Can industrial policy foster innovation in renewable energy technologies in the OECD and in EU regions?

We cross-fertilise scholarship on industrial policy (IP) and renewable energy (RE) innovation, and submit that RE serves as a general purpose technology that contains more specific RE technologies (RETs). We develop five hypotheses and provide econometric evidence for the impact of demand-pull, technology-push and systemic IP instruments on different RETs. Using a large dataset on RET innovation and policy instruments across 34 OECD countries, we test for the role of country experience, for EU North–South regional variations and for the quality of RE innovations. Our results support our theory-derived hypotheses.