Industrial Competition - How to Win the Renewable Energy Race? A QCA-based analysis

The energy transition is part of a wider industrial revolution (Westphal, 2021); gaining geopolitically from renewable energy, therefore, requires advances in industry, manufacturing, and technology. It is those advances that determine whether a country is in a position to take or keep the role of a technology supplier (Lachapelle et al., 2017), and thus to win geopolitically from new energy technologies – or not (Scholten et al., 2020). Engaging successfully in the new industrial competition depends on the ability of individual states to provide the industry with favorable conditions such as a suitable policy framework (Sen and Ganguly, 2017), R&D, or access to funding (Yergin, 2020). Existing path-dependencies may be problematic in that regard (Overland, 2021). In turn, this involves the possibility for widely different development paths and hence a risk for global equity and stability (Eicke and Goldthau, 2021; Bazilian et al., 2019). Using different analytical perspectives, scholars such as Smith Stegen (2018), Overland et al. (2019), and Bazilian et al. (2019) have assessed which (type of) countries might win, and which could lose geopolitically from the energy transition. We aim at contributing to this literature (see Sattich and Huang, forthcoming) with a systematic analysis of the framework conditions required to generate development in the industries related to renewable energy. To come to such an analysis, we draw on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). This method is case-based in the sense that it emphasizes the value of analyzing individual cases. In terms of operationalization, this means that cases are described as a) causal conditions and b) outcomes. The approach is comparative in the sense that it enables the researcher to explore similarities and differences across comparable cases. In our analysis, each country is understood as a specific configuration of conditions determining industrial competitiveness. By cross-comparing a set of countries with above-average performance in terms of industrial competitiveness, we hope to identify different combinations of conditions suited to promote growth in the renewable energy industry. One of the strengths of the QCA method in that regard is the integration of qualitative and quantitative research traditions which allows us to use qualitative as well as quantitative data to determine whether a certain condition or outcome is present or absent, depending on the individual definition. Sattich, T., Huang, S. (forthcoming) Industrial Competition - Who is Winning the Renewable Energy Race? In: Scholten, D. (Ed.) Handbook on the Geopolitics of the Energy Transition (Edgar Elgar).