Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol Innovation core, innovation semi-periphery and technology transfer: The case of wind energy patents ☆ Johan Nordensvard a , Yuan Zhou b, ⁎ , Xiao Zhang b a Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton, United Kingdom b School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Technology transfer World System Theory Innovation Patent analysis ABSTRACT Some scholars have pointed to a rise of South-South technological transfer led by emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa while other scholars highlight that emerging economies still need to catch up with developed countries. Drawing on world system's theory, we argue that an adapted innovation framework of 'core - semi-periphery - periphery' could be an important analytical framework that may help us understand the process of innovation catch up. This may help specifically to better understand how an emerging economy can at least in theory have sectors that could be defined as innovation core and source for technology transfer. We will look at wind energy as North American, European, Indian and Chinese firms dominate the market. This study used citation network analysis and patent analysis to analyse knowledge flows between wind firms and to identify and compare the positon and role of each firm in the knowledge network. We argue that there is still, despite catching up, a difference between innovation core countries (US, Germany, Denmark) and innovation semi-periphery (China, India) which will limit the opportunities of knowledge transfer within the sector of wind energy. 1. Introduction The academic field of international technology transfer and co- operation has had more than three decades to mature as a subject (Bell, 1990; Able-Thomas, 1996). There has been a recent discussion around how the rise of China and India (Kaplinsky and Messner, 2008; Humphrey and Messner, 2006) will change the overall role of these countries as prospective drivers of innovation. Urban et al. (2015) argue that much of the literature and debates on low carbon technology transfer and cooperation is restricted to North–South technology transfer from high-income countries to low and middle income coun- tries. The rise of emerging economies like China, India, South Africa and Brazil as new economic, political, social and technological powers however challenges the pre-conceptions about low carbon technology transfer and rebalances the focus towards South–South technology transfer and cooperation (Urban et al., 2015). This article argues that we need to be more realistic of the nature of South-South low carbon technology transfer and analyse different en- ergy sectors as it could be that a country could be a low carbon in- novative core country in wind energy but far less developed in other renewable energy sectors such as hydropower and solar energy. The article will not make conclusions on the overall capacity of a country to produce and transfer knowledge but just discuss the narrow sector of a low carbon sector such as wind energy corporations. There has been an expanding list of research that explores the dis- tinction between how Asian and European wind firms have engaged in different ways of facilitating low carbon technology transfer and tech- nology cooperation (Lewis, 2013; Gosens and Lu, 2013; Lema and Lema, 2012, 2013; Schmitz and Lema, 2014; Dai et al., 2014; Nordensvärd and Urban, 2015). There has been an ambiguous focus on North-South technology transfer as a blueprint and how this could be challenged by a South-South technological transfer framework heralded by emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Recent additions to the literature assert that Chinese, India and European wind energy firms are engaged in a complex set of technology cooperation (e.g. Schmitz and Lema, 2014; Lema and Lema, 2012; Urban, 2018). For at least three decades, China and India have been the recipients of transferred wind energy technology from the European Union (EU) countries (Lema and Lema, 2012; Mallett et al., 2009). This followed the classical North–South technology transfer model involving Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Overseas Development Aid (ODA) or domestic investments for foreign-acquired technologies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.04.048 Received 10 October 2017; Received in revised form 29 March 2018; Accepted 22 April 2018 ☆ “This article is part of a Virtual Special Issue entitled 'South-South Technology Transfer and Cooperation for Low Carbon Energy Technologies'.”. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: j.o.nordensvard@soton.ac.uk (J. Nordensvard), zhou_yuan@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (Y. Zhou). Energy Policy 120 (2018) 213–227 0301-4215/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T