Bringing Breakthrough Technologies to Market: Evidence from UK Renewable Energy Projects
Due to the irreversibility of many investments, firms often have a “rational reluctance” to invest immediately in risky projects and there is an option value to waiting. However, this delay in investment is sub-optimal if the technologies in question generate large positive externalities or reduce negative externalities. As pandemics and extreme weather events have shown, there is significant social value to early, pre-emptive investments. In this paper, I explore how a policy that reduces the uncertainty of future revenues brings breakthrough clean technologies to market. I develop a dynamic model of firm entry and investment which shows that a social planner prefers risk-reduction policies over Pigouvian subsidies if investment costs increase in price risk. I exploit the presence of bunching around the UK’s renewable energy feed-in-tariff eligibility threshold to estimate the value of risk reduction to firms. The magnitude of excess bunching around the eligibility threshold confirms that firms significantly value risk-reduction, with the policy yielding a positive and significant impact on entry and investment into the renewable energy market. Policies to reduce investor risk may therefore be an important component of helping breakthrough technologies scale-up in a timely manner, which in turn can help avoid acute societal crises.
Date: 3 February 2022, 15:00 (Thursday, 3rd week, Hilary 2022)
Venue: Virtual Seminar via Zoom (please register to attend)
Speaker: Sugandha Srivastav (Complexity/Sustainability Programmes, INET Oxford)
Organising department: Institute for New Economic Thinking
Organiser: Susan Mousley (INET Oxford Admin Team)
Organiser contact email address: events@inet.ox.ac.uk
Part of: INET Oxford Researcher Seminars
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtf--tpj8tGdFivYUrIUEDIsM1e9BE3GSG
Audience: Public
Editor: Susan Mousley