Climate change policies call for a radical technological shift in the energy sector. The huge costs of greenhouse gas emissions abatement can be scaled down only if the development of low-carbon technologies will take place at an accelerated pace. But such progress has to confront with a large...

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of energy efficiency systems for the residential sector of EU countries over the past twenty years and the associated process of structural change occurred in EU economies. To this purpose, we develop a set of indicators to measure some significant...

Understanding the long-term patterns of innovation in energy technologies is crucial to informing public policy planning in the context of climate change. This paper analyzes which of two common models of innovation over the technology life-cycle – the product-process innovation shift observed...

Geological carbon sequestration seems one of the promising options to address, in the near term, the global problem of climate change, since carbon sequestration technologies are in principle available today and their costs are expected to be affordable. Whereas extensive technological and...

Whether China maintains its business-as-usual energy-intensive growth trajectory or changes to a sustainable development alternative has significant implications for global energy and climate governance. This paper is motivated to theoretically examine China's potential transition from its...

This contribution discusses the policy-induced diffusion dynamics of environmental innovations. We use wind and solar power as examples of a new technology base of the electricity sector. This directly links to the renewable energy targets of “Europe 2020”; we reveal unforeseen and...

This paper applies the Directed Technical Change (DTC) framework to study improvements in the efficiency of energy use. We present a theoretical model which (1) shows that the demand for energy is shifted down by innovations in energy intensive sectors and (2) highlights the drivers of...

Power systems with increasing shares of wind and solar power generation have higher capital and lower operational costs than traditional technologies. This increases the importance of the cost of finance for total system cost. We quantify how renewable policy design can influence cost of finance...

The development of variable renewable energy (VRE) and their massive installation are some of the challenges that the economies of a large part of the world will have to face in the coming years to help ensure a reasonable sustainability of the planet. On the other hand, the advances that have...