RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PATENTING TRENDS AND RESEARCH ACTIVITY FOR GREEN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES A P REPRINT

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RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PATENTING TRENDS AND RESEARCH

ACTIVITY FOR GREEN ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES

A PREPRINT

Regina TUGANOVA1, Anna PERMYAKOVA1, Anna KUZNETSOVA1, Karina RAKHMANOVA1, Natalia

MONZUL1, Roman UVAROV1, Elizaveta KOVTUN2, and Semen BUDENNYY2, 3

1ITMO University, Faculty of Energy and Environmental Technologies, Saint-Petersburg

2Sber AI Lab, Moscow

3Artiﬁcial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI), Moscow

October 19, 2022

ABSTRACT

Green technology is viewed as a means of creating a sustainable society and a catalyst for sustainable

development by the global community. It is responsible for both the potential reduction of

production waste and the reduction of carbon footprint and CO2emissions. However, alongside

with the growing popularity of green technologies, there is an emerging skepticism about their

contribution to solving environmental challenges. This article focuses on three areas of eco-

innovation in green technology: renewable energy, hydrogen power, and decarbonization. Our

main goal is to analyze the relationship between publication activity and the number of patented

research results, thus shedding light on the real-world applicability of scientiﬁc outcomes. We used

several bibliometric methods for analyzing global publication and patent activity, applied to the

Scopus citation database and the European Patent Ofﬁce’s patent database. Our results show that

the advancement of research in all three areas of eco-innovation does not automatically lead to the

increase in the number of patents. We offer possible reasons for such dependency based on the

observations of the worldwide tendencies in green innovation sphere.

Keywords ESG; Bibliometric analysis; Patent; Green technologies; Sustainability; Renewable energy;

Decarbonization

1 Introduction

The global focus of humanity on sustainable development to ensure a stable life and reduce environmental problems

requires businesses and the research sector to apply and develop more resource and energy-saving technologies ([1]).

Providing businesses with green technologies is a critical part of their activities. Through the implementation of

environmentally friendly and efﬁcient developments, a signiﬁcant reduction in the carbon footprint is possible ([2]).

A crucial contribution to the achievement of sustainability is made by technological innovations in the ﬁeld of green

technologies, which are a key factor in promoting sustainable development ([3, 4]). Moreover, the observance by

technological innovations of production-saving and resource-saving approaches will make it possible to achieve the

most coordinated development and the simultaneous solution of existing economic, social and environmental problems

([5]).

From the point of view of eco-innovation, it is assumed that focusing on green technologies will bring novelty and

innovative change to the functioning of any industry in the same way as information technology ([6]).

An important role in the development and implementation of green technologies is played by environmental, social

and governance (ESG) performance indicators of companies. Despite the inﬂuence of ESG in the ﬁeld of business

and technology, a confrontation between scientists on the world stage is indicated. One side supports ESG ratings,

declaring their effectiveness at the expense of reputation and competitiveness ([7, 8]). At the same time, another

arXiv:2210.09611v1 [stat.AP] 18 Oct 2022

Relationships between patenting trends and research activity for green energy technologies A PREPRINT

part of the researchers believes that ESG ratings are ineffective, since it is not possible to evaluate the true value

of criteria, but it is possible to fulﬁll all the conditions and requirements of the ratings without additional efforts

([9, 10, 11]). This trend is observed due to the fact that the mechanism of the relationship between ESG ratings and

green innovations has not been studied in detail, therefore, the results do not act as a universal criterion for evaluating

green technologies ([12]). Existing research is also limited and, in most cases, based on developed countries with

relatively mature ESG systems, as developing countries are not well established on the market and are still in the

early stages of creating an ESG system ([13]). Although ESG ratings have a signiﬁcant impact on ecoinnovation in

the ﬁeld of green technologies, these energy-efﬁcient and resource-efﬁcient processes play a predominant role in the

development of the industrial sector.

Interestingly, in recent years, the existence of an industrial paradox can be observed with the growing demand for

renewable energy technologies (RES). Apparently, the ESG agenda in part of the letter E catalyzes interest in carbon-

neutral energy, and RES is the brightest representative of this energy. In other words, the ESG agenda creates additional

demand for renewable energy, catalyzes this market, and promotes more investment. However, the production of

renewable energy will require the more forced extraction of rare-earth metals, such as nickel and lithium. In addition

to other metals often used in the production of electric batteries, they are by far the main capacity for RES-generated

electricity. Consequently, increasing the rate of extraction of target metals for RES will increase emissions, increasing

the anthropogenic impact on the environment. Despite the initial good intentions to improve the environmental

situation ([14]).

Over the past decades, the industrial sector has faced two main constraints: the waste of natural resources and the

rapidly growing pollution of the environment ([15]). Therefore, ecoinnovations have become an important measure

to solve the problems of developing industries that negatively affect the state of the biosphere. Consequently,

production is indispensable in the concept of sustainable development, whose vector aims at the development of

new environmentally friendly technologies. One such example is the use of environmentally friendly chemicals from

renewable raw materials that contribute to the sustainability of the chemical sector. However, these “green” chemical

technologies can only contribute to a more sustainable society if their environmental impact is lower than that of their

traditional counterparts ([16]).

For the development of the industrial technology sector, new ideas, methods for implementing, developing and testing

prototypes of resource- and energy-efﬁcient green technologies in smaller laboratory conditions using experimental

facilities are needed. To implement this research trajectory, research and development (R&D) is widely used around

the world.

