Policy Briefs & Testimonies

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can be defined as global, digitally-native organizations which enable people to coordinate and govern shared resources and activities through the use of smart contracts on blockchains. This policy brief aims to serve as an accessible primer for United States policymakers to understand the unique opportunities and challenges DAOs present, and how these organizations may be addressed in the regulatory landscape of the U.S.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is very likely to be a key technology for achieving the Biden administration's goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But absent regulation requiring its use, CCUS needs to become more economical in order for deployment in the United States to expand significantly.

In this policy brief, we consider the existing mechanism of tax credits. We see how they can encourage private sector risk-taking to enable research and development (R&D) outcomes. However, our goal is to go beyond economic growth benefits, and to include the less tangible considerations of public good and public purpose in the research and development domain. We then suggest an expansion of tax credits focused on supporting the researchers involved in the R&D and encouraging innovation in both large organizations and in startups and small businesses. This approach builds upon the existing framework of agency-led, mission-defined support of the private sector used by the U.S. government, as occurs in other programs such as America’s Seed Fund (sometimes known by its acronyms, SBIR and STTR). The integration of specific agency- and mission-focused elements to the credit system ensures that these additive credits support research and researchers whose R&D outcomes will improve the health, prosperity, and opportunity for the U.S. as a whole.

Growing concern around climate change has ignited recent interest in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies and generated a series of studies on its global market potential.

The author explores approaches to effectively managing innovation of negative emission technologies (NET), as a means to contribute significantly to alleviating climate change and its impacts. He notes that “The greatest challenge to climate change innovation is how to manage the transition of technology from the R&D stage to deployment. For a new solution such as NET to gain policymaker approval and resources needed to develop and deploy a practical operating system, advocates must come forward with a design-of-innovation program.