Comparative Green Advantage: Growth Regimes and Public Investment in Renewable Energy R&D

Many consider research and development (R&D) a crucial pillar of decarbonization, yet few have investigated what actually drives investment. What drives public investment in renewable energy R&D in wealthy democracies? Using OECD data, this research note tests a number of hypotheses from the literature and finds that public investment in renewable energy R&D is most closely associated with growth regimes and their related characteristics. Furthermore, the ‘most invested’ are dynamic services export‐led growth regimes who are deindustrializing and moving towards knowledge‐based sectors like information and communications technology and finance. In short, economies investing the most in renewable energy R&D have the least structurally carbon‐intensive growth regime. As international economic integration locks many countries into specific path‐dependent roles, these findings suggest that there is a comparative advantage to the green transition. It concludes with a discussion of the asymmetric green capacities between core and periphery countries in the European Union.