Articles

While the 2014 Ukrainian crisis is far from over, policy debates surrounding the standoff between Russia and the United States and Europe already offer some important lessons on the gap between the policy world and the realities of energy markets. In this communication, we will discuss three policy proposals proposed between February and April 2014 as an illustration of the aforementioned mismatch, and explain their broader implications.

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate that International Energy Agency (IEA) member country government investments have been volatile: they peaked in the late 1970s, declined during the subsequent two decades, bottomed out in 1997, and then began to gradually grow again during the 2000s.