The European green energy industry: equity financing instruments and policies in the climate action agenda

Funding level: National

Funding agency: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Abstract:

The threats of environmental issues linked to the global climate change have been recognized to be one of the most serious problems challenging the world (Bailey and Tatikonda, 2018; Lee et al., 2015; Lerner, 2010; Zhang et al., 2019). Energy-intensive industries are listed as one of the main industries that should be strongly committed to sustainability transition. The transition to climate neutrality and alignment with EU Green Deal-inspired policies offers an opportunity for green energy firms to engage in transformative climate and innovation actions that meet the urgency of the climate crisis in this decade.

The extant academic literature has so far mainly investigated the role of established firms as valuable actors in the broader cleantech field, without focusing on green energy early-stage ventures and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Such firms are deemed to play a significant role in pursuing innovation in this field (Cohen and Winn, 2007; Dean and McMullen, 2007; Garud and Karnøe, 2003; Hart and Milstein, 1999; McDaniels and Robins, 2017; Owen et al., 2018; Wüstenhagen et al., 2008), but they often face financial constraints to develop and scale their business (Ghosh and Nanda, 2010; Giudici et al., 2018; Hornuf and Schwienbacher, 2018; Josefy et al., 2017) because of high levels of uncertainty characterizing their inventions and their capital-intensive nature.

The project will involve four broad research activities:
1) “The mapping of green energy in Europe”: is aimed at building a complete dataset of green energy companies with associated financial accounting information, patent data, and sources of financing. We will map the geographical distribution, the evolution over time, the current size, the patenting activities, and the sources of financing of the green energy sector.
2) “The Collection of EU-level and country-level targeted policies and regulations” that are central to the European Green Deal (and that can be declined at both European and national level).
3) “The enabling factors for the development of green energy firms”: is aimed at exploring the effects of the implementation of specific and targeted policies and regulations (at both EU-level and country-level) that are central to the European Green Deal and the effects of different sources of financing on the financial and innovative performance of green energy firms.
4) We will explore the extent to which the implementation of policies and regulations affect the offer of equity by VCs in the green energy sub-field. The results stemming from such research activities will lead to the definition of a set of policy recommendations.

DiSA role: Partner - Local Unit

DiSA Team Leader: Laura Toschi

DiSA Team members: Federico Munari and Maurizio Sobrero

Project Coordinator: Politecnico di Torino

Other participants: Politecnico di Milano

Start date 28/09/2023 - End date 27/09/2025

Total project cost: 342.885 euro

Funded by European Union - Next Generation EU