Abstract
This study investigates the evolutionary patterns of renewable energy technology in East Asian countries—Japan, Korea, and China—as an emerging technology where the catch-up strategy is actively taking place. To reflect the quality of technology development activities, we assess each country’s research and development (R&D) activities using patent citation analysis. The goal of this study is to overcome the limitations of prior research that uses quantitative information, such as R&D expenditures and number of patents. This study observes the process of technological catch-up and leapfrogging in the East Asian renewable energy sector. Furthermore, we find that each nation’s technology development portfolio differs depending on the composition share of technologies. Policymakers in emerging economies can use the findings to shape R&D strategies to develop the renewable energy sector and provide an alternative method of evaluating the qualitative development of technology.
Highlights
Global warming and environmental concerns such as air pollution and acid precipitation are two of the most critical issues in today’s society [1,2,3]
Since our main focus is on renewable energy technology, we do not include fossil fuel technologies
During the 1990s and early 2000s, renewable energy technology development in Japan concentrated on biomass and waste energy technology such as F23G5/00, F09B3/00, and C10L10/00
Summary
Global warming and environmental concerns such as air pollution and acid precipitation are two of the most critical issues in today’s society [1,2,3]. Growing global concerns about environmental issues have increased the attention paid to renewable energy technology, which may play a key role in reducing carbon emissions and provide conditions for a sustainable growth. The United States, Japan, and Germany are the leading nations in the renewable energy industry [9,10,11], and many countries wish to catch up by increasing their efforts to develop renewable energy technology. South Korea (hereafter, Korea) spent over $0.68 billion in 2014 to develop clean and renewable energy [15]. Both Korea and China made efforts to catch up to Japan, which is one of the leading nations in renewable energy technology
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