IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v98y2016icp97-107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tracking U.S. biofuel innovation through patents

Author

Listed:
  • Kessler, Jeff
  • Sperling, Daniel

Abstract

We use biofuel patents as a proxy for biofuel innovation. Through use of natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms, we expand patent classification capabilities to better explain the history of biofuels innovation. Results indicate that after the initial establishment of the U.S. biofuel industry, there were two surges in biofuel innovation: 1995–2000, characterized by heavy patenting by 1st generation (food-based) biofuel firms; and 2005–2010, characterized by a second surge of innovation by those same large firms, complemented by a large number of biotechnology firms producing a relatively small number of 2nd generation biofuel patents. Our analysis corroborates the widespread understanding that the first surge in biofuel innovation was linked to innovations in agriculture, and that the second surge of biofuel innovation was driven by demand-pull policies mandating and incentivizing biofuels. But the slow emergence of a 2nd generation cellulose-based biofuels industry, far slower than called for by policy, suggests that technology-push policies more focused on R&D and investment may be needed to accelerate the commercialization of 2nd generation biofuels.

Suggested Citation

  • Kessler, Jeff & Sperling, Daniel, 2016. "Tracking U.S. biofuel innovation through patents," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 97-107.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:98:y:2016:i:c:p:97-107
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2016.08.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516304451
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.08.021?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yeh, Sonia & Farrell, Alexander E. & Plevin, Richard J & Sanstad, Alan & Weyant, John, 2008. "Optimizing U.S. Mitigation Strategies for the Light-Duty Transportation Sector: What We Learn from a Bottom-Up Model," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt1td1g7qw, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    2. Corts, Kenneth S., 2010. "Building out alternative fuel retail infrastructure: Government fleet spillovers in E85," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 219-234, May.
    3. Sarica, Kemal & Tyner, Wallace E., 2013. "Analysis of US renewable fuels policies using a modified MARKAL model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 701-709.
    4. Carlsson, B & Stankiewicz, R, 1991. "On the Nature, Function and Composition of Technological Systems," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 93-118, April.
    5. Katharine Sanderson, 2006. "A field in ferment," Nature, Nature, vol. 444(7120), pages 673-676, December.
    6. Carine Peeters & Bruno Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2007. "Innovation strategy and the patenting behavior of firms," Springer Books, in: Uwe Cantner & Franco Malerba (ed.), Innovation, Industrial Dynamics and Structural Transformation, pages 345-371, Springer.
    7. Negro, Simona O. & Hekkert, Marko P. & Smits, Ruud E., 2007. "Explaining the failure of the Dutch innovation system for biomass digestion--A functional analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 925-938, February.
    8. Zeileis, Achim & Kleiber, Christian & Jackman, Simon, 2008. "Regression Models for Count Data in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i08).
    9. Breschi, Stefano & Lissoni, Francesco, 2001. "Knowledge Spillovers and Local Innovation Systems: A Critical Survey," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 10(4), pages 975-1005, December.
    10. Hira, Anil & de Oliveira, Luiz Guilherme, 2009. "No substitute for oil? How Brazil developed its ethanol industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2450-2456, June.
    11. Bergek, Anna & Jacobsson, Staffan & Carlsson, Bo & Lindmark, Sven & Rickne, Annika, 2008. "Analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems: A scheme of analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 407-429, April.
    12. Valeria Costantini & Francesco Crespi & Ylenia Curci, 2015. "A keyword selection method for mapping technological knowledge in specific sectors through patent data: the case of biofuels sector," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(4), pages 282-308, June.
    13. Valeria Costantini & Massimiliano Mazzanti (ed.), 2013. "The Dynamics of Environmental and Economic Systems," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-94-007-5089-0, December.
    14. Yeh, Sonia & Witcover, Julie, 2014. "Status Review of California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard - January 2014 Issue," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt9gk6w15t, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    15. David Popp & Ted Juhl & Daniel K.N. Johnson, 2003. "Time in Purgatory: Determinants of the Grant Lag for U.S. Patent Applications," NBER Working Papers 9518, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Searchinger, Timothy & Heimlich, Ralph & Houghton, R. A. & Dong, Fengxia & Elobeid, Amani & Fabiosa, Jacinto F. & Tokgoz, Simla & Hayes, Dermot J. & Yu, Hun-Hsiang, 2008. "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12881, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    17. Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge & Livingston, Michael J. & Mitchell, Lorraine & Wechsler, Seth, 2014. "Genetically Engineered Crops in the United States," Economic Research Report 164263, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    18. Yeh, Sonia & Witcover, Julie, 2014. "Status Review of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt4tk3h6k8, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    19. Claudia Czado & Tilmann Gneiting & Leonhard Held, 2009. "Predictive Model Assessment for Count Data," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 1254-1261, December.
    20. Popp, David, 2005. "Lessons from patents: Using patents to measure technological change in environmental models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 209-226, August.
    21. Yeh, Sonia & Sperling, Daniel, 2010. "Low carbon fuel standards: Implementation scenarios and challenges," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6955-6965, November.
    22. Nemet, Gregory F., 2009. "Demand-pull, technology-push, and government-led incentives for non-incremental technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 700-709, June.
    23. Hakan Eggert & Mads Greaker, 2014. "Promoting Second Generation Biofuels: Does the First Generation Pave the Road?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(7), pages 1-16, July.
