This lecture examines technological innovation in renewable energy sectors as a window into state-firm relations under conditions of globalization. Governments around the world have used remarkably similar industrial policies to encourage domestic wind and solar industries, yet firms in different economies have responded to renewable energy policy by establishing distinct innovative capabilities. Drawing on more than two years of field research in China, Germany and the United States, this paper shows how firms respond to sectoral industrial policy by incrementally building on local industrial legacies, even in global, emerging industries such as wind and solar. As governments support renewable energy industries not just for environmental reasons, but also in the hopes of creating tangible economic rewards, this project points to the limits of industrial policy and explains who benefits and how. It also identifies a new and important role for firms from developing economies in the development of new technologies, particularly in industries central to addressing global environmental problems.