The Global Patent Landscape for Climate Change Related Patents

The UN Climate Action Summit recently concluded and received heavy press coverage. There is a significant amount of research being done worldwide that is directly and indirectly related to climate change. IFI CLAIMS has surveyed this activity and the results are shown below.

A Special Patent Classification

Climate Change related patents are classified within the global Cooperative Patent Classification system. The CPC system has nine high level sections. These are:

• A: Human Necessities
• B: Operations and Transport
• C: Chemistry and Metallurgy
• D: Textiles
• E: Fixed Constructions
• F: Mechanical Engineering
• G: Physics
• H: Electricity
• Y: Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies

Within the “Y” section, there is a special class “Y02” defined as “Technologies or Applications for Mitigation or Adaptation Against Climate Change”. This definition is very broad and covers many topics, as will be shown below. It is important to understand that a patent may have multiple classifications. 

For example, consider US-20160288800-A1 “Fuel saving driving diagnostic device and fuel saving driving diagnostic system” from Toyota. Its primary classification is “B60W – vehicle control systems”, but it is also classified under “Y02T – Climate Change Mitigation Technologies Related to Transportation”. This is typical. Most of the patent filings shown below involve a technical innovation that has a positive impact on climate change. 

Under the high level Y02 class, there are eight sub-classes:

Breakdown by Patent Office

Across the seven patent offices we looked at and for the entire period 2001 – 2019, the breakdown by country is:
 
  Note that the EP applications count only considered applications first filed in the EP. WO applications do originate from specific nations. Over time, we see that China’s activity has increased dramatically while the other regions have generally declined.  
  Data from 2001 to 2018 is shown above. The Chinese totals are somewhat distorted by the fact that China was late to adopt the CPC classification system, therefore the graph for China slightly undercounts the data prior to 2017 and 2018.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. The graph above shows that China is also the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas related patent applications. 

Sub-classes by Country

Looking at the CPC Group level, we can see which technical areas are emphasized in each country.  The top CPC groups are shown below with the applications counts in each country. The largest technical area in each country is highlighted. 

Leading Companies in Each Country

Highlighted Technologies

The State Grid Corporation of China

The State Grid Corporation of China is the largest filer of Chinese patent applications in the period 2001 to 2019.  It is an example of a Chinese state-owned enterprise. While they file many patent applications in China, they file relatively few outside of China.  IFI calculates that 65,302 Chinese State Grid Corp applications were published during the study period, 766 (1.1%) WO applications were published and 173 US applications were published.  So very few of the State Grid applications are filed outside of China. 

Two interesting WO examples are:

• WO-2012171147-A1 Coordination and control system for regulated charging and discharging of pure electric vehicle in combination with wind power generation
• US-9037425-B2 Method for determining position of forced power oscillation disturbance source in regional interconnected power grid

China is encouraging innovation in state-owned enterprises, as reported in Forbes.

Batteries and Alternative Fuels for Vehicles and Aircraft

• US-10381682-B2 “Lithium ion-conductive sulfide-based solid electrolyte comprising nickel sulfide and all-solid state battery using the same” from Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co is a good lithium-ion battery related patent. 
• KR-20160019349-A “Method for producing biodiesel using rice bran” is a good biofuel example.  
• US-10246658-B2 “Biorenewable kerosene, jet fuel, jet fuel blendstock, and method of manufacturing” filed by REG Synthetic Fuels.  This invention creates kerosene which can be use as a jet aircraft fuel.
• CN-105524667-A “Aviation alternative fuel and preparation method thereof” from BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTIC is another aviation fuel related application. 

Carbon Capture

Carbon Dioxide Absorbent And Method for Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Using the Same

Category Y02C – Carbon Capture is the smallest category, but one of the most interesting.  Rather than reduce carbon emissions, perhaps the carbon emissions that are already in the atmosphere can be removed.  It is a good idea, but widespread adoption faces many challenges.  Here are some interesting examples:

• KR-20190101052-A “Carbon Dioxide Absorbent And Method for Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Using the Same” from Korea (pictured above).
• US-20190262795-A1 “Adsorbent, method for removing carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide remover, and air conditioner” is from Japan’s Hitachi Chemical. 
• US-9474996-B2 “Photocatalytic material for splitting oxides of carbon. Using a photoexcited electron to split an oxide of carbon (like CO2) into carbon and oxygen.”

Agriculture

Agricultural plastic greenhouse from Japan’s Organic Nico

Y02A/40 “Adaptation – Agriculture” is an active area. Here are three examples.

• CN-108450382-A  “Intelligent feeding system based on deep learning” is an interesting agricultural invention from China’s Zhejiang University. 
• JP-2016163541-A  “Agricultural Organic Greenhouse” from Japan’s Organic Nico (pictured above).
• US-20180371484-A1 “Isolated polynucleotides and polypeptides and methods of using same for increasing plant utility”, Evogene Ltd. 

Water

• An interesting example in the water category (Y02W) is US-20190046926-A1: “Soft sensing of system parameters in membrane distillation” from King Abdullah University of Science  and Technology (KAUST).  It addresses the use of Membrane Distillation as an alternative to Reverse Osmosis for water desalination.  In addition to Y02W, it is classified in B01D61/364 (Membrane Distillation) and C02F (Water Treatment).

Information Technology

• EP-3543950-A1 “MONITORING OF EMISSIONS BY MEANS OF A DISTRIBUTED DATABASE” (Y02E AND G06Q/10 "Resources, workflows, human or project management") from Siemens AG.
• CN-109076350-A “A kind of ascending transmission method and device assisting access LAA system based on authorization” from China’s Huawei.

For more information on CLAIMS Direct and our many reports, please contact us.