Innovation dynamics of the wind energy industry in South Africa and Brazil: technological and institutional lock-ins

Abstract

This paper explores the conditions of path dependencies and technological lock-ins in the transition to low-carbon technologies such as renewable energy technologies. Both industrialized and emerging economies have been locked into fossil-fuel-based energy systems through a long process of technological and institutional evolution that create systemic market and policy barriers in the uptake of renewable energy technologies. We identify systemic features, that are in fact competitive advantages, such as entrepreneurial experimentation, formation of markets, knowledge development and diffusion, and influence in the direction of search that are critical in overcoming technological and institutional lock-ins, and in eventually driving the transition to low-carbon energy technologies. The two countries analysed here, South Africa and Brazil, have been locked into coal and hydropower technologies, respectively, for many decades, making the current transition to wind energy difficult. Using literature on technological innovation systems and on technological and carbon lock-ins, this paper analyses the systemic features in the two countries that have been identified to either block or induce the transition to wind energy industries.