Trends in Climate technology Patents

Hi Friends,

I have been working on a report on the barriers that exist in technology transfer and those technologies with special relevance to Climate change.

I plan to share with you excerpts of my findings in this post. Let me know what you think.

What have other researchers said?

Martin Khor notes that developed countries have an overwhelming dominance in patents world-wide, with the EU, US and Japan together holding 76.7% of renewable energy patents, whereas, China and Korea together held a meagre 5.2% share. 

Robert Lee et.al report on the patent ownership of six renewable energy technologies, including wind, solar PV, concentrated solar power, biomass to electricity, cleaner coal and CCS) concludes that the US, Japan and Germany are the foremost in innovation. 

Damodaran (My boss@IIMB) in his 2011 article on CCS technologies (That is carbon capture and storage) has found that majority of patents are dominated by patents related to capture processes and methods.

In automobile pollution technologies, the BRIICs countries had only 0.7% share whereas the the EU (49%), Japan (31%) and the US (14%) held highest share.

What have I found?

A few figures first

I have classified Solar technologies into 3 generations, based on an IRENA report on the technologies. 

First generation photovoltaic cells which are in commercial use includes crystalline Silicon (c-Si) either single or polycrystalline.

Second generation cells which are in early market deployment phase include thin-film PV technologies which include amorphous and micromorph Silicon (a-Si), Cadmium Telluride (CdTe), Copper-Indium-Diselenide (CIS) and  Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide (CIGS) systems. 

Third generation of PV cells are those under development and demonstration which include PV cells for Concentrated Solar applications, including multi-junction cells and Organic and other Dye-Sensitized cells.

 

As can be expected, there is an even spread in assignees for solar photovoltaic patents across all the three above mentioned generation technologies. However, apart from a handful of electronic firms in South Korea, most of assignees came mostly from the developed countries, which notably included public universities and government departments in the US. Most assignees for thin-film technologies (second-generation) are firms in the US. Among third generation photovoltaic systems, assignees for multi-junction cells, touted for concentrated photovoltaics are from the US and Germany. Assignees to Dye-sensitized cell systems were again mostly from South Korea, Japan, Taiwanese and included a few Chinese firms.

Coming to Wind-power related and combined cycle power related patent assignment  is highly skewed. Wind related patent assignees were large power engineering companies based in the US, Denmark, Germany, Japan and Spain. IGCC technology patent assignees mostly are private firms from the US, France, Japan, Germany and Italy.

I will talk more about what issues have been noted by researchers earlier in future posts.