Impact of the Feed-in Tariff Policy on Renewable Innovation: Evidence from Wind Power Industry and Photovoltaic Power Industry in China

Technological innovation is the key to develop wind power and photovoltaic power industries. The feed-in tariff (FIT) policy, as a demand-pull policy, is important to support renewable energy technological innovation. Using the “difference-in-differences” method, this paper investigates the impact of FIT policy of wind power and the impact of the FIT policy designed according to differences in the distribution of resources on wind power technological innovation. The findings show that the FIT policy can drive patenting in wind power technologies during the implementation period, but may play a relatively weak promoting role in technological innovation in the latter term, and the FIT policy designed according to differences in the distribution of resources also stimulates more patent counts. Finally, based on the fixed effect negative binomial regression model, this paper finds that the higher feed-in tariffs can increase the patent counts in photovoltaic power technologies.