@ThomasASpencer @KanitkarT 1/ @ThomasASpencer. Zeroth order remark -- results drawn from a collaboration with a Master's student (TJ's) in her excellent dissertation . Wont name her in this debate without her personal intervention. First, 2017 in the article is an error. Our data is upto 2016.
2/ However, you agree that our conclusion broadly is correct, that patenting has declined (clearly quite sharply) across the CCMTs. Our statement about all developed countries and sub-sectors is based on the use of both OECD STAT and PATSTAT Online.
3/ We have used priority dates and inventor country of residence while extracting the number of patents filed and hence we have country wise data.
4/ There are issues with the missing information for inventor country of residence in PATSTAT due to incomplete filings but the trends are so robust that we are confident that it does not change the results.
5/ So we stand by our comments about developed countries and sub-sectors (if there are corrections in one or two cases, quite happy to examine but doesn't change the point). We have examined not only energy generation but also energy storage technologies, and CCS.
6/ Smart grids have the lowest decline understandably, but the developed countries are totally outpaced in this by China. None of this guarantees that the patents are actually worked.
7/ India is the ONLY country that by law requires regular filing of whether granted patents are worked. No other country does!!
8/ So we have no clue whether cutting edge technology is being worked or whether current expansion is actually diffusion of first-generation tech driven by a strong regulatory support. I am not saying this is a bad thing but lets not get carried away.
9/ If there is technology maturation, cumulative patenting will be S-shaped but please, every S-shape does not indicate tech maturation. So what happened to create this significant fall in innovation?
10/ My focus on CCMT suggests the end of legally binding commitments, but your nice graph suggests that the 07-09 recession is a good alternate or contributory explanation.
11/ And end of legally binding commitments is not just one event but the start of a whole chain of consequences. You suggest a number of alternate explanations but these are all country specific and a true miracle if they lead to near-universal peaking in the same period.
12/ Part of your list of explanations is indeed very much an overlap -- the recession is what you delicately refer to as "the end of a business cycle upswing" and what you call "policy outside RE" is end of legally binding commitments, though it affected RE as well.
13/ Obviously more can be done to verify my claim, but simplistic it is not. Clearly though this is not the time that India with its development deficits and weak innovation base should launch itself into the unknown.
14/ If it does, it heralds huge investment in technology with an uncertain life (remember cross bar technology in Indian telecom before the digital disruption!!), and large-scale dependence on external tech and supply. The current stage suits us well.
15/ Current tech is good for some serious expansion of RE, energy efficiency is moving ahead well, we have time on the learning curve and well let the world figure the rest out while we deal with equally challenging developmental issues.
16/ Unfortunately when it comes to India it is always the Annex-I going "yeh dil maange more" (the heart yearns for more), but I think India is actually doing somewhat more than what it really "CAN".
17/ I think actually in essence you agree, in terms of what you noted as a response to Gutierres. However, no time-lines now and certainly not for some time.
18/ India's development has historically not been big-bang or exponential growth and by giving a time-line we risk losing even the limited flexibility that we have left in fair access to the global carbon budget, and that definitely includes coal.
19/ Indeed it is Annex-I countries who should be giving short-term steep commitments, to minimize their contribution to cumulative emissions, cutting coal even faster and not hiding behind oil and gas.
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