Abstract

Energy innovation is essential to shifting from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon economy to address climate change. Among other determinants (technology-push and demand-push factors), collaboration plays a crucial role in stimulating energy innovation. However, the role of collaboration types in low-carbon technology innovation is relatively underexplored. To examine this relationship, we investigated the effects of the importance of domestic and international collaboration in low-carbon technology patenting in South Korea from 2000 to 2013. We employed a count model with panel (technology and year) fixed effects to estimate the importance of collaboration to low-carbon technology patenting. In general, we found that collaboration is an important factor in driving low-carbon technology patenting in Korea. In particular, we found that international collaboration was of significant importance to lagging low-carbon technology fields. The technology-specific panel regression shows that Korean inventors anticipate potential knowledge diffusion from inventors in other countries. In sum, the Korean government should expand its international collaboration efforts as there is clear evidence of the importance of international collaboration to low-carbon technology change in areas of reduced technological capability.