Sectoral Innovation System And The Development Of China’s Wind Power Industry:Theories,Methodology And Policies

Wind energy takes important position in China’s energy strategy. Compared with traditional energy sources, wind energy is clean and widely distributed, and the wind power generation process does not rely on any external resources and causes little damage to the environment. Facing the expanding of energy demand and the environmental deterioration, accelerating the development of wind power industry is of great significance for China’s economic development and social progress in the future.In the past30years, China’s wind power industry has made remarkable progress. China has greatly enhanced the manufacturing capacity of wind power equipment, and the volume of China’s installed wind power capacity ranks first in the world. Cureently, the wind power is China’s third largest power resource. However, the development of wind power industry is a systematic project, and there are still various issues for the overall development of China’s wind power industry. And the previous research aiming at some specific links and issues in the industry cannot effectively address all these problems.This research starts from systematic perspective, explores the nature and content of innovation, analyzes the functions of innovation systems, and then constructs a function-analyzing model for innovation systems reseauch. Based on this specific model, this paper investigates the composition of China’s wind power sectoral innovation system and the function evolution process of China’s wind power sectoral innovation system, and some policy recommendations are further proposed. We propose that the nature of innovation is a complex process for value creation, and the essential function of innovation systems is to create new scientific values, technical values, economic values, social values and cultural values. And for the wind power sectoral innovation system, the most important function is to create technical values and economic values. Industrial function evolution analysis and case study show that the development of China’s wind power sectoral innovation system has followed both policy routes and technical routes, and the system has created different values in different stages and fulfill different specific functions.This research explores the nature of innovation and deepens the understanding of functions of innovation systems. The function-analyzing model estabilised in the research enriches the methods for innovation systems. Empirical research based on the function-analyzing model illuminates the process and the charecteristics of China’s wind power industry development, and reveals certain pratical significance in directing China’s policy-making process for wind power industry.