Regulatory governance of ‘clean’ technologies: Comparing major economies’ support for Lithium-ion batteries

Technological change is a key lever to address climate change. Simultaneously, it presents vast economic opportunities that governments want to seize. While the important role of regulatory governance in influencing both the speed and direction of technological change is well established, systematic empirical analyses of the governance approaches employed by major global economies to participate in the “clean technology race” are lacking. Drawing on innovation studies and policy design literature, we develop a novel framework for the creation of comparable policy mix design datasets. We apply this framework to assess over 200 policies targeting lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in China, the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) and compare the evolution of these emerging mixes over the past two decades. All three countries aim to catch up in LIBs – a key technology to decarbonize the transport and electricity sectors – from Japan and Korea, albeit with varying success. Our preliminary results reveal substantial differences, highlighting the different approaches major global players are taking. China takes a very active role in creating markets for a portfolio of various technologies and applications. The EU also creates technology and application portfolios, with a strong emphasis on coordinating innovation activities between industry players. In contrast, the US leaves technology choice largely to the market; yet major changes to this approach are afoot with the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. We discuss how these diverging governance patterns have impacted the development of local LIB innovation and production. Our approach for assessing complex policy mixes is intended to provide a blueprint for further empirical analyses of the governance of technologies, thus contributing to the development of common analytical tools and the creation of comparable data.