Feed-in tariffs, knowledge stocks and renewable energy technology innovation: The role of local government intervention

This paper studies the moderating effect of local government intervention on transforming feed-in tariffs and knowledge stocks into renewable energy technology innovation. We examine the key intervention measures for the wind energy sector, using provincial panel data in China over the period 2008-2017. Our results show that local government intervention factors, such as policy count in renewables and R&D expenditure, are significant drivers for technology innovation. However, local green fixed industrial investment has negative implication. Moreover, we find that increasing local policy counts in renewables and augmenting local R&D investment can buffer feed-in tariffs' effectiveness on innovation performance. Expanding renewable policies, and increasing local fund on R&D program and green fixed industries may enhance the relationship between knowledge stocks and technology innovation. It is suggested that the provinces with over-reliance subsidies should put more emphasis on local renewable development policies and increase the level of R&D expenditure.