| dc.description.abstract | The substantial intensification of climate change has given significant impetus to the development of clean energy technologies. The European Union is actively taking part in combating climate change, aiming in energy transition and in net-zero emissions by 2050. It has been acknowledged that innovation will play a key role in the accomplishment of a sustainable economic growth, while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. Due to the significant importance of innovation, there has been a need for its quantification, however, it is a rather difficult task. There are three main categories of innovation indicators, namely input, throughput and output indicators. In this master thesis, the focus will be on the throughput indicators and more specifically on the patents and bibliometric indicators. Previous literature sources have already used these two types of indicators to measure innovation in the energy sector, yet to a limited extent. Therefore, the aim of this research is to gather the patent and bibliometric indicators used in previous literature, assess their merits and conclude which indicators are the most suitable to reflect adequately the innovation activity of clean energy technologies. To answer the research question “Which are the most appropriate indicators to monitor the innovation progress of clean energy technologies under the prism of patents and bibliometrics?”, a conceptual framework is proposed which consists of a literature review for the collection of the indicators, a set of criteria and an assessment. The final set of patent and bibliometric indicators which concluded from the assessment were used to measure the progress of innovation of nine different clean energy technologies for the period 2007-2018. The results showed that even though some indicators might fulfil all the applied criteria, they provide skewed results, hence they should be avoided for innovation measurement. Regarding the evolution of innovation of the clean energy technologies, solar PV and wind energy technologies developed the most during the in-scope period, even though they have been well-established technologies for decades. Ocean energy and CCS/U are slowly developing, thus more R&D is required in these sectors. Finally, concerning the world leaders of innovation, China, Germany and the United States demonstrated the highest innovative activity, with regard to both patents and publications. | |
