IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v209y2023icp516-532.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Battery innovation and the Circular Economy: What are patents revealing?

Author

Listed:
  • Metzger, Philipp
  • Mendonça, Sandro
  • Silva, José A.
  • Damásio, Bruno

Abstract

This analysis of over 90,000 secondary battery innovations (measured by international patent families) provides a comprehensive account of the long-run progress of a knowledge base with a key role in the transition to a transformative, closed-loop, Circular Economy. Innovation accelerated globally from 2000 to 2019, a sustained dynamic mostly originating in Asia. Patterns of less toxicity and more diversity in technological trajectories are detected and found to bear evidence of pro-circularity. We find a number of emergent technological trajectories, such as solid-state, lithium–sulfur, redox-flow and sodium-ion batteries, each one with a different potential to push ahead the circularity pathway, and which allow for the detection of country clusters. Through a methodology that can be of interest for further research, we examine the extent to which batteries have circular characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Metzger, Philipp & Mendonça, Sandro & Silva, José A. & Damásio, Bruno, 2023. "Battery innovation and the Circular Economy: What are patents revealing?," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 516-532.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:209:y:2023:i:c:p:516-532
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2023.03.132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148123004354
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2023.03.132?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li, Zeyun & Kuo, Yen-Ku & Mahmud, Abdul Rahman & Nassani, Abdelmohsen A. & Haffar, Mohamed & Muda, Iskandar, 2022. "Integration of renewable energy, environmental policy stringency, and climate technologies in realizing environmental sustainability: Evidence from OECD countries," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 1376-1384.
    2. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Serajuddin, Umar, 2020. "Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    3. Sandro Mendonca, 2006. "The Revolution Within: Ict And The Shifting Knowledge Base Of The World'S Largest Companies," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(8), pages 777-799.
    4. Matt Marx & Joshua S. Gans & David H. Hsu, 2014. "Dynamic Commercialization Strategies for Disruptive Technologies: Evidence from the Speech Recognition Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 3103-3123, December.
    5. Sandro Mendonca & Hugo Confraria & Manuel Mira Godinho, 2021. "Appropriating the returns of patent statistics: Take-up and development in the wake of Zvi Griliches," SPRU Working Paper Series 2021-07, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    6. Zubi, Ghassan & Dufo-López, Rodolfo & Carvalho, Monica & Pasaoglu, Guzay, 2018. "The lithium-ion battery: State of the art and future perspectives," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 292-308.
    7. repec:fth:harver:1473 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Célestin Banza Lubaba Nkulu & Lidia Casas & Vincent Haufroid & Thierry De Putter & Nelly D. Saenen & Tony Kayembe-Kitenge & Paul Musa Obadia & Daniel Kyanika Wa Mukoma & Jean-Marie Lunda Ilunga & Tim , 2018. "Sustainability of artisanal mining of cobalt in DR Congo," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 1(9), pages 495-504, September.
    9. Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Yann Ménière & Myra Mohnen, 2017. "International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 793-828, May.
    10. Andy Stirling, 2007. "A General Framework for Analysing Diversity in Science, Technology and Society," SPRU Working Paper Series 156, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    11. Ana de Jesus & Minna Lammi & Teresa Domenech & Fedra Vanhuyse & Sandro Mendonça, 2021. "Eco-Innovation Diversity in a Circular Economy: Towards Circular Innovation Studies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-22, October.
    12. Baumann, Manuel & Domnik, Tobias & Haase, Martina & Wulf, Christina & Emmerich, Philip & Rösch, Christine & Zapp, Petra & Naegler, Tobias & Weil, Marcel, 2021. "Comparative patent analysis for the identification of global research trends for the case of battery storage, hydrogen and bioenergy," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    13. Fulvio Castellaci & Stine Grodal & Sandro Mendonca & Mona Wibe, 2005. "Advances and Challenges in Innovation Studies," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 91-121, March.
    14. Stephan, Annegret & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Bening, Catharina R. & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2017. "The sectoral configuration of technological innovation systems: Patterns of knowledge development and diffusion in the lithium-ion battery technology in Japan," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 709-723.
    15. Mendonca, Sandro & Pereira, Tiago Santos & Godinho, Manuel Mira, 2004. "Trademarks as an indicator of innovation and industrial change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1385-1404, November.
    16. de Jesus, Ana & Mendonça, Sandro, 2018. "Lost in Transition? Drivers and Barriers in the Eco-innovation Road to the Circular Economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 75-89.
    17. Malhotra, Abhishek & Zhang, Huiting & Beuse, Martin & Schmidt, Tobias, 2021. "How do new use environments influence a technology's knowledge trajectory? A patent citation network analysis of lithium-ion battery technology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    18. Massimiliano Mazzanti & Emy Zecca, 2023. "Industry, innovations and transition to the green and circular economy," Chapters, in: Patrizio Bianchi & Sandrine Labory & Philip R. Tomlinson (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Development, chapter 18, pages 302-320, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Neuhäusler, Peter & Rothengatter, Oliver & Frietsch, Rainer, 2019. "Patent Applications - Structures, Trends and Recent Developments 2018," Studien zum deutschen Innovationssystem 4-2019, Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) - Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, Berlin.
    20. Carolina Castaldi & Sandro Mendonça, 2022. "Regions and trademarks: research opportunities and policy insights from leveraging trademarks in regional innovation studies," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(2), pages 177-189, February.
    21. Stephan, Annegret & Bening, Catharina R. & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Schwarz, Marius & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2019. "The role of inter-sectoral knowledge spillovers in technological innovations: The case of lithium-ion batteries," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    22. Kosmadakis, Ioannis E. & Elmasides, Costas & Koulinas, Georgios & Tsagarakis, Konstantinos P., 2021. "Energy unit cost assessment of six photovoltaic-battery configurations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 24-41.
    23. Gaétan de Rassenfosse & Hélène Dernis & Geert Boedt, 2014. "An Introduction to the Patstat Database with Example Queries," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 47(3), pages 395-408, September.
    24. Castellacci, Fulvio & Grodal, Stine & Mendonca, Sandro & Wibe, Mona, 2005. "Advances and challenges in innovation studies," MPRA Paper 27519, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    25. Jose Silva & Guilherme Tavora & Sandro Mendonca, 2023. "Reconfiguring the Battery Innovation Landscape," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 17(1), pages 34-50.
    26. Freeman, Chris & Louca, Francisco, 2002. "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199251056, Decembrie.
    27. Ioannis E. Kosmadakis & Costas Elmasides & Dimitrios Eleftheriou & Konstantinos P. Tsagarakis, 2019. "A Techno-Economic Analysis of a PV-Battery System in Greece," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-14, April.
    28. Yildizbasi, Abdullah, 2021. "Blockchain and renewable energy: Integration challenges in circular economy era," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 183-197.
    29. Charles R. Harris & K. Jarrod Millman & Stéfan J. Walt & Ralf Gommers & Pauli Virtanen & David Cournapeau & Eric Wieser & Julian Taylor & Sebastian Berg & Nathaniel J. Smith & Robert Kern & Matti Picu, 2020. "Array programming with NumPy," Nature, Nature, vol. 585(7825), pages 357-362, September.
    30. Noah Kittner & Felix Lill & Daniel M. Kammen, 2017. "Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 2(9), pages 1-6, September.
    31. Ribeiro, Barbara & Shapira, Philip, 2020. "Private and public values of innovation: A patent analysis of synthetic biology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1).
    32. Hsu, David H. & Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Zhao, Qifeng, 2021. "Rich on paper? Chinese firms’ academic publications, patents, and market value," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    33. Wang, Shubin & Zhao, Erlong & Razzaq, Hafiz Kashif, 2022. "Dynamic role of renewable energy efficiency, natural resources, and climate technologies in realizing environmental sustainability: Implications for China," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 1095-1104.
    34. Benjamin K. Sovacool & Peter Newell & Sanya Carley & Jessica Fanzo, 2022. "Equity, technological innovation and sustainable behaviour in a low-carbon future," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(3), pages 326-337, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gnekpe, Christian & Plantec, Quentin, 2023. "Regulatory push-pull and technological knowledge dynamics of circular economy innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    2. Oana Luca & Liliana Andrei & Cristina Iacoboaea & Florian Gaman, 2023. "Unveiling the Hidden Effects of Automated Vehicles on “Do No Significant Harm” Components," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-26, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mendonça, Sandro & Damásio, Bruno & Charlita de Freitas, Luciano & Oliveira, Luís & Cichy, Marcin & Nicita, António, 2022. "The rise of 5G technologies and systems: A quantitative analysis of knowledge production," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(4).
    2. Ana Teresa Santos & Sandro Mendonça, 2022. "Do papers (really) match journals’ “aims and scope”? A computational assessment of innovation studies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7449-7470, December.
    3. Carolina Castaldi & Sandro Mendonca, 2021. "Regions and trademarks. Research opportunities and policy insights from leveraging trademarks in regional innovation studies," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2138, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Dec 2021.
    4. Gnekpe, Christian & Plantec, Quentin, 2023. "Regulatory push-pull and technological knowledge dynamics of circular economy innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    5. Fulvio Castellacci & Vegard Tveito, 2016. "The Effects of ICTs on Well-being: A Survey and a Theoretical Framework," Working Papers on Innovation Studies 20161004, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo.
    6. Wang, Quan-Jing & Feng, Gen-Fu & Chen, Yin E. & Wen, Jun & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2019. "The impacts of government ideology on innovation: What are the main implications?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 1232-1247.
    7. Lee, Sungjoo & Lee, Hakyeon & Lee, Changyong, 2020. "Open innovation at the national level: Towards a global innovation system," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    8. D'Adamo, Idiano & Mammetti, Marco & Ottaviani, Dario & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2023. "Photovoltaic systems and sustainable communities: New social models for ecological transition. The impact of incentive policies in profitability analyses," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 1291-1304.
    9. David Hidalgo-Carvajal & Ruth Carrasco-Gallego & Gustavo Morales-Alonso, 2021. "From Goods to Services and from Linear to Circular: The Role of Servitization’s Challenges and Drivers in the Shifting Process," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-26, April.
    10. Attila Havas & Doris Schartinger & K. Matthias Weber, 2022. "Innovation Studies, Social Innovation, and Sustainability Transitions Research: From mutual ignorance towards an integrative perspective?," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 2227, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    11. Nina Su & Zhuqin Shi & Xianqi Zhu & Yunsheng Xin, 2021. "An Evolutionary Game Model of Collaborative Innovation Between Enterprises and Colleges Under Government Participation of China," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440219, February.
    12. Slavo Radosevic & Esin Yoruk, 2016. "A New Metrics Of Technology Upgrading: The Central And East European Countries In A Comparative Perspective," UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series 2016-2, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
    13. Marco Grazzi & Chiara Piccardo & Cecilia Vergari, 2020. "Concordance and complementarity in IP instruments," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(7), pages 756-788, August.
    14. Leckel, Anja & Veilleux, Sophie & Dana, Leo Paul, 2020. "Local Open Innovation: A means for public policy to increase collaboration for innovation in SMEs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    15. Ana Teresa Santos & Sandro Mendonça, 2022. "The small world of innovation studies: an “editormetrics” perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7471-7486, December.
    16. Costa, Cátia Miriam & Mendonça, Sandro, 2019. "Knowledge-intensive consumer services. Understanding KICS in the innovative global health-care sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 968-982.
    17. Seck, Gondia Sokhna & Hache, Emmanuel & Barnet, Charlène, 2022. "Potential bottleneck in the energy transition: The case of cobalt in an accelerating electro-mobility world," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    18. Leonardo Costa Ribeiro & Ulisses Pereira Santos & Valbona Muzaka, 2022. "Trademarks as an indicator of innovation: towards a fuller picture," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 481-508, January.
    19. Isabel Cavalli & Charlie Joyez, 2021. "The Dynamics of French Universities in Patent Collaboration Networks," GREDEG Working Papers 2021-38, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    20. Callegari, Beniamino & Nybakk, Erlend, 2022. "Schumpeterian theory and research on forestry innovation and entrepreneurship: The state of the art, issues and an agenda," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:209:y:2023:i:c:p:516-532. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.