Yes / Technologies can help strengthen the resilience of our economy against existential climate-risks. We investigate
climate change adaptation technologies (CCATs) in US patents to understand (1) historical patterns and possible
drivers of innovation; (2) scientific and technological requirements to develop and use CCATs; and (3) CCATs’
potential technological synergies with mitigation. First, in contrast to mitigation, innovation in CCATs only
slowly takes off, indicating a relatively low awareness of investors for solutions to cope with climate risks.
We discuss how historical trends in environmental regulation, energy prices, and public support may have
contributed to patenting in CCATs. Second, CCATs form two main clusters: science-intensive ones in agriculture,
health, and monitoring technologies; and engineering-intensive ones in coastal, water, and infrastructure
technologies. Analyses of technology-specific scientific and technological knowledge bases inform directions
for how to facilitate advancement, transfer and use of CCATs. Lastly, CCATs show strong technological
complementarities with mitigation as more than 25% of CCATs bear mitigation benefits. While not judging
about the complementarity of mitigation and adaptation in general, our results suggest how policymakers can
harness these technological synergies to achieve both goals simultaneously.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19116 |
| Date | 08 August 2022 |
| Creators | Hötte, K., Jee, Su J. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)., CC-BY |
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