Abstract

Sustainable innovation emerges and spreads to solve challenging global issues. Through desk research and using secondary data, this article evaluates the socio-economic impact of renewable energy policies, innovations, and opportunities. National Innovation System (NIS) has been applied to analyze the importance of new technology and the role of stakeholders and collaborations in the Open Innovation System (OIS). We examine the major components of sustainable innovation, disruptive innovation, radical innovation, including social, political, technological, and economic drivers influencing the development of renewable energy sector. The United Kingdom (UK) leads the world in installed Offshore Wind Farms (OWF) capacity and has the largest OWF investments. The Helix system provide foundations upon which firms build innovative products, technologies and services through research and development (R&D). However, there are concerns about the impact of Brexit on the UK policies related to the European Union (EU) Green Deal and Paris Agreement on climate change initiatives. With a focus on the UK’s OWF and Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) sector, this article developed a model to explain the Socio-economic benefits of ORE innovations, constituents of successful International Innovation System (IIS), NIS and OIS. These have implications for the achievement of EU renewable energy targets by 2030. The developed ORE innovation model transforms into opportunities in the local economy, entrepreneurship growth, job creation, increased revenues, increased renewable energy production and consumption.