Technological trajectories for climate change mitigation in China, Europe and India
New technologies need to be developed to decelerate global warming. Europe, China and India are among those who push innovations in this field - starting from very different initial conditions in terms of market site and structure, technological capabilities, and policy priorities. This results in different technological trajectories. Besides explaining these differences this project aims at highlighting reasons as well as effects on international competitiveness and technology cooperation.
Project Lead:
Tilman Altenburg
Project Team:
16 Researcher of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and partner institutitons
Financing:
Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), Volkswagen Stiftung (Germany)
Time frame:
2011 - 2015
/
completed
Co-operation Partner:
Institute of Development Studies, BrightonTsinghua University, Beijing; Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Project description
The urgent need to mitigate climate change demands for technological development. Europe is in a strong position to advance the relevant technologies. But it is also important, that China, India and other emerging economies push in this direction. However, socio-economic conditions and political pressures in India and China are very different from those in Europe, thus giving rise to different patterns of specialization. While this increases the range of climate technology options, it may also have far-reaching implications for the competitive positioning and trade relations of nations. Based on these considerations, the project addresses three main questions:
How do the emerging technological trajectories for climate change mitigation in Europe, China and India differ? What explains these differences? What are the implications for related strategies of international competition and cooperation at the enterprise and government level? The empirical analysis concentrates on two sectors: wind energy (in China, India, Germany and Denmark) and electric vehicles (in China, India, Germany and France).