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"Reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change will require dramatic changes in the way that energy is produced and consumed. The cost of technological changes such as alternative energy sources and improved energy efficiency will play a large role in determining the overall cost of combating climate change. The development of these technologies will be heavily influenced by government policy. Both environmental and R&D policies provide incentives encouraging the development of clean technologies. Understanding the incentives provided by these policies, and their influence on the development of new technologies, is important for understanding the ultimate effects of climate policy. This chapter reviews the literature on environmental innovation and diffusion, with a focus on studies relevant to the development of clean energy technologies necessary to address climate change. I discuss the implications of this literature for the development of climate policy"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Encouraging innovation is an important part of environmental policy. A large literature in environmental economics examines the links between environmental policy and innovation. This paper reviews recent literature on green innovation. I highlight major trends in the literature, including an increased number of cross-country studies and a focus on the effect of different policy instruments on innovation. I include a discussion of the justifications and evidence for technology-specific policy incentives and present evidence on the effectiveness of government R&D spending. My review concludes with a discussion of three promising areas for new research on environmental innovation.

The mix of public and private research funding investments in alternative energy presents a challenge for isolating the effect of government R&D funding. Factors such as energy prices and environmental policy influence both private and public R&D decisions. Moreover, because government R&D is further upstream from the final commercialized product, it may take several years for its effect on technology to be realized. Combining data on scientific publications for alternative energy technologies with data on government R&D support for these technologies, we address these challenges. First, we ask how long it takes for energy R&D to provide successful research outcomes. We both provide information on the lags between research funding and new publication and link these articles to citations in U.S. energy patents. One million dollars in additional government R&D funding leads to 1-2 additional publications, but with lags as long as ten years between initial funding and publication. Second, we ask whether adjustment costs associated with large increases in research funding result in diminishing returns to government R&D. There is no evidence of diminishing returns on the level of publication output, but some evidence that additional funding leads to lower quality publications, using citations as a measure of publication quality.