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REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE OMB No. 0704-0188
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PLEASE DO NOT RETURN YOUR FORM TO THE ABOVE ORGANIZATION.
1. REPORT DATE (DD-MM-YYYY) 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED (From - To)
March 2011 Technical Report
4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER
Clean Energy Innovation: Sources of Technical and Commercial DE-AC36-08GO28308
Breakthroughs
5b. GRANT NUMBER

5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER

6. AUTHOR(S) 5d. PROJECT NUMBER
Thomas D. Perry IV and Mackay Miller (NREL) NREL/TP-6A20-50624
Lee Fleming (Harvard Business School) 5e. TASK NUMBER
Kenneth Younge (University of Colorado) SA10.102C
James Newcomb (NREL, Current Affiliation: Rocky Mountain
Institute) 5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER

7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION
National Renewable Energy Laboratory REPORT NUMBER
1617 Cole Blvd. NREL/TP-6A20-50624
Golden, CO 80401-3393
9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSOR/MONITOR'S ACRONYM(S)
NREL
11. SPONSORING/MONITORING
AGENCY REPORT NUMBER

12. DISTRIBUTION AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
National Technical Information Service
U.S. Department of Commerce
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, VA 22161
13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

14. ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 Words)
Low-carbon energy innovation is essential to combat climate change, promote economic competitiveness, and
achieve energy security. Using U.S. patent data and additional patent-relevant data collected from the Internet, we
map the landscape of low-carbon energy innovation in the United States since 1975. We isolate 10,603 renewable
and 10,442 traditional energy patents and develop a database that characterizes proxy measures for technical and
commercial impact, as measured by patent citations and Web presence, respectively. Regression models and
multivariate simulations are used to compare the social, institutional, and geographic drivers of breakthrough clean
energy innovation. Results indicate statistically significant effects of social, institutional, and geographic variables on
technical and commercial impacts of patents and unique innovation trends between different energy technologies.
We observe important differences between patent citations and Web presence of licensed and unlicensed patents,
indicating the potential utility of using screened Web hits as a measure of commercial importance. We offer
hypotheses for these revealed differences and suggest a research agenda with which to test these hypotheses.
These preliminary findings indicate that leveraging empirical insights to better target research expenditures would
augment the speed and scale of innovation and deployment of clean energy technologies.
15. SUBJECT TERMS
patents; clean energy; Web hits; innovation; breakthroughs; low carbon

16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17. LIMITATION 18. NUMBER 19a. NAME OF RESPONSIBLE PERSON
OF ABSTRACT OF PAGES
a. REPORT b. ABSTRACT c. THIS PAGE
Unclassified Unclassified Unclassified UL 19b. TELEPHONE NUMBER (Include area code)

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