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Executive Summary

Low-carbon energy innovation and implementation is essential to combat climate change,
promote economic competitiveness, and achieve energy security. Our study of clean
energy patenting in the United States is undertaken to elicit fundamental trends and
implications that can inform public and private innovation investment, resulting in greater
efficiency of research and development programs. 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 could augment the
speed and scale of innovation and deployment of clean energy technologies.

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