Intensive Workshops Examine Energy Technologies, Future of Oil and Gas Reserves

A group of American and European academics working on understanding the future prospects of energy technologies and the role of governments shaping these prospects gathered at Harvard Kennedy School in April. Hosted by Laura Diaz Anadon, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group as part of the Technology Elicitations and Modeling (TEaM) Project, the group discussed the need to incorporate uncertainty around technical change, the challenges of utilizing expert elicitations to inform policy decisions using models, and future collaborative work combining different expert elicitations and different energy-economic models.

One of the main inputs to the TEaM project was ETIP’s recently completed three-year project to gather information about the future of energy technologies and use this information to assess the impact of different energy R&D investments in an energy-economic model. This project, known as ERD3 (Energy Research Development, Demonstration, and Deployment), resulted in a report in late 2011 titled Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation.

The Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) hosted a two-session workshop in May on U.S. oil and gas reserves, during which academics and other industry experts examined the forecasts and barriers for these resources.  The participants—from universities, think tanks, and companies—came together to discuss how these North American resources could affect the global oil supply and to make projections for the future of the industry.  The participants also discussed implications for U.S. energy policy, specifically including concerns about oil security, natural gas technology, and cap-and-trade programs.  Participants included William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy; Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program; Leonardo Maugeri, research fellow with the Geopolitics of Energy Project; and Meghan O’Sullivan, faculty chair of the Geopolitics of Energy Project.  The ENRP will produce a report on the workshop.