Science & Technology

10 Items

A quantum computer

Adobe Stock

Policy Brief

Using Advance Market Commitments for Public Purpose Technology Development

    Authors:
  • Alan Ho
  • Jake Taylor
| June 2021

Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) are a powerful policy tool that can be used to ensure that America can retain leadership in technology fields such as climate change, computing, and medicine. In an AMC, a U.S. agency commits to buying some specified new technology before that technology exists. This provides a price, specification, and framework for evaluation that can streamline decision making and funding approaches in the private sector and accelerate progress towards well defined technical outcomes without being directed about the underlying solution and steps along the path. As such, AMCs represent a powerful option for ground-up technological building where private investment replaces the role of more traditional, blue sky government funding, and the larger market for the resulting product is jump-started by an initial government market.

An abstract design

N. Hanacek/NIST

Policy Brief

The Public-Purpose Consortium: Enabling Emerging Technology with a Public Mission

    Author:
  • Jake Taylor
| October 2020

We are at a moment in time where cooperation between public-purpose stakeholders and profit-motive stakeholders can be an effective means of integrating public purpose into technology as it emerges. This brief covers the basic concept of a public-purpose consortium (PPC), examination of what combination of factors lead to their use for emerging technologies, and considers the key principles for organizing PPCs and enabling their success: Build Community, Enable Cooperation, Ensure Value, Institute Governance, and Keep It Lightweight.

Image of China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force drill with a ballistic missile launcher

(China Military / 81.cn)

Policy Brief - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Inadvertent Escalation and the Entanglement of Nuclear Command-and-Control Capabilities

    Author:
  • James Acton
| Oct. 29, 2018

The risks of nuclear escalation between the U.S. and China or Russia are greater than ever given the possibility of misinterpreted cyber espionage and military strikes against early warning systems. What can be done to reduce this risk?

Testimony

Securing America's Future: Realizing the Potential of the DOE National Laboratories

The Federal Government has many tools at its disposal to advance energy technology innovation. It can signal markets, for example, through energy tax and regulatory policy ("market pull"), and it can advance research, development, and deployment of energy technologies ("technology push"). Both of these kinds of tools can be effective, but the most effective policy portfolio balances a combination of these policies.

Policy Brief - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

Smashing Atoms for Peace: Using Linear Accelerators to Produce Medical Isotopes without Highly Enriched Uranium

| October 2013

Accelerators can eventually be substituted for nuclear research reactors for the production of medical isotopes and for neutron-based research and other applications. The use of accelerators would reduce dependence on HEU and decrease the resulting risks. The United States and other countries should work together to provide the funding and exchange of information and ideas needed to speed up the development, demonstration, and deployment of technically and economically viable accelerator technologies to substitute for research reactors.

    A 2011 Nissan Leaf electric vehicle displayed at Plug-in 2010, a plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles conference and exposition in San Jose, Calif., July 28, 2010. The first mass-market electric cars went on sale in December 2010.

    AP Photo

    Policy Brief - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

    Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation

    The United States needs a revolution in energy technology innovation to meet the profound economic, environmental, and national security challenges that energy poses in the 21st century. Researchers at Harvard Kennedy School undertook a three-year project to develop actionable recommendations for transforming the U.S. energy innovation system. This research has led to five key recommendations for accelerating U.S. energy innovation.

    Policy Brief - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

    Research, Development, and Demonstration for the Future of Nuclear Energy

    | June 2011

    Dramatic growth in nuclear energy would be required for nuclear power to provide a significant part of the carbon-free energy the world is likely to need in the 21st century, or a major part in meeting other energy challenges. This would require increased support from governments, utilities, and publics around the world. Achieving that support is likely to require improved economics and major progress toward resolving issues of nuclear safety, proliferation-resistance, and nuclear waste management. This is likely to require both research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of improved technologies and new policy approaches.

    teaser image

    Policy Brief

    International Climate Technology Strategies—Summary

      Author:
    • Richard G. Newell
    | October 2008

    Policies facilitating innovation and large-scale adoption of low-carbon technologies will need to play a central role in global efforts to address climate change, alongside policies targeted directly at reducing emissions.  This paper considers opportunities for improved and expanded international technology development and transfer strategies within the broader context of international agreements and institutions for climate, energy, trade, development, and intellectual property.