The diffusion of renewable energy technologies (RETs) has to speed up for countries to reach their, often ambitious, targets for renewable energy generation. This requires a large number of actors to adopt RETs. Policies will most likely be needed to induce adoption, but there is limited knowledge about what motivates RET adoption. The purpose of this paper is to complement and expand the available evidence regarding motives to adopt RETs through a survey to over 600 non-traditional RET adopters in Sweden. The main finding of the study is that although environmental concerns, technology interest, access to a base resource and prospects to make money are important motives in general, RET adopters is a heterogeneous group with regard to motives: there are many different motives to adopt RETs, adopters differ in how large importance they attach to the same motive and each adopter can have several different motives to adopt. There are also differences in motives between RETs (especially wind power vs. solar power) and between adopter categories (especially IPPs vs. individuals and diversified companies). This implies that a variety of policy instruments might be needed to induce further adoption of a variety of RETs by a variety of adopter categories.

Finding ways to encourage investments in renewable electricity production is crucial to reach a transition to a sustainable energy system. While in the energy policy literature, investments are usually explained by economic or regulatory policies, recent studies have suggested that some investors are boundedly rational and may respond differently to policies. In this paper, a framework is proposed to make a more complete analysis of the institutional demands influencing emerging investors in renewable electricity production. Based on 35 cases, both formal and informal demands were identified and their impact on emerging investors behavior was analyzed. Results show that besides formal institutional demands, emerging investors were influenced by their task environment and by various informal demands which originated in investors collective and internal contexts. However, different investors were affected by different institutional demands. They also responded in different ways to the same demands; while some perceived a specific demand as imposing, others regarded it as inducing. These findings provide a better understanding of the institutional forces affecting emerging investors in renewable electricity. The paper suggests new policies to handle the heterogeneity of investors and opens up for a new panorama of informal policy channels, where network effects can be utilized to trigger emerging investors decisions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract It has become increasingly clear that a transition to low-carbon energy systems, including a widespread diffusion of renewable energy technologies (RETs), is necessary for the world to handle the challenges of climate change. Previous innovation system oriented research has identified barriers to development and early-stage diffusion of RETs, but more research is needed to understand what kind of institutional frameworks and governance tools are needed to achieve effective large-scale diffusion at a stage when technologies are commercially available and new demand-side actors become involved. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to identify the main challenges faced by adopters of renewable electricity technologies under different institutional frameworks as well as their strategies for overcoming them. Results based on a qualitative multiple case study of 28 adopters in France and in Sweden show that adopters were faced with system-level challenges, such as market-structure obstacles and lack of institutional routines, as well as actor-level challenges, such as lack of resources or behavioral characteristics. The study also highlights the difference between blocking and restraining challenges and proposes that barriers are better thought of as challenges that can be overcome. It shows the importance for policy makers to consider not only system-level diffusion challenges, but also to understand actor-level contexts, including the behaviors of adopters who contribute to the transition. A further understanding how new entrants have managed to overcome existing challenges may provide new policy tools to facilitate the adoption for new adopters, for instance by encouraging the use of networks or by supplying specific information to potential adopters who lack it.

This paper analyses public support and argues that supply does not match demand in terms of the support needs of different types of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). The demand side of public support to NTBFs is analysed by developing a typology of NTBFs, based on venture origin and degree of innovativeness. Each types characteristics, challenges and support needs are identified. The supply side is analysed in terms of the goals, instruments and level of aggregation of the two main policy areas that provide support for NTBFs: small and medium-sized enterprise policy and science, technology and innovation policy. Finally, the demand and supply sides are compared and three main shortcomings of existing public support to NTBFs are identified. This paper makes a twofold contribution: first, the typology gives guidelines for policy-makers with respect to the support needs of the NTBFs. Second, it identifies shortcomings in existing public support and recommends improvements.

This paper studies self-reinforcing mechanisms in multi-technology industries, i.e. industries in which technological lock-in does not occur and several technologies continue to coexist. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what kind of self-reinforcing mechanisms can be present in such industries and explain how multiple paths can coexist and interact in a context of self-reinforcement and, ultimately, path dependency. Building on the empirical example of the lighting industry, the paper shows that all previously recognized types of self-reinforcing mechanisms can be present in a multi-technology industry. However, in addition to the path-internal positive feedbacks and cross-path negative externalities identified in single-path settings, multi-technology industries also experience positive cross-path externalities that create a symbiotic relationship between alternatives and allow for the reproduction of the same development pattern across technologies. Due to the existence of such non-negative technology interactions, multi-technology industries can be path dependent while still retaining technological variety.

