  In the race to achieve climate goals, many governments and organizations are
encouraging the local development of Renewable Energy Technology (RET). The
spatial innovation dynamics of the development of a technology partly depends
on the characteristics of the knowledge base on which this technology builds,
in particular the analyticity and cumulativeness of knowledge. Theoretically,
greater analyticity and lesser cumulativeness are positively associated with
more widespread development. In this study, we first empirically evaluate these
relations for general technology and then systematically determine the
knowledge base characteristics for a set of 14 different RETs. We find that,
while several RETs (photovoltaics, fuel-cells, energy storage) have a highly
analytic knowledge base and develop more widespread, there are also important
RETs (wind turbines, solar thermal, geothermal and hydro energy) for which the
knowledge base is less analytic and which develop less widespread. Likewise,
the technological cumulativeness tends to be lower for the former than for the
latter group. This calls for regional and country-level policies to be specific
for different RETs, taking for a given RET into account both the type of
knowledge it builds on as well as the local presence of this knowledge.
