ABSTRACT

Accelerating the pace of energy technological innovation is essential to curb global climate change and build a clean energy system. Based on this idea, from the perspective of renewable energy technology gaps across countries, this study presents a thorough empirical analysis of the convergence of energy technology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) budgets across OECD countries over 1985–2017. In doing so, we apply two-regimes threshold autoregressive approach to account for heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and transition path in energy technology RD&D convergence. One observation is that only a small number of advanced countries namely Canada, Japan, and the U.S. follow a nonlinear process and exhibit partial convergence in energy technology RD&D budgets with Japan as a transition country. Interestingly, our results also provide clear support for the global convergence of energy technology RD&D budgets once accounting for the two regimes jointly. These trends in national energy innovation policies could arguably help Canada, Japan, and the U.S. to drive up their energy RD&D trajectory into the future, suggesting that these countries would be able to achieve a more sustainable energy innovation supply system.

摘要

加快能源科技创新步伐，对于遏制全球气候变化、构建清洁能源体系至关重要。基于这一思路，本研究从各国可再生能源技术差距的角度，对 1985 年至 2017 年 OECD 国家能源技术研究、开发和示范 (RD&D) 预算的收敛进行了彻底的实证分析。在这样做的过程中，我们应用了两态阈值自回归方法来解释能源技术 RD&D 收敛中的异质性、非线性和过渡路径。一个观察结果是，只有少数先进国家，即加拿大、日本和美国，遵循非线性过程，在能源技术 R&D 预算方面表现出与日本作为转型国家的部分趋同。有趣的是，我们的结果也为能源技术研发预算的全球趋同提供了明确的支持，一旦将这两种制度共同考虑在内。国家能源创新政策的这些趋势可以说有助于加拿大、日本和美国在未来推动其能源研发轨迹，这表明这些国家将能够实现更可持续的能源创新供应体系。