Institutional Complexity in European Union Climate Innovation: European and National Experiences with Off-Shore Renewable Energy

Abstract

The influence of political and social institutions on business decisionmaking for the development and adoption of technological innovations has formed an increasingly important area of discussion among scholars interested in understanding the reasons for national differences in the direction and pace of innovation in response to societal challenges (Hall and Soskice, 2001a; Hancke, 2009; Nelson and Nelson, 2002). As Harrison and Mikler explain in Chapter 1, the influence of regional and national institutions on innovation processes is particularly evident in the case of developing technologies to mitigate climate change because of the manifold challenges involved in aligning scientific, policy and business priorities sufficiently to support the instigation, testing and commercialization of new greenhouse gas (GHG) reducing technologies. The greater difficulty, of course, lies in unravelling how such institutions and governance processes operate for different types of innovation, in different countries, and during different phases of innovation in order to arrive at a clearer view of the cause-and-effect relationships that determine whether or not innovations prosper or fall by the wayside. How satisfactory is it, for instance, to utilize the lens of liberal market and coordinated market economies (LMEs and CMEs) proposed by the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) approach (Crouch, 2005b) compared with examining the political, social, economic and cultural institutions influencing climate innovation in individual countries and markets (Castree, 2006; Laurie, 2005)?

I acknowledge financial assistance provided by Intelligent Energy Europe (Streamlining of Ocean Wave Farm Impacts Assessment, SOWFIA: IEE/09/809/SI2.558291) and INTERREG IV A (Marine Energy in Far Peripheral and Island Communities, MERiFIC: 3726/4122) for this research. All views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the opinions of either organization. I also thank Peter Connor, Angus Vantoch-Wood, Jiska de Groot and Yannis Kablan for their contributions to the research underpinning this chapter.