Sponsoring R&D acts as a contribution to innovation. According to the R&D speciﬁcs, not all the results of this

work correspond to technological advances, which are usually perceived as the result of innovative activity. Some

countries, such as China, allocate government subsidies to stimulate the introduction of R&D in the ﬁeld of green

technologies, which does not always contribute to their development and subsequent implementation on a large scale

([17]). It is worth noting that in recent years there have been a growing number of studies, the object of which is

the quantitative indicator of patent activity in the ﬁeld of environmental innovations in green technologies. Patents

are considered the result of research experimental activity; however, not all patents can have practical application in

production. Therefore, researchers try to measure technological progress based on the production structure ([18]).

Despite numerous theoretical studies showing a direct proportional relationship between the number of innovative

ecotechnologies and the improvement of the climate situation, there is weak empirical evidence to conﬁrm this ([5]).

The ambiguity of the impact of eco-innovations in the ﬁeld of green technologies on reducing the carbon footprint was

also noted. This was expressed in the presence of both positive and negative dynamics of the impact of eco-innovations

on CO2emissions, depending on the conditions. The varied impact can be observed due to several factors: the level of

income of the country and the time interval ([19]), which allows us to conclude that the contribution of ecoinnovations

to sustainable development is ambiguous.

The ﬁeld of green technology affects all areas of human activity ([18, 20, 21]). Some of the most promising tracks,

namely renewable energy technology, decarbonization, and hydrogen energy, were chosen for the study in this article

([22, 23, 24]). It is these tracks contribute to the dynamic development of the economy and science in general.

Furthermore, selected areas are actively supported by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ([25]). These are

’Affordable and Clean Energy’ (SDG number 7) ([26]), ’Industry, ’Innovation and Infrastructure’ (number 9) ([27]),

’Responsible Consumption and Production’ (number 12) ([28, 29]), and ’Climate Action’ (number 13) ([19]).

In recent times, Artiﬁcial Intelligence (AI) has been introduced in many spheres of people’s life. Such wide application

is entailed with intensive training of machine learning models and, as a consequence, with signiﬁcant energy

consumption. Hence, there is a serious concern about direct connection between AI computing and considerable CO2

emissions. A special tracker [30] can be leveraged to track carbon emissions resulting from the training procedure.

Relationships between patenting trends and research activity for green energy technologies A PREPRINT

The purpose of this work is to analyze the connection between publication and patent activity in the ﬁeld of renewable

energy, decarbonization, and hydrogen energy.

2 Literature review

Over the past few centuries, research into non-renewable natural resources and the production of electricity from them

has been of great importance in meeting all human needs and society as a whole. According to studies, it has been

found that the worldwide demand for electricity is only increasing every year, and compared to the level of 2010,

by 2040 the demand for energy will increase by 56% ([31]). However, the production of necessary energy in power

plants is accompanied by the active production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The

formation of such emissions in excessive amounts is the main cause of global warming, and worldwide dissatisfaction

with the negative impact of the energy sector on the environment has increased in recent years.

Approximately 35% greenhouse gases are emitted by existing power plants, making the energy sector one of the main

contributors to global warming ([32]). For this reason, alternatives to generate energy in an environmentally friendly

way have been actively developed in recent decades. Therefore, the worldwide implementation of renewable energy

sources (RES) in the energy sector is intended to improve the biosphere and prevent the possible effects of global

warming, which leads to the sustainable development of society ([33]).

Renewable energy is generated from inexhaustible natural resources, so this type of energy signiﬁcantly reduces

society’s dependence on traditional energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. The application of RES in

different areas of life is one of the most promising and environmentally friendly solutions to combat the reduction of

greenhouse gases and to contribute signiﬁcantly to the decarbonization of the energy sector ([34, 35, 36]). However,

one cannot ignore the fact that many scientiﬁc articles question only the positive effects of RES, so studies actively

discuss the negative impact on the environment of several speciﬁc RES ([37]).

Figure 1 shows the distribution of the capacity generated from each type of renewable energy over the period from

2020 to 2022. According to the results, hydropower takes the lead in terms of power generation over the period of time

presented. Wind, solar photovoltaics and bioenergy produce less power each year. In 2021, wind power was 1,818.5

TWh, solar photovoltaics was 994 TWh, and ﬁnally bioenergy generated 667.2 TWh. The contribution of geothermal,

concentrated solar, and ocean energy is a very small percentage, but the three types of energy have the potential for

further development and active implementation.

Figure 1: Annual capacity generated by renewable energy sources, 2020-2022 (TWh)

Studies show that increasing the amount of energy generated through renewable energy sources has a positive effect

on reducing carbon dioxide emissions only if the renewable energy consumption threshold is overcome ([38]).

Despite the introduction of renewable energy processes, the main type of energy is derived from fossil fuels, especially

petroleum. Yet oil is a dominant source of energy, it still faces the problem of carbon intensity because the world is

not ready to abandon energy derived from fossil fuels ([39]).

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RELATIONSHIPSBETWEENPATENTINGTRENDSANDRESEARCHACTIVITYFORGREENENERGYTECHNOLOGIESAPREPRINTReginaTUGANOVA1,AnnaPERMYAKOVA1,AnnaKUZNETSOVA1,KarinaRAKHMANOVA1,NataliaMONZUL1,RomanUVAROV1,ElizavetaKOVTUN2,andSemenBUDENNYY2,31ITMOUniversity,FacultyofEnergyandEnvironmentalTechnologies,Saint-Petersburg2Sber...

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