Abstract: The achievement of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals mainly relies on innovation in clean energy projects such as hydropower, wind power, photovoltaic and pumped storage projects. Most of the previous studies focus on general scientific and technological management issues such as innovation strategies, management systems, and resource allocation, but lack a holistic understanding of the innovative characteristics of clean energy projects and an analysis of the existing empirical research on different kinds of clean energy project innovation. This paper presents a new system of innovation indexes for these clean energy projects, and reveals the status of innovation in their development through an industry survey. We also identify the main problems in the innovation and their causes, and suggest its future direction and scope. The results have both theoretical and practical implications for clean energy project innovation.

Key words: hydropower, wind power, photovoltaic and pumped storage projects, clean energy projects, innovation, status analysis