39 Items

overhead image of Brookhaven National Laboratory

©2016 Landsat / Copernicus, used with permission

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The Department of Energy National Laboratories

| November 2017

This report recommends policies and actions to improve the return on investment the U.S. government makes in sponsoring research and development (R&D) at the Department of Energy's (DOE) seventeen National Laboratories ("Labs"). While the Labs make a unique and significant contribution to all of the Department of Energy's missions, the authors develop the idea that for the Labs to fully support DOE's energy transformation goals, their R&D management practices need to be updated to better reflect current research into innovation systems and management. They also highlight the necessity of Lab interactions with industry in order to impact the nation's energy infrastructure investment, which is, for the most part, privately held.

Paper - Harvard Kennedy School

Making Technological Innovation Work for Sustainable Development

| December 2015

Sustainable development requires harnessing technological innovation to improve human well-being in current and future generations. However, poor, marginalized, and unborn populations too often lack the economic or political power to shape innovation processes to meet their needs. Issues arise at all stages of innovation, from invention of a technology through its selection, production, adaptation, adoption, and retirement.

Report - Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center

Inventing the Future to Address Societal Challenges: Venky Narayanamurti's 75th Birthday

| September 19-20, 2014

Some of America's most distinguished leaders in academia, science, and technology gathered at Harvard on September 19 and 20, 2014, to celebrate the 75th birthday of renowned Harvard scientist Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti — and to discuss the future of innovation in America.

Report - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation

The United States and the world need a revolution in energy technology—a revolution that would improve the performance of our energy systems to face the challenges ahead. In an intensely competitive and interdependent global landscape, and in the face of large climate risks from ongoing U.S. reliance on a fossil-fuel based energy system, it is important to maintain and expand long-term investments in the energy future of the U.S. even at a time of budget stringency. It is equally necessary to think about how to improve the efficiency of those investments, through strengthening U.S. energy innovation institutions, providing expanded incentives for private-sector innovation, and seizing opportunities where international cooperation can accelerate innovation. The private sector role is key: in the United States the vast majority of the energy system is owned by private enterprises, whose innovation and technology deployment decisions drive much of the country's overall energy systems.

Discussion Paper

Putting It All Together: The Real World of Fully Integrated CCS Projects

    Author:
  • Craig A. Hart
| July 2011

This study examines the legal, regulatory and financial issues encountered in nine planned commercial-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research, development and demonstration (RD&D) projects under Phase III of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSP) Program. In Phase III of the RCSP, financial issues dominated the outcomes in these projects, directly causing termination of three of the projects and contributing to termination in two others. Long-term liability and lack of coordination among regulatory authorities also posed significant barriers.

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Report - Cambridge University Press

The State of the Nation's Ecosystems: Measuring the Lands, Waters and Living Resources of the United States

| September 2002

In modern Western culture, ecosystem awareness has evolved from a somewhat obscure scientific concept a few decades ago, to its current state in the vernacular of a large proportion of the population. Today it is increasingly hard to find someone who does not have an idea of what an ecosystem is, however fragmentary or inaccurate the understanding may be.

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Discussion Paper - Environment and Natural Resources Program, Belfer Center

Embeddedness and Influence: A Contrast of Assessment Failure in New England and Newfoundland

November 2001

This paper of the Global Environmental Assessment Project (GEA) examines fisheries assessment failures in New England and Newfoundland. While scientific assessments proved ineffective determinants of sustainable policies in both cases, a comparative analysis reveals important differences. In New England, ominous assessments were ignored by decisionmakers while in Newfoundland more optimistic assessments led decisionmakers astray. This contrast in outcomes illustrates the countervailing perils associated with the degree to which scientific assessment processes are embedded within the organizations that use assessments to inform their decisions. Embedded assessments are often influential within their host organization, but are apt to raise suspicions outside of them. Disembedded assessments garner less suspicion, but run the risk of being marginalized when their conclusions conflict with the objectives of decisionmaking organizations. Given the prevailing conditions within their respective issue domains, this analysis suggests that scientific assessments were insufficiently embedded in New England's regulatory structure while exceedingly embedded in Newfoundland's.

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Discussion Paper - Harvard Kennedy School

Vulnerability and Resilience for Coupled Human-Environment Systems: Report of the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program 2001 Summer Study

October 2001

The 2001 Summer Study of the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program was a working session to advance the intellectual agenda of science and technology for sustainability. Discussion focused primarily on issues of vulnerability and resilience, as they provide an exceptionally rich "case study" for exploring the conceptual and design challenges facing efforts to build place-based, integrative systems of research, assessment and decision support that can more effectively address problems arising through the interactions of society and environment. The particular objective of the Summer Study was to make significant progress in addressing the following four related groups of questions: what is the Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program's model of vulnerability/resilience for coupled human-environment systems; how can this model be refined, tested, and applied; how can integrated systems of research, assessment and decision support be designed to enable such work; and what methodological and modeling innovations are needed to facilitate the analysis of such systems and to advance understanding of the nonlinear, multi-scale, rapidly evolving relationships between nature and society that are the focus of sustainability science? This paper reports on the discussion at the Summer Study on these four core sets of questions.

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Discussion Paper - Environment and Natural Resources Program, Belfer Center

Designing Effective Assessments: The Role of Participation, Science and Governance, and Focus

| Sep. 30, 2001

This report presents and discusses in detail the discussions of the working groups and the synthesis session on the third day of the workshop, which presented reports from working groups and reactions from practitioners on the three themes.

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Discussion Paper - Harvard Kennedy School

Communicating Probabilistic Forecasts to Decision Makers: A Case Study of Zimbabwe

| September 2000

Seasonal climate forecasts offer the possibility of helping people to change their decisions in response to scientific information. With an improving ability to model and predict the El Niño / Southern Oscillation, climatologists are able to issues seasonal forecasts that in some places are quite reliable. One such place, is Zimbabwe, lying in the semi-arid tropics of southern Africa, and with an economy highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Starting in 1997, there have been efforts to apply seasonal forecasts to decision making in Zimbabwe. The success of these efforts has been mixed. This study examines these efforts, and attempts to explain why they may have been more or less successful. Drawing off literature in environmental assessment, risk communication, and behavioral economics, this study offers guidance for ways to improve the forecast applications process, particularly with respect to the communication of probabilistic information. Additionally, this study seeks to test whether the recommended course of action-a highly participatory assessment process examining uncertainties in great detail-could succeed, through the undertaking of a behavioral economic experiment in rural villages throughout the country. The experimental results suggest the approach could work.