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- Assessing the industrial effects of the deployment of renewable energy technologies: when product identity mattersPublication . Barbosa, Juliana; Fontes, Margarida; Bento, NunoABSTRACT: Investment in renewable energy technologies (RET) produces impacts on economic activity and job creation that are fundamental to increase the social acceptability of those technologies. Previous research that attempted to measure the impacts of RET has mainly focused on its effects in energy production and climate mitigation, but surprisingly little is known about the potential of RET to transform the industrial structure of an economy. This paper proposes a methodology to understand and measure the industrial transformative impact of RET. The paper draws on contributions from the sustainability transitions literature and from the economic literature that analyses the socioeconomic impacts of RET, and combine them with the economic complexity literature in order to address two main gaps: the lack of measurement of industrial transformative effects in the first; and the assumption of product homogeneity in the second that precludes an assessment of more structural impacts. We develop a conceptual approach to the way technology deployment can lead to changes in the industrial structure, centered on the notion of product heterogeneity intrinsic to the economic complexity literature. We advance three main dimensions along which to measure the changes in the industrial structure driven by modifications in the basket of products being produced due to the development of the technology value chain: sophistication, connectivity, and competitiveness. We also propose a more precise delineation of the industrial value chain of the technology, by considering the actual weights of each sector to the technology and the technology to each sector. This approach is applied to the case of wind energy in Portugal (a successful fast follower), compared with three other main wind energy producers (Spain, Denmark, Germany). The results show a strong relationship between the deployment of the technology and the sophistication and the competitiveness of the Ăcloud of productsĂ composing the industrial value chain. The paper proposes a novel analytical framework and measurement tools that can support a timely assessment of the effects of sustainable energy technologies in the industrial structure, with relevance for policy.
- Inter-sectoral relations to accelerate the formation of technological innovation systems. Determinants of actors entry into marine renewable energy technologiesPublication . Bento, Nuno; Fontes, Margarida; Barbosa, JulianaABSTRACT: Decarbonizing the energy system requires new technologies, whose formation and diffusion needs the attraction of actors from different sectors to compose the value chain. Sectoral interactions are crucial and dependent on contextual and technological factors, as well as firm-specific characteristics. This paper examines the determinants of firm diversification towards a new technology and their role in sectoral interactions. We combine concepts from technological innovation systems (TIS), sectoral innovation systems and organization studies to examine the drivers of actors' entry as well as their impact on systems' formation, through the effect on intersectoral relations associated with technological variety and relatedness. The development and demonstration of marine renewable energy technologies (MRET) in Portugal over the past two decades provides the empirical case. A database of 237 companies includes responses from a survey of a large part of the actors involved in MRET and potential entrants. A standard binary logit model estimates the effect of a set of drivers of firms' entry in MRET. Firms are more driven by variety-led factors and technology maturity, than by their technological capacity and sectoral proximity. We derive implications for policy and theory, namely for the conceptualization of inter-sectoral relations in TIS.