By Charlie Wilson and Arnulf Grubler, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and IIASA Transitions to New Technologies Program
Solar-powered flying skateboards: Central to your typical 8-year-old’s vision of a climate-friendly future, but, alas, destined only for the world of science fiction.
But all is not lost. Many other forms of energy technology innovation lie squarely within the realms of science. And scientists working on how to address climate change see innovation as key to addressing climate change.
“The history of energy innovation is littered with over-exuberance…”
The question is how do we innovate successfully? The history of energy innovation is littered with over-exuberance, pipe dreams, and white elephants. But it’s also marked by striking successes, such as the world-leading Danish wind power and Brazilian ethanol industries, or the energy efficiency of Japanese consumer products.
Our new book scours the pages of history to work out what has distinguished past successes from failures. We cast a critical eye on twenty varied innovation histories of energy technologies, from large to small, old to new, and supply to end-use. We are interested both in the technologies that now dominate our landscape as well as technologies that have faded from public view.
Our motivation for the book was to find out: how can we innovate successfully to address climate change? We don’t come up with all the answers, but we do think we can point the way.
A systemic perspective on energy technology innovation
Successful innovation is like a puzzle: you need all the pieces to see the whole picture. But history shows us that innovation policy, research, analysis, and market activity have too frequently focused on a particular piece of the puzzle.
Research and development (R&D) is a good example. Energy-related R&D activities are dominated by private firms. But governments play a crucial role in supporting and investing in R&D with less immediate prospects and less certain pay-offs. When we looked at the history of R&D, we found that public R&D efforts often targeted early and rapid upscaling of promising new technologies. This was particularly the case for energy supply technologies, including wind turbines, solar thermal plants , synthetic fuels, and nuclear power.
Building big can help reduce costs. But cost reductions from upscaling are by no means guaranteed. They depend on all sorts of other things: experimentation and testing, often for prolonged periods; entrepreneurs trying out applications in different market niches; early adopters demonstrating its advantages; underlying investments in skills, training, and human capital; shared expectations around a technology’s prospects; mechanisms to share and exchange knowledge about what works; a consistent market environment without cyclical or stop-start activity that leads to turnover in workforces and the loss of acquired knowledge.
These are just some of the other pieces of the puzzle, elements of the broader innovation system. The cost reductions sought by policymakers and technology developers may be the corner piece that holds the rest together. But it doesn’t make a picture on its own.
This is why advocates of an Apollo program or Manhattan project for low-carbon technologies are wrong. These historical examples of singular science-led R&D programs are poor analogues for what’s needed in today’s energy market environment, with discerning consumers, profit-seeking developers, and cash-poor governments.
We need silver buckshot not silver bullets, diverse portfolios of options not one-shot, large-scale panaceas. Diversity means entrepreneurialism, risk-taking, variety, and experimentation in technology development, learning processes to sustain performance improvements through market deployment, and support for and protection of niche markets by public policy. More and more pieces of the puzzle.
What does it take to bring down the costs of new technologies? A systemic approach to innovation is key.
Learning from history
Our book identifies the hallmarks of historical innovation successes and sets out how we can apply these lessons towards a low-carbon future. We put the puzzle together to reveal the picture of a comprehensive yet simple framework for analyzing energy technology innovation.
An innovation systems perspective makes transparently clear that successful innovation is founded on effectively functioning innovation systems. An inter-dependent mesh of knowledge, institutions, use, and resources that cohere to support new technologies through development and out into the market. With a critical role for consistent, continuous and aligned policy support for all the elements of the energy system.
That corner piece? Well, it’s an important piece of the puzzle … but it’s only a piece.
The book ‘Energy Technology Innovation: Learning from Historical Successes and Failures’ is edited by Arnulf Grubler and Charlie Wilson, and published by Cambridge University Press. It’s also available on Amazon.com.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Matthias Jonas, Senior Research Scholar in the Advanced Systems Analysis Program, IIASA.
Earth’s Future, Wiley’s open-access journal devoted to documenting global change and sustainability, published online a commentary by scientists from IIASA and Brazil tackling the tough question of how to ensure that actions taken locally do not—collectively—contribute to overreaching planetary boundaries.
