Antoine Dechezleprêtre

Invention and Transfer of Climate Change Mitigation Technologies on a Global Scale: A Study Drawing on Patent Data

This paper uses the EPO/OECD World Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) to provide a quantitative description of the geographic distribution of inventions in thirteen climate mitigation technologies since 1978 and their international diffusion on a global scale. Statistics suggest that innovation has mostly been driven by energy prices until 1990. Since then, environmental policies, and climate policies more recently, have accelerated the pace of innovation. Innovation is highly concentrated in three countries—Japan, Germany and the USA—which account for 60% of total innovations. Surprisingly, the innovation performance of emerging economies is far from being negligible as China and South Korea together represent about 15% of total inventions. However, they export much less inventions than industrialized countries, suggesting their inventions have less value. More generally, international transfers mostly occur between developed countries (73% of exported inventions). Exports from developed countries to emerging economies are still limited (22%) but are growing rapidly, especially to China.

Environmental Policy and Directed Technological Change: Evidence from the European Carbon Market

This paper investigates the impact of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on technological change. We exploit installations-level inclusion criteria to estimate the impact of the EU ETS on firms patenting. We find that the EU ETS has increased low-carbon innovation among regulated firms by as much as 10%, while not crowding out patenting for other technologies. We also find evidence that the EU ETS has not impacted patenting beyond the set of regulated companies. These results imply that the EU ETS accounts for nearly a 1% increase in European lowcarbon patenting compared to a counterfactual scenario.

The impacts of environmental regulations on competitiveness

This article reviews the empirical literature on the impacts of environmental regulations on firms’ competitiveness as measured by trade, industry location, employment, productivity, and innovation. The evidence shows that environmental regulations can lead to statistically significant adverse effects on trade, employment, plant location, and productivity in the short run, in particular in a well-identified subset of pollution- and energy-intensive sectors, but that these impacts are small relative to general trends in production. At the same time, there is evidence that environmental regulations induce innovation in clean technologies, but the resulting benefits do not appear to be large enough to outweigh the costs of regulations for the regulated entities. As measures to address competitiveness impacts are increasingly incorporated into the design of environmental regulations, future research will be needed to assess the validity and effectiveness of such measures and to ensure they are compatible with the environmental objectives of the policies.

Environmental Regulation and the Cross-Border Diffusion of New Technology: Evidence from Automobile Patents

We examine the impact of environmental regulation on the international diffusion of new technology through the patent system. We employ a dataset of automobile emission standards between 1992 and 2007 and corresponding data on cross-border patent inflows of technologies developed to comply with these standards. Our analysis, based on a research design of country pair years, shows it is “regulatory distance” between countries rather than absolute regulatory stringency per se that matters for cross-border patent inflows: the flow of compliance technologies rises when regulatory standards in the inventor and the recipient countries become “closer”.

Greening Global Value Chains: Innovation and the International Diffusion of Technologies and Knowledge

Using novel data on patents, trade of equipment goods, and foreign direct investments and insights from the economic literature, the paper seeks to lay out the state of knowledge on the role of innovation and the diffusion of technologies in the greening of global value chains as well as some of the main policy issues. A special emphasis is put on developing countries -- distinguishing emerging economies and least-developed countries -- and on climate-mitigation technologies. Emerging economies are already reasonably well integrated in the global economy. As a consequence, technologies flow in through the imports of capital goods and local investments by multinational enterprises owning technologies. Pushing further technology transfer requires strengthening intellectual property rights, lowering barriers to trade and investments and improving technological absorptive capacities. In contrast, their role in innovation is limited. Standard tools of innovation policy - public research and development, public support to private research and development, better access to finance - should develop. But studies also suggest that governments should introduce more stringent environmental policies with proper enforcement at home to go beyond the adoption of foreign technologies. The situation of least-developed countries is very different: they do not import green technologies and low barriers to trade and foreign direct investment or strict intellectual property rights are unlikely to trigger technology transfer. In these countries, the focus should be on building technological capacities.

Invention and Diffusion of Water Supply and Water Efficiency Technologies: Insights from a Global Patent Dataset

This paper identifies over 50,000 patents filed worldwide in various water-related technologies between 1990 and 2010, distinguishing between those related to availability (supply) and conservation (demand) technologies. Patenting activity is analyzed — including inventive activity by country and technology, international diffusion of such water-related technologies, and international collaboration in technology development. Three results stand out from our analysis. First, although inventive activity in water-related technologies has been increasing over the last two decades, this growth has been disproportionately concentrated on supply-side technologies. Second, whilst 80% of water-related invention occurs worldwide in countries with low or moderate water scarcity, several countries with absolute or chronic water scarcity are relatively specialized in water efficiency technologies. Finally, although we observe a positive association between water scarcity and local filings of water patents, some countries with high water availability, in particular Switzerland or Norway, nevertheless appear as significant markets for water-efficiency technologies. This suggests that drivers other than local demand, like regulation and social and cultural factors, play a role in explaining the global flows of technologies.

International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of international patent families, including their domestic component. We exploit a relatively under-studied feature of patent families, namely the number of patents covering the same invention within a given jurisdiction. Using this information, we highlight common patterns in the structure of international patent families, which reflect both the patenting strategies of innovators and the peculiarities of the different patent systems. While the literature has extensively used family size, i.e. the number of countries in which a given invention is protected, as a measure of patent value, our results suggest that the number of patent filings in the priority country within a patent family as well as the timespan between the first and last filings within a family are other insightful indicators of the value of patented innovations.

What role for climate negotiations on technology transfer

Little progress has been made in climate negotiations on technology since 1992. Yet the diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies to developing countries (non-Annex I) has increased dramatically over the last twenty years. The shift has mostly concerned emerging economies, which are now reasonably well connected to international technology flows. This is good news, as the bulk of emissions increases are expected to take place in these countries in the near future. In contrast, the least developed countries still appear to be excluded from international technology flows, mostly because of their negligible participation in the recent economic globalization. This article focuses on the policy implications of the contribution of climate negotiations to international technology diffusion. Policy relevance The discrepancy between the small amount of progress made in climate negotiations on technology since 1992 and the steady increase in the international diffusion of climate mitigation technologies leads to the perhaps controversial view that the diffusion of climate mitigation technologies does not need strong international coordination over technology issues under the UNFCCC. However, climate negotiations can play a key role in stimulating the demand for low-carbon technologies by setting ambitious emission reductions targets and policies.