Inventive Activity for Climate Change Mitigation: An Insight into the Maritime Industry

Abstract

Climate change mitigation is one of the most important challenges facing the modern world. It is necessary to monitor the development of new concepts and technologies and take a stab at identifying disruptive innovations, which have the potential of becoming real climate-friendly game changers. The aim of this paper is to examine the patterns of inventive activity aimed at mitigating climate change in the maritime industry with respect to other transport modes. Appropriate research tools in the area of patent analysis were selected and utilised. A new class of patents related to climate change in maritime transport (CPC-Y02T70/00) was used as a data source. The original value of the study consists of offering a complete picture of the efforts made in patenting activity in climate change mitigation in the maritime transport, with a look at leading applicants and countries, knowledge flows, the most robustly developed and underdeveloped technical fields. A map of technical knowledge flows for climate change mitigation in transport was constructed. The research results show that inventions for the maritime industry are less hermetic than those for air and road transport; however, they are not as much linked with previously developed solutions. The most intensively developed technical fields include the design and construction of watercraft hulls (1) and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to the propulsion system (2). Among the technologies whose further development merits close attention are solutions related to electrical propulsion and wave energy. At the same time, inventive activity in the area of climate change adaptation dedicated to ports is insignificant and definitely needs more support from the community of scientists and inventors. Building knowledge based on patent information can help universities, research institutions, shipyards, manufacturers of marine equipment and other business entities to identify the technologies of the greatest potential for further development.