“We have to recognize that international approaches to climate change have basically failed. They are not going anywhere, maybe even backwards,” said economist William Nordhaus at a lecture for IIASA staff and young scientists on 23 June. The reason for this failure, he argued, is that international agreements have so far failed to deal with the problem of free riders.
The Kyoto Protocol, for instance, failed as countries dropped out one by one, as soon as mitigation started to become costly. Many countries never even ratified the agreement. Nordhaus explained, “There were no penalties for dropping out.”
Norhaus first introduced the concept of climate clubs at the IIASA 40th Anniversary Conference in 2012.
As the next round of climate talks approach this winter and next in Paris, many researchers say it is time for a new model for international climate change treaties. One new idea, which Nordhaus first proposed at the IIASA 40th Anniversary Conference in 2012, is the concept of “climate clubs.”
Nordhaus said, “Think of the treaty as a club. It’s a voluntary agreement, where members get certain benefits, for a certain cost.” A climate club would work like a free-trade union, such as the EU. It would encourage participation by penalizing non-participants, allowing members of the “climate club” to charge tariffs on all imports of non-participating nations. In his lecture on Monday, Nordhaus expanded on the concept he introduced in 2012, presenting the results of modeling work to determine the tariff rates and carbon prices that would be needed in such an agreement, and how participation would look.
Nordhaus found that more countries were likely to participate when carbon prices were lower. At a carbon price of 25 or 50 dollars, a majority of world regions would participate in the club, while at higher carbon prices of 75 to 100 dollars per ton of carbon dioxide, the highest participation rate would be only about half of that.
At IIASA on Monday. From left: William Nordhaus, IIASA Deputy Director General Nebojsa Nakicenovic, and IIASA Risk Policy and Vulnerability Program Director Joanne Bayer
The high carbon price, Nordhaus explained, would make the cost of participating much higher than the costs of tariffs for non-participants. However, with a lower carbon price, even low penalty tariffs of 3 to 4% could be enough to encourage participation. The idea of tariffs is simpler than previous suggestions of trade penalties based on the carbon emissions impact of specific goods—which in practice are difficult to define, and, as Nordhaus said, “not a big enough stick to induce participation.”
Like any trade agreement, though, Nordhaus’ climate club also means some win and some lose. When he examines the benefits on a regional level, the US, EU, and India appear to gain the most benefits, while Russia and China gain the least. What would it take to get such an agreement off the ground? Nordhaus said that a few key regions would be enough—for example, the EU, the USA, and China.
Watch Nordhaus’ 2012 Lecture at the IIASA Conference
William Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He has a B.A. from Yale University (1963) and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT (1967). More>>
Scientists who have worked for many years in the field of climate change sometimes grow cynical about the possibility that the world will address the problem. After over 40 years of research on the subject, there is still no global agreement on climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. This despite growing evidence of the severity of the problem.
“The odds are against us, but they are not zero,” he told an audience of IIASA researchers on 13 May. In a wide-ranging lecture for IIASA staff, Schellnhuber highlighted some of the most recent findings on climate change from PIK researchers, but also shared his thoughts on the potential for the world to take action to mitigate the emissions that are leading to climate warming.
The human race has blossomed on this planet only in the last 11,000 years, a period of very stable climate known as the Holocene. Without this stability, Schellnhuber pointed out, humans would not have been able to develop agriculture, let alone the technological advances of the industrial revolution or the population explosions that followed from these developments. Destabilizing this climate that has led to such success could be dangerous—and evidence suggests that it will be most dangerous to people in developing countries, who did the least to cause the problem.
Some of the more worrisome research to come out of PIK and other climate research centers in recent years focuses on possible tipping points or “non-linearity” in the climate system. For example, changes in the jet stream, related to declining Arctic sea ice cover and warming in the Arctic, are already proving to have major effects on weather, possibly contributing to recent heat waves like the 2010 heat wave in Russia, as well as floods in more southern regions—such extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent, said Schellnhuber, in a world with greater warming.
