How the policy mix impacts innovation: Findings from company case studies on offshore wind in Germany

By Kristin Reichardt, Karoline S. Rogge. 2016

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Transforming the energy system to one with a greater importance of renewables requires redirecting and accelerating technological change. In this transition, so-called policy mixes play a crucial role. Yet precisely how policy mixes affect technological innovation remains poorly understood. To remedy this, in this study we choose a qualitative company case study approach to analyze the innovation impact of a comprehensive policy mix, taking offshore wind in Germany as research case. We find that the feed-in tariff level and the perceived consistency and credibility of the German offshore wind policy mix have been vital innovation drivers. Specifically, the consistent and stable policy strategy with its long-term targets, and the consistency of the instrument mix with this policy strategy appear crucial to RD&D. In contrast, adoption decisions depend on a comprehensive and consistent instrument mix. Finally, a high level of credibility can partly offset negative effects of inconsistencies in the mix.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b85b6c9b393425188c04f2268566154f0fbf5ddb

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Citations in the corpus

The need for comprehensive and well targeted instrument mixes to stimulate energy transitions: The case of energy efficiency policy (2017, unknown): “Initial qualitative evidence for offshore wind in Germany suggests that these policy mix characteristics play a key role for corporate innovation activities (Reichardt and Rogge 2016).”
Public-private partnerships as systemic agricultural innovation policy instruments – Assessing their contribution to innovation system function dynamics (2019, background): “Solving potential systemic problems require appropriate policy mixes and the orchestration of these policy mixes so that individual policies become aligned and may reinforce each other (Borrás and Edquist, 2013; Flanagan et al., 2011; Reichardt and Rogge, 2016).”
Policy mixes for sustainability transitions: An extended concept and framework for analysis (2016, background): “at potentially different governance levels – which may ultimately help to explain the redirection and acceleration of technological change (Reichardt and Rogge, 2016).”
The co-evolution of policy mixes and socio-technical systems: Towards a conceptual framework of policy mix feedback in sustainability transitions (2019, background): “Given these challenges, Rogge and Reichardt (2016) propose a framework for analysing policy mixes for sustainability transitions.”
Do policy mix characteristics matter for low-carbon innovation? A survey-based exploration of renewable power generation technologies in Germany (2018, background): “Building on recent qualitative insights into the impact of policy mix characteristics for innovation in the case of offshore wind power (Reichardt and Rogge, 2016) the aim of our paper is to quantitatively explore this link using survey data.”
Exploring the role of phase-out policies for low-carbon energy transitions: the case of the German Energiewende (2017, unknown): “3 Second, building on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) conducted within the EU a questionnaire was developed which speci ﬁ cally included novel questions on the policy mix, in line with a broader understanding of the term [6] and drawing on qualitative insights on o ﬀ shore wind [65].”
Environmental Policy and Innovation: A Decade of Research (2019, background): “Price-based policies such as feed-in tariffs perform better than quantity-based policies in the longrun, by encouraging cost reductions over time Reichardt and Rogge (2016) provide a case study of offshore wind innovation in Germany.”
Conceptual and empirical advances in analysing policy mixes for energy transitions (2017, background): “This example also illustrates that other policy mix considerations played a key role, as well, such as the simultaneous existence of the nuclear phase out, the promotion of research and development, or the credibility, consistency and coherence of the overarching policy mix [27,24,28].”
The pace of governed energy transitions: Agency, international dynamics and the global Paris agreement accelerating decarbonisation processes? (2016, background): “…2015), its progress benefited from parallel and interconnected developments in a number of countries (Wieczorek et al., 2013), such as early experimentation in Denmark and now catching-up activities in Germany, another major player in this field (Reichardt and Rogge, 2016; Reichardt et al., 2016).”