Renewable energy product competitiveness: Evidence from the United States, China and India

Abstract

In order to achieve the goal of limiting the global average temperature increase by 2 °C in the Paris Agreement on climate change, the international community must make unprecedented changes to the current human lifestyle, energy and transportation system. Under such circumstances, the United States, China, India and other developing and developed countries have made remarkable progress in renewable energy production and trade. In order to systematically evaluate the international competitiveness of renewable energy products of the United States, China and India, the current study has built a new multi-dimensional evaluation index to estimate the international competitive edge of renewable energy products exported from these countries, by abandoning the traditional methods for measuring trade competitiveness and adopting the projection pursuit (PP), TOPSIS model and the improved weighting methodology. The results demonstrate that the overall international competitiveness of renewable energy products of the United States is very strong, whereas China and India have seen a rapid growth; and distinct differences exist in the component factors leading to the international competitiveness among the three countries. Based on these findings, this study has put forward corresponding policy implications.