A new study from PIK researchers shows that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may also be in danger of melt that would raise sea levels. (Image courtesy NASA Goddard)
At the same time, a new study from PIK scientists suggests that the glaciers which serve as the outlet for the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet might melt, effectively unplugging the passages that hold the ice sheet in place. Schellnhuber said, “If global warming removes that plug, there could be an unstoppable flow of ice into the ocean.”
New research from NASA announced this week suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may already have been so destabilized. Schellnhuber points out that the countries that will experience the greatest impacts of sea level rise—primarily in the tropics—contributed the least to the problem.
A moral issue
Many researchers at both IIASA and PIK work closely with policymakers to help define the costs and benefits of climate action. But Schellnhuber argued that only a social movement will provide the push that policymakers need in order to support strong action. When he talks to heads of government, he said, they listen to what he has to say. But without broad support, they cannot or will not act.
“I think it is a moral issue in the end. People have to decide whether they want to do something,” he said. “The older I get and the more I learn about the challenges, the more I think this is the only way.”
References
Tang, Q, Zhang X, Francis JA. (2014). Extreme summer weather in northern mid-latitudes linked to a vanishing cryosphere. Nature Climate Change 4, 45–50 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2065
Levermann, A., Bamber, J., Drijfhout, S., Ganopolski, A., Haeberli, W., Harris, N.R.P., Huss, M., Krüger, K., Lenton, T., Lindsay, R.W., Notz, D., Wadhams, P., Weber, S. (2012): Potential climatic transitions with profound impact on Europe – Review of the current state of six ‘tipping elements of the climate system’. Climatic Change 110 (2012), 845-878, [DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0126-5]
Joughin, I, Smith BE, Medley B. (2014) Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Underway for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica. Science. 10.1126/science.1249055
Rignot E, Mouginot J, Morlighem M, Seroussi H, and Scheuchl B. (2014) Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060140
By Alan McDonald, IIASA Alumnus (1979-82 and 1997-2000) and member of the IIASA Alumni Advisory Board
I stumbled on IIASA in 1975. I was 24 and working for General Electric’s Fast Breeder Reactor Department. I was supposed to figure out how safe General Electric should make its new breeder reactor, a type of nuclear reactor (The project later died when Jimmy Carter came to the White House and the uranium price plummeted). We researched what was going on around the world on determining acceptable risks. The best stuff was coming from this place outside Vienna called the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. We didn’t know IIASA was only two years old. We only knew its papers on determining acceptable risks were better than anyone else’s.
In 1977 I look a leave from GE to go to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In my second year I was a teaching assistant for Howard Raiffa and took his seminar on the art and science of negotiation. After graduation, I asked if I could get a job at IIASA. Perhaps in an administrative capacity, he thought, since I didn’t have a PhD. If I wrote a page about why IIASA should consider me, he might forward it to Laxenburg.
Wolf Häfele hired me for what was then called the Energy Systems Program (ENP). It was 1979, six years after the Arab oil embargo, the creation of OPEC, and an explosion of energy studies in the US and other oil importing countries. All those national studies projected national oil demands exceeding supplies by varying amounts depending on the policies being modeled. Then they labeled the unmet demand “imports.” IIASA was the first to check if all those imports might add up to more than the oil exporters could export, and what might be done about it if they did. In addition, ENP developed the energy supply model MESSAGE, now used in multiple national and international studies. Cesare Marchetti’s logistic model taught humility about dreams of quick policy-driven transitions away from oil. And ENP still had some of the world’s best work on risk acceptance — which had the added benefit of provoking Mike Thompson to analyze the issue through the lens of cultural anthropology and generate a whole new set of useful insights.
I met my wife, Sue, at IIASA. She was in Personnel and, when I arrived, briefed me about leave slips and all the rest. Part way through, she stopped. “You’re not listening,” she said. “If I have questions, I can come back,” said I. I did, and I did.
Two and a half years later we left IIASA, got married and did a 5-month road-trip honeymoon around the US on the theory it might be another 50 years before we were again so unburdened with obligations (right so far). The trip ended in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The US membership in IIASA was being exiled from Washington to Cambridge due to Dick Pearle’s and President Reagan’s animosity. I joined up to pitch IIASA’s virtues to foundations, US corporations and anyone who’d listen in Washington. In pitching IIASA’s virtues, there was a lot to