Bioenergy emerging paradigm

Author(s)

Carolina da Silveira Bueno

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Economia
• Defense date: 2020-07-31

Examining board members

José Maria Ferreira Jardim da Silveira; Ana Urraca Ruiz; Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira; Leonardo Brantes Bacellar Mendes; Renato de Castro Garcia

• Advisor: José Maria Ferreira Jardim da Silveira

Abstract

Bioenergy is considered the most important frontier in the context of the transition to a low carbon economy. In this sense, many scientists promote efforts to develop the knowledge necessary for the technological and economic viability of bioenergy. Knowledge creation is a complex process. The development of emerging knowledge first passes through the process of sharing ideas, which are transmitted informally through direct contacts and interactions between agents. One possible explanation is that the relevant knowledge is tacit, or not coded, which means that it is only transmitted through direct interactions. In this phenomenon of sharing ideas and creating knowledge, cooperation networks emerge. Once created, knowledge becomes encoded. In the case of collaboration involving emerging knowledge, little is known about the performance of these networks in economies. In networks, agents are important not only in the creation of knowledge, but also in the dynamics of collaborations, which have an influence on technical change. In the present thesis, the dynamics of these relations are drivers of the development of technologies, which condition the formation of an emerging paradigm, which is understood as the initial bases that precede the technological paradigm. It seeks to question how the emerging knowledge in the field of bioenergy is spread across continents, creating a kind of epistemic community, which will lay the foundation for a low carbon energy transition in the future. Therefore, the main objective is to map the networks of scientific collaboration in bioenergy and evaluate the efficiency of the structure of these networks on technical change. Network methodology is used to analyze, based on scientific articles, the densification of these collaboration networks. Thus, it is intended to measure the calculation of the Diffusion of Emerging Knowledge via the Cooperation Network (DRC). Then, the technological frontiers are identified from the analysis of the matrices of co-occurrence of technological classes (International Patent Classification - IPC) of patents in bioenergy. The sample contains 12,372 articles and 11,695 patents, in the period from 1975 to 2018. These data were then incorporated into the analysis of generalized evolution. The hypothesis understands that collaboration between countries, even those with little scientific collaboration, is important to spread scientific knowledge across continents. Simultaneously, cooperations evolve in order to increase the collaboration rate of the number of countries involved and have a temporal correlation with the growth in collaboration between different areas of knowledge, which converge to areas of technological frontiers. The analysis allowed the formulation of the emerging paradigm concept, a phenomenon that emerges from the mass of collaborations interconnected to the agents' areas of knowledge. The diffusion of complex knowledge occurs regionally across continents, giving rise to areas of technological frontiers. The results indicated that bioenergy is an emerging paradigm, with collaboration networks on all continents, with the exception of the Arctic. It was possible to verify the distinction between countries that collaborated a lot and countries that collaborated less . However, these differences did not affect the performance of the network. On the contrary, they had a significant influence on emerging knowledge flows (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/13820-4 - Innovation and Networks: method to identify the international collaborative network in bioenergy technological paradigm
• Grantee: Carolina da Silveira Bueno
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate