80% of innovative industrial leaders come from Europe, Japan and USA

KIC InnoEnergy and Questel Consulting have published a unique report on innovation to provide an in-depth understanding of the global competitive energy landscape.

The ‘Top 10 Energy Innovators in 100 Energy Priorities’ report is the first to identify and rank the top industry and academic players worldwide simultaneously according to their innovation competencies in 100 energy priorities defined in KIC InnoEnergy’s Innovation Strategy for 2014-2019. According to the global results of the report, 80% of innovative industry leaders come from Japan, United States and European regions. China leads the list of academic innovative players with a strong presence in all 100 priorities, with a 40% frequency of occurrence in the top ten rankings. However, Chinese industrial players are almost absent from the rankings.

Europe and the USA are the best positioned in the global energy landscape with both industrial and academic players. The European players lead some of the thematic fields analysed in the report, such as wind energy, ocean energy or solar thermal electricity, where Germany and Spain provide most of the top innovators in industry.

Speaking about the report, Diego Pavía, chief executive of KIC InnoEnergy, said that the report “focused on key technological areas where further development is needed” in order to help “address the market challenges in the short/midterm period”. He added that this was a core aim of KIC InnoEnergy.

The report has analysed close to 150,000 patents, 180,000 scientific publications, identified 1,890 R&D collaborations, 340 acquisitions and start-ups, 1,227 products, services and licenses and 2,000 industry and academic players.