This study offers the first consistent attempt to identify how energy sector decarbonization policies have affected the energy mix over the past four decades across more than 100 developing countries. 

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

The attached document contains April 2022 updates to our database on U.S. government investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) through the Department of Energy.

Laura Diaz Anadon, Visiting Scholar and longstanding associate of the Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, was appointed to the new European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, a new independent advisory body ready to provide the European Union (EU) with scientific knowledge, expertise and advice relating to climate change. The Advisory Board’s work will underpin the EU’s climate action and efforts to reach climate neutrality by 2050.

Following the conclusion of the 2021 COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, we asked several of our climate experts for their takeaways from the conference and its impacts on climate change.

What was accomplished? COP26 created pressure for some countries to produce revised  Nationally Determined Contributions, helped catalyze new pledges to reduce emissions (including from India), led to the approval of the rules to govern international cooperation and carbon markets (the Paris Rulebook) addressing the issue of double counting, and served as the Launchpad for some novel initiatives that could play a useful role. Among the announcements that were made, was one that recognizes the importance of strategic investment and government action to lower the cost of technologies to reach carbon neutrality.

The authors examine the impact of the US Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) on two outcomes for startup companies: innovation (measured by patenting activity) and business success (measured by venture capital funding raised, survival, and acquisition or initial public offering).

The COVID-19 recovery response from the UK government should include increased and well-targeted R&D investments to foster the energy transition and a more sustainable economy.

The authors investigate how the executives of the two largest research institutes for photovoltaic technologies — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, USA and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) in Freiburg, Germany — have made use of public framing to secure funding and shape the technological development of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The article shows that the executives used four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession), and that the choice of dimensions and tactics is tightly coupled to the characteristics of the specific technologies pursued by the research institutes.