Abstract This paper addresses interactions between technological innovation systems (TIS) and wider “context structures”. While TIS studies have always considered various kinds of contextual influences, we suggest that the TIS framework can be further strengthened by a more elaborated conceptualization of TIS context structures and TIS–context interactions. For that purpose, we identify and discuss four especially important types of context structures: technological, sectorial, geographical and political. For each of these, we provide examples of different ways in which context structures can interact with a focal TIS and how our understanding of TIS dynamics is enhanced by considering them explicitly. Lessons for analysts are given and a research agenda is outlined.

To explain the development of multi-technology companies and industries where several alternative technologies co-exist and interact over long periods, this article suggests an extension of path dependency theory by providing a conceptualization of the path notion that incorporates the theoretical possibility of multiple paths and path interaction. The conceptualization is applied to a patent study of three leading companies in the lighting industry: General Electric, Osram/Siemens, and Philips. The study shows technology development patterns that are characterized by strong persistence, both within each path and across the whole technology field. These results demonstrate that multiple technological paths can co-exist in companies and industries, characterized by simultaneous long-term presence of several technologies. In such cases, path interaction takes place both between co-existing paths and when new, radically different paths are created. Although further studies are needed to identify the underlying self-reinforcing mechanisms, there is a clear indication that technological path dependency is not restricted to unitary progression patterns, as implied by previous conceptualizations.

Projektet Nya investerare i förnybar elproduktion: motiv, investeringskriterier och policykonsekvenser harstudierat icke-traditionella investerare i förnybar elproduktion med syfte att ge ettvetenskapligt underlag för utformning och implementering av energipolitiska styrmedel riktademot dessa investerare samt vidareutveckla befintliga beslutsstödsmodeller för investering iförnybar elproduktion. Studien har visat (a) att majoriteten av investeringarna i förnybarelproduktion i Sverige har gjorts av icke-traditionella investerare, (b) att dessa icke-traditionellainvesterare inte är en homogen grupp utan består av många olika slags aktörer, med olikamotiv, kunskapsbaser, resurser och nätverk som använder olika strategier för att genomförasina investeringar och som reagerar på olika sätt på ekonomiska styrmedel samt (c) attskillnaderna med avseende på strategier och reaktioner är kopplade till investeringsmotivetsnarare än till organisationsform eller huvudsaklig verksamhet.

The project New investors in renewable electricity production: motives, investment criteria and policyimplications has studied non-traditional investors in renewable electricity production with thepurpose to generate a scientific basis for the design and implementation of policy instrumentsdirected at these investors and to further develop existing decision-support models. The studyshows (a) that a majority of the investments in renewable electricity production in Sweden hasbeen done by non-traditional investors, (b) that these non-traditional investors do notconstitute a homogenous group but rather consists of many different types of actors withdifferent motives, resources, knowledge bases and networks who use different strategies toimplement their investments and who differ in their responses to economic policy instrumentsand (c) that differences with regard to strategies and responses are related to investmentmotives rather than to organizational form or main activity.

The innovation literature acknowledges that innovation policy should be based on an analysis of underlying innovation system dynamics. Whereas policy prescriptions have been derived from analyses of the functional dynamics of emerging innovation systems in the ‘fluid’ phase of the technology life cycle and for the rejuvenation of path-dependent, mature innovation systems associated with a ‘specific’ phase of technology development, the role of policy in the “transitional” phase remains unclear. Through a discussion about the challenges associated with specific functions of a technological innovation system in the transitional phase, this paper identifies a number of potential system weaknesses specifically associated with this phase, for example demand-side path dependency, lack of informational increasing returns to adoption, imbalanced development of components and complementary technologies, lack of financial, physical and human resources and various forms of delegitimation. It also suggests that policy intervention might be justified to remedy these weaknesses, since many of them are out of reach of system actors. Other weaknesses can take too long time for system actors to handle, if a technological transformation is urgent from a societal perspective. Removing obstacles for mass market formation and stimulating system coordination should be a priority for policy aimed at the transitional phase. This would require policy to play the part as an innovation intermediary within the innovation system rather than as an external supplier of pushes and pulls.