9 Items

Discussion Paper - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

Energy Technology Expert Elicitations for Policy: Workshops, Modeling, and Meta-analysis

| October 2014

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.

The construction site of Shahe Aqueduct Project, part of the South-North Water Transfer Project, in China's Henan province, May 10, 2012. It is the world's largest aqueduct project.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - International Herald Tribune

China's Massive Water Problem

| March 28, 2013

"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."

Dong Energy's Nick Brodigan on an offshore wind turbine's base platform, Gunfleet Sands Wind Farm off the coast of Brightlingsea, Essex, Apr. 24, 2009. The Carbon Trust launched a global competition for new designs of offshore wind turbine foundations.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Research Policy

Missions-oriented RD&D Institutions in Energy Between 2000 and 2010: A Comparative Analysis of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States

| December 2012

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.

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.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Quarterly Journal: International Security

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2011

| Summer 2011

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Quarterly Journal: International Security

Belfer Center Newsletter Spring 2011

| Spring 2011

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

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

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2010-11

| Winter 2010-11

The Winter 2010/11 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

 

CoalTech, a private company that is working out of Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Coal Research Center, is working with a larger-scale coal gasifier.

AP Photo

Paper - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

Expert Elicitation of Cost, Performance, and RD&D Budgets for Coal Power with CCS

| September 28, 2010

There is uncertainty about the ex-ante returns to research, development, and demonstration programs in the United States on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. To quantify this uncertainty, we conducted a written expert elicitation of thirteen experts in fossil power and CCS technologies from the government, academia, and the private sector. We asked experts to provide their recommended budget and allocation of RD&D funds by specific fossil power and CCS technology and type of RD&D activity (i.e. basic research, applied research, pilot plants, and demonstration plants) for the United States....On average, experts estimated that if their recommended RD&D portfolio was implemented, the capital cost of new coal plants with CCS in 2030 would decrease by 10% in addition to the cost reductions/increases that would occur by 2030 through non-public RD&D related factors.

Book Chapter

Acting in Time on Energy Policy: Foreword

    Author:
  • David T. Ellwood
| May 2009

"The question of whether we can "act in time" on energy and climate change poses one of the most profound challenges facing the world today. No human activity, other than the wide-scale use of nuclear weapons, has greater potential to reshape and harm our planet and our species than the rapidly expanding generation of greenhouse gases. What is so frustrating about the issue is that even though the dangers are widely accepted in the scientific community, and even though failing to act in time could set off a chain of events that would be all but irreversible, action to date has been weak at best."