Science, Technology, and Public Policy

This document contains September 2015 updates to our database on U.S. government investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) through the Department of Energy. The database, in Microsoft Excel format, tracks DOE appropriations from FY 1978–2015 and the 2016 budget request and includes funding for ERD3 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It also includes several charts.

Characterizing the future performance of energy technologies can improve the development of energy policies that have net benefits under a broad set of future conditions. In particular, decisions about public investments in research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) that promote technological change can benefit from (1) an explicit consideration of the uncertainty inherent in the innovation process and (2) a systematic evaluation of the tradeoffs in investment allocations across different technologies. To shed light on these questions, over the past five years several groups in the United States and Europe have conducted expert elicitations and modeled the resulting societal benefits. In this paper, the authors discuss the lessons learned from the design and implementation of these initiatives.

This brief looks at the so-far inadequate responses of the Chinese government and makes the case that new institutions are needed to allow China to meet this growing challenge.

"Although the country has successfully imported model environmental policies, it has yet to develop the complex institutional infrastructure needed to make them work, especially an independent judiciary, a capable bureaucracy, and effective co-operation between central and local governments."

"Beijing needs to stop relying on technology to avoid making hard choices about scarce resources. The United States and the rest of the world need to push the Chinese government to make its development more sustainable through political reform, lest China's economy and social stability be endangered."

"China's major cities have long been notorious for their high levels of air and water pollution, but such visible signs of threats to human health are thrusting environmental hazards into the public eye like never before. The Chinese government has taken some steps to address public concern at these hazards, but if either history or the experience of other countries is any guide, Beijing needs to take public opinion seriously to avoid future environmental crises."

By analyzing the institutions that have been created to stimulate energy technology innovation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China—three countries with very different sizes, political systems and cultures, natural resources, and histories of involvement in the energy sector—this article highlights how variations in national objectives and industrial and political environments have translated into variations in policy.

This document contains February 2012 updates to our database on U.S. government investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) through the Department of Energy. The database, in Microsoft Excel format, tracks DOE appropriations from FY 1978–2011 and the FY 2012 and 2013 budget requests and includes funding for ERD3 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It also includes several charts.

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.

The report, Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation, released on Nov. 22, 2011,is the result of a three-year energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) project of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The ERD3 project was funded by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to produce and promote a comprehensive set of recommendations to help the U.S. administration accelerate the development and deployment of low-carbon energy technologies.