U How governments, universities, and companies contribute to renewable energy development? A municipal innovation policy perspective of the triple helix

Some countries have chosen to focus on bottom-up initiatives to enhance the development of renewable energy systems (RES), using the local level (municipalities) as a pillar in this development. Municipalities need to expand their innovation policies to support such transition toward renewable energies. The triple helix (TH) model, based on university, industry, and government, can play an important role in supporting and establishing local policies for RES. We analyze the contribution by the TH actors to the development of three innovation policy criteria for RES development: Creation of cooperative systems, generation and transfer of knowledge, and development of municipal locational factors. Our results are based on a quantitative survey of 727 mid-sized and large municipalities from all regions in Germany. We provide empirical evidence of the relevance of the TH model to support these policy criteria. We also show that rather than treating the TH model as a single effect on RES development, each of the TH actors provides different contributions to RES policies. The government and the private sector have an important role in all three policy criteria. At the same time, we only found a contribution by universities to knowledge generation and transfer, but not to the two other criteria. Thus, in a developed context, the integration of government and private companies is a driving factor to create innovation conditions for RES development, while universities concentrate on creating structural knowledge for innovation in the RES context.