The role of renewable energy alliances in enhancing corporate innovation: Evidence from China

Abstract

The increasing importance of innovation-driven development requires empowering enterprises as the main drivers of innovation in emerging energy technologies. The existing literature primarily emphasizes government support for renewable innovation, with limited research on external collaborations. This paper searches and collects announcements of listed renewable energy companies regarding strategic alliances during 2009–2021 to explore whether renewable energy alliances promote innovation and their mechanism to motivate innovation efforts, using the Two-way Fixed Effects Model . The main results suggest that renewable energy alliances increase innovation output significantly. The mechanism analysis reveals that establishing renewable energy alliances indirectly enhances innovation output via transaction cost savings and alleviates financing constraints. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that factors such as firm ownership, size, knowledge absorption capacity, green investor concerns, and enterprise life cycle significantly impact the innovation incentives from renewable energy alliances. This paper enriches the research on the drivers of renewable energy innovation and provides policy insights for encouraging autonomous innovation in renewable energy enterprises.