Articles

Accelerating innovation in clean energy technologies is a policy priority for governments around the world aiming to mitigate climate change and to provide affordable energy. Most research has focused on the role of governments financing R&D and steering market demand, but there is a more limited understanding of the role of direct government interactions with startups across all sectors. The authors  propose and evaluate the value-creation mechanisms of network resources from different types of partners for startups, highlighting the unique resources of government partners for cleantech startups. 

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator was heading back to Tehran on Sunday to consult with his nation’s leadership, as negotiators remained divided over how to limit and monitor Tehran’s nuclear program and even on how to interpret the preliminary agreement they reached two months ago.

"To harness the globally available technologies, African leaders will need to take into account the multisectoral dimension of African agriculture and pay particular attention to the urgency of investing in rural infrastructure, higher agricultural training and creation of regional markets."

Providing societies with reliable energy services, fighting energy poverty and mitigating climate change entail a crucial infrastructure component. Both the energy access and the low carbon challenge require more decentralized energy solutions and a change in the energy infrastructure paradigm. Yet, physical energy infrastructure co-evolves with socio-economic institutions, actors and social norms. This may produce inertia against change. The energy challenge also requires solutions at multiple scales and may entail elements of common pool resource problems. Therefore, the governance of energy infrastructure needs to be polycentric. This allows for contextualization, experimentation and innovation. The article concludes by sketching routes of further research into the energy infrastructure governance nexus in social science research.

In this new lead article, Prof. Calestous Juma, Harvard University and Prof. Yee-Cheong Lee, UNESCO, reflect on the progress made since the UN Millennium Project's Task Force report on science, technology and innovation (ST&I) was published. In 2005, the Task Force released the report Innovation: applying knowledge in development. It outlined a number of ways in which ST&I could be used to realize the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The authors claim that the report has played a key catalytic role in raising global awareness of the importance of ST&I in development.

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.

Cell phone use has grown faster in Africa than in any other region of the world since 2003....Of course, South Africa—the most developed nation—still has the highest penetration, but across Africa, countries have leapfrogged technology, bringing innovation and connectivity even to remote parts of the continent, opening up mobile banking and changing the way business is done.

The effort to address climate change stumbled with the failure to pass cap-and-trade. What should happen now? Five experts, including the Harvard Project's Joe Aldy, discuss the future of U.S. climate and energy policy.

"...[T]he credits a utility earns for a given source of generated electricity should be inversely proportional to the CO2 emissions associated with that source. Renewables and nuclear would earn full credit whereas natural gas and fuel oil sources would earn less, and conventional coal less than that. If properly structured, this can provide the right incentives for investment and retirement of electricity-generating capacity and the right incentives for dispatch from existing capacity."

In recent years, American treaty behavior has produced growing concern among both allies and less friendly nations. On such fundamental issues as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, human rights, civil liberties, environmental disasters, and commerce, the United States has generated confusion and anger abroad. Such a climate is not conducive to needed cooperation in the conduct of foreign and security policy. Among U.S. actions that have caused concern are the failure to ratify several treaties; the attachment of reservations, understandings, and declarations before ratification; the failure to support a treaty regime once ratified; and treaty withdrawal. The structural and historical reasons for American treaty behavior are deeply rooted in the United States' system of government and do not merely reflect superpower arrogance.