Collaborative advantage: How supply chain alliances drive productivity improvement in renewable energy firms

With accelerating industrial and energy transitions, promoting cooperation among enterprises within the renewable energy supply chain is crucial for mitigating supply chain risks and enhancing productivity. However, existing studies offered limited evidence on its productivity implications, leaving a critical gap in understanding how synergistic supply chain relationships support renewable energy development. Using data from China's listed renewable energy firms from 2014 to 2023, this paper constructs a Two-Way Fixed-Effects model to investigate how participation in supply chain alliances affects total factor productivity and explores the underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that: (1) Engaging in supply chain alliances improves the productivity performance of renewable energy companies. It suggests that renewable energy firms that participate in supply chain alliances increase productivity by 9.6 %. This conclusion remains valid after endogeneity analysis and robustness tests. (2) Supply chain alliances can increase productivity by improving the supply chain efficiency and facilitating technological efforts. (3) Renewable energy firms with lower bargaining power and a more optimized human capital structure are more likely to achieve productivity improvement in the supply chain partnerships. (4) Both upstream and downstream partnerships exert significant positive effects. This paper enriches the research on supply chain management and strategic alliances, offering policy insights and empirical evidence to advance renewable energy transition and support high-quality industrial upgrading.