Interactive Learning or Technology Transfer as a Way to Catch‐Up? Analysing the Wind Energy Industry in Denmark and India

Abstract

This paper uses sectoral systems of innovation framework to examine the relationship between technology policy and industrial development by comparing the emergence of the wind energy industry in Denmark and India. Since the late 1970s Denmark has led the development of a global wind energy industry and in 2004 wind energy supplied 18.8 per cent of Denmark's electricity consumption. India was however a late entrant that managed in a few years to establish itself as the fifth largest producer of wind energy in the world. We suggest that India's unique policy of “interactive learning” with international and especially Danish actors, instead of imitation of foreign technology policies and institutions, was a substantial contributor to India's success in developing their wind energy industry.

Keywords:

• Wind energy industry
• Denmark
• India
• sectoral systems of innovation
• catch‐up
• interactive learning
• technology transfer

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Editor and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. They would also like to thank Ina Drejer, Bengt‐Åke Lundvall as well as the participants of the 4th Globelics International Conference, India, and participants of the DRUID winter and summer 2006 conferences.

Notes

1. Technology policy refers to policies that focus on technologies and sectors. Technology policy often focuses on rapidly growing markets that are characterized by high rate of innovation (Lundvall and Borrás, 2005).

2. http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct42005/snt.asp (accessed 4 October 2005).

3. We will reintroduce this concept in the later part of the paper while discussing the “interactive learning” between the Danish and Indian actors.

4. For further reference on the early knowledge base of the wind turbine industry in Denmark, please refer to Kristinsson and Rao (2007).

5. Import of capital goods and intermediate products were allowed more liberally than finished goods since the mid‐1980s in India.

6. Tamil Nadu numbers from the Indian wind energy association webpage.

7. http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct42005/snt.asp (accessed 4 October 2005).

8. Third party sale amounts to allowing wind power producers to use the grid infrastructure to sell power to any industrial client at any mutually agreed rate.

9. http://www.plan.aau.dk/tms/energy/indexuk.php?id = 4&st = 1

10. http://www.afm.dtu.dk/Windenergy/index.html

11. http://www.risoe.dk/risoe2.htm

12. Energy Plan 81.

13. The others being Denmark and Germany.

14. http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/jun/26neg.htm

15. http://www.awea.org/faq/usresource.html