Catalyzing clean tech Innovation: The role of intellectual property protection in China's new energy sector.

New energy enterprises have become a crucial pathway to achieving green and low-carbon development and enhancing industrial security. This study uses intellectual property protection policies as an exogenous shock, leveraging data from A-share listed companies in the new energy industry between 2007 and 2023, to construct a multi-time point difference-in-differences model. The study examines the impact of national intellectual property demonstration city policies on enterprises' breakthroughs in key core technologies. The results indicate that the policy significantly promotes breakthroughs in key core technologies of new energy enterprises. Mechanism tests show that intellectual property protection policies primarily promote technological breakthroughs indirectly by reducing innovation risks, alleviating financing constraints, and enhancing R&D activity. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the policy effect is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, enterprises registered in non-western regions, or cities that have not implemented patent insurance pilot programs. This study deepens the understanding of the micro-mechanisms underlying technological breakthroughs in new energy enterprises from the perspective of property rights protection, expands the research perspective on the relationship between institutional incentives and enterprise innovation in the context of green and low-carbon transformation, and provides theoretical basis and empirical support for optimizing regional intellectual property policy tools and strengthening the technological foundation of the new energy industry.