0.0129
PMR VERT INT
0.0993
0.1298*
0.0686
PMR PUB OWN
0.0845
0.0207
0.0210
0.0063
0.3362
R&D
0.3926***
0.0054
0.0968
0.6356***
0.3600
0.1666**
0.4160**
FEED-IN
-5.139***
1.5440***
2.9548
0.4656
2.8425
KYOTO
0.4778**
0.1342
1.9649***
0.8407**
0.7505
1.7038***
0.5473
RECs
0.1526**
0.1938** *
0.0080
OTHER POL
0.0636
0.2623
0.4142**
0.6686*
0.1956
0.4505**
0.1827
ELEC PRICE
0.6341
9.1864**
14.359*** **
4.4071
15.468*** *
3.7185
ELEC CONS
2.0008***
2.0909**
0.5850
1.1801
1.6076*
GDP
1.6397*
1.5128*
1.2114
3.5998***
0.2730
2.6629
2.0857**
ENLARG ** *
0.2711
0.2461
0.2570
Country FE
Yes
Year FE N
495
448
429
475
346

22. Results Product Market Regulation:
the PMR indicator is statistically significant only for wind and solar thermal technologies.
among the three subcomponents of PMR, only PMR ENTRY drives the aggregate result, as it is statistically significant in the case of wind and solar thermal, in line with Hypothesis 1.

23. Results Renewable Energy Policy:
in line with Hypothesis 2, technology-specific policies appear to play a major role in the early phases of technological development (solar PV, marine), whereas for relatively more mature technologies, e.g., wind and solar thermal, quota systems are more effective policy tools   
R&D is a significant determinant of innovation for several RETs, such as wind, marine, biofuel and geothermal
future policy expectations as proxied by the KYOTO protocol dummy exert a significant and positive effect for wind, solar PV, marine and biofuel technologies.

24. Results Technological potential:
The effect of KYOTO, in line with H3, is stronger for technologies with an high tech potential
The evidence is mixed for the other cases.
Controls
ELEC PRICE is associated with a more robust outcome, as it is positive and statistically significant in five of the eight technologies analysed
ELEC CONS, is significant only for the two solar energy technologies
OTHER POL, controlling for all these policy instruments for which continuous information is not available, shows an expected positive and significant effect for solar PV, marine and biofuels

25. Difference-in-difference
Policy endogeneity is an issue difficult to address with multiple policy measures.
Idea of exploiting the ratification of Kyoto:
The ratification of the Kyoto protocol is a significant driving force of renewable energy policy adoption (Vona and Nicolli, 2013).
It is relatively more exogenous that country-level policies as it is decided cooperatively.
For EU countries, the decision is made collectively for countries with initial level of expertise in renewable energy.
One of the goal of Kyoto was to favour technological transfer.

26. (1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
K STOCK
0.0035***
0.0026***
0.0034***
0.0027***
0.0057***
PMR ENTRY
***
***
***
*** **
***
PMR VERT INT
0.0023
0.0047
0.0017 **
PMR PUB OWN
0.0011
0.0086
0.0222
0.0166
0.0901***
R&D
0.0678**
0.0686**
0.0829***
0.0659**
0.0750***
0.1730***
FEED-IN
KYOTO
1.0476***
1.0085***
0.8157***
0.9820***
0.8075***
0.5460***
RECs
0.0046
0.0192
0.0382
OTHER POL
0.2945***
0.3073***
0.3156***
0.3099***
0.2675***
0.0126
ELEC PRICE
6.0896***
6.7005***
6.3392***
5.8639***
5.3459***
***
ELEC CONS
1.5010***
1.4800***
1.5748***
1.4879***
1.7625***
0.6457**
GDP
1.1284***
1.1807***
1.2311***
1.1743***
1.1757***
0.7090**
ENLARG ** ** *
***
KYOTO*RECs
KYOTO*FEEDIN
***
KYOTO*OT POL
0.0812
KYOTO*R&D
0.2558***
KYOTO*PMR ENTRY *
Country*tech FE
Yes
Year FE N
3678

27. Comments The aggregate result confirms previous evidence.
The controls and the lagged knowledge stock are associated with the expected coefficients, while among the three components of PMR, only entry barriers constitute a statistically significant driver of innovation.
It should be noted here that the aggregate results are mainly driven by wind and the two solar technologies, which represent approximately 70% of the total patenting in RE
KYOTO accelerate the effect of PMR and R&D. Confirmed the complementarity hypothesis put forward by Nesta et al.
FEEDD-IN significant post KYOTO, when the policy framework became more stable

28. Conclusions
the aggregate effect of market liberalisation found in the previous literature is driven by technologies with a lower development intensity and more subjected to the entry of independent producers, such as wind and solar thermal energy.
the effect of REPs is heterogeneous across technologies and depends on their different degrees of maturity and technological potential.
KYOTO amplifies the effect of PMR, FEED-IN and R&D. This result confirms the complementarity between policy framework and the institutional context

29. SEEDS is an interuniversity research centre
SEEDS is an interuniversity research centre. It develops research in the fields of ecological and environmental economics, with a special focus on the role of policy and innovation