    24. Corrocher, Nicoletta & Malerba, Franco & Montobbio, Fabio, 2007. "Schumpeterian patterns of innovative activity in the ICT field," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 418-432, April.
    25. Yeh, Sonia & Witcover, Julie, 2014. "Status Review of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard July 2014 Issue," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt7h50h016, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    26. Carine Peeters & Bruno Van Pottelsberghe, 2006. "Complex innovation strategies and patenting behaviour," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/9051, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    27. Schlegel Stephanie & Kaphengst Timo, 2007. "European Union Policy on Bioenergy and the Role of Sustainability Criteria and Certification Systems," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-19, December.
    28. Costantini, Valeria & Crespi, Francesco & Martini, Chiara & Pennacchio, Luca, 2015. "Demand-pull and technology-push public support for eco-innovation: The case of the biofuels sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 577-595.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arnold, Michelle & Tainter, Joseph A. & Strumsky, Deborah, 2019. "Productivity of innovation in biofuel technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 54-62.
    2. Berg, S. & Wustmans, M. & Bröring, S., 2019. "Identifying first signals of emerging dominance in a technological innovation system: A novel approach based on patents," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 706-722.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephan, Annegret & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Bening, Catharina R. & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2017. "The sectoral configuration of technological innovation systems: Patterns of knowledge development and diffusion in the lithium-ion battery technology in Japan," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 709-723.
    2. Gosens, Jorrit & Lu, Yonglong & Coenen , Lars, 2013. "Clean-tech Innovation in Emerging Economies: Transnational Dimensions in Technological Innovation System Formation," Papers in Innovation Studies 2013/10, Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research.
    3. Paramonova, Svetlana & Nehler, Therese & Thollander, Patrik, 2021. "Technological change or process innovation – An empirical study of implemented energy efficiency measures from a Swedish industrial voluntary agreements program," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    4. Yeh, Sonia & Witcover, Julie & Lade, Gabriel E. & Sperling, Daniel, 2016. "A review of low carbon fuel policies: Principles, program status and future directions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 220-234.
    5. Lam, Long T. & Branstetter, Lee & Azevedo, Inês M.L., 2017. "China's wind industry: Leading in deployment, lagging in innovation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 588-599.
    6. Gosens, Jorrit & Lu, Yonglong, 2013. "From lagging to leading? Technological innovation systems in emerging economies and the case of Chinese wind power," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 234-250.
    7. Rogge, Karoline S. & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2009. "The impact of the EU ETS on the sectoral innovation system for power generation technologies: findings for Germany," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S2/2009, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    8. Sven Wydra, 2019. "Value Chains for Industrial Biotechnology in the Bioeconomy-Innovation System Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-16, April.
    9. Quatraro, Francesco & Scandura, Alessandra, 2019. "Academic Inventors and the Antecedents of Green Technologies. A Regional Analysis of Italian Patent Data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 247-263.
    10. Costantini, Valeria & Crespi, Francesco & Palma, Alessandro, 2017. "Characterizing the policy mix and its impact on eco-innovation: A patent analysis of energy-efficient technologies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 799-819.
    11. van Rijnsoever, Frank J. & van den Berg, Jesse & Koch, Joost & Hekkert, Marko P., 2015. "Smart innovation policy: How network position and project composition affect the diversity of an emerging technology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1094-1107.
    12. Hellsmark, Hans & Jacobsson, Staffan, 2009. "Opportunities for and limits to Academics as System builders--The case of realizing the potential of gasified biomass in Austria," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5597-5611, December.
    13. Edsand, Hans, 2016. "Technological Innovation Systems and the wider context: A framework for developing countries," MERIT Working Papers 2016-017, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    14. Moors, Ellen H.M. & Kukk Fischer, Piret & Boon, Wouter P.C. & Schellen, Frank & Negro, Simona O., 2018. "Institutionalisation of markets: The case of personalised cancer medicine in the Netherlands," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 133-143.
    15. Morrison, Geoff M. & Witcover, Julie & Parker, Nathan C. & Fulton, Lew, 2016. "Three routes forward for biofuels: Incremental, leapfrog, and transitional," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 64-73.
    16. Zolfagharian, Mohammadreza & Walrave, Bob & Raven, Rob & Romme, A. Georges L., 2019. "Studying transitions: Past, present, and future," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    17. Monk, Alexander & Perkins, Richard, 2020. "What explains the emergence and diffusion of green bonds?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Andersson, Johnn & Hellsmark, Hans & Sandén, Björn A., 2018. "Shaping factors in the emergence of technological innovations: The case of tidal kite technology," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 191-208.
    19. Mohammad Esmailzadeh & Siamak Noori & Alireza Aliahmadi & Hamidreza Nouralizadeh & Marcel Bogers, 2020. "A Functional Analysis of Technological Innovation Systems in Developing Countries: An Evaluation of Iran’s Photovoltaic Innovation System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-20, March.
    20. Ayrapetyan, David & Befort, Nicolas & Hermans, Frans, 2025. "From local markets to global legitimacy: A materialization perspective on technological innovation system's dynamics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 54(1).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:98:y:2016:i:c:p:97-107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.