220unconnected to the grid. A key lesson for Europe is that forced innovation often amounts to little and that the old saying holds up: “no plan survives contact with reality.”

Keywords Wind curtailment · Patents · Economic Planning · Entrepreneurship · Policy

1 . Introduction

There is an increasing interest in a global transition to green energy, and in several countries, policies promoting a transition are in effect (Nuñez-Jimenez et al., 2020). While China has become the largest installer of wind power in the world over the last two decades, the quality of the installed capacity has been lackluster (Dong et al., 2018; Zhu et al., 2019; IRENA, 2021). The installed wind capacity in China exceeds the United States by a factor of two (IRENA, 2018). Despite twice the installed capacity in 2016, China has produced less power.

How can more capacity produce less power? The short answer is that incentives matter, and that the Chinese wind power system has induced unproductive entrepreneurship. When studying the last decade’s development, it is easy to ﬁnd examples

J. Grafström (*) The Ratio Institute, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: jonas.grafstrom@ratio.se