Green technology commercialization: Drivers, barriers, and emerging directions

Abstract

Green technologies are climate change mitigation technologies and central to decarbonisation, yet their societal benefits depend on whether innovations can be commercialised and diffused at scale amid policy uncertainty, financing frictions, and infrastructure constraints. To synthesise a rapidly expanding but fragmented evidence base, this study maps the intellectual structure and temporal evolution of research on green technology commercialisation using a bibliometric systematic literature review approach. A focused topic search in the Web of Science Core Collection retrieved 350 records. After screening for peer reviewed, English language journal articles, 259 publications spanning 1991 to 2026 were retained. We apply complementary bibliometric techniques, including keyword co occurrence clustering, co citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, burst detection, and co authorship mapping, to triangulate thematic structure, knowledge foundations, and emerging research fronts. The results indicate a clear acceleration since 2019 and a pronounced surge during 2023 to 2025, which together account for more than half of the dataset. The literature organises into six clusters that conceptualise commercialisation as an innovation to diffusion system shaped by digital infrastructure; regulation and finance for transition; cleantech entrepreneurship and market formation; green finance for scale up; market channels for green growth; and enabling policy and finance conditions. Despite rapid growth, collaboration remains fragmented, and publication output is geographically concentrated, led by China, whereas citation influence is distributed more broadly. These findings clarify dominant mechanisms and highlight opportunities for integrated, multilevel research and policy design that better aligns incentives, capital, capabilities, and diffusion channels.