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The effects of green energy policies on innovation

University of British Columbia

Over the last twenty years, climate change and energy stability have increasingly played a role in government policy. Innovation is a key ingredient to increased growth while achieving climatic goals. The policy paths taken by different countries have been extremely diverse. What effects do these policies have on innovation and what policies are best at encouraging the market? This thesis uses a theoretical model to examine the effect that different policies have on innovation and to empirically test a series of hypotheses obtained from the model. Both the theoretical and empirical results support the hypothesis of a “home bias”, whereby innovation in domestic markets is impacted more than innovation in world markets when a domestic policy is initiated. A second result is that mandatory renewable energy minimum levels for power companies have relatively strong impacts on installed wind capacity. In general, a country’s wind capacity is determined by both economic and non-economic considerations.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-11-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/15004

Agricultural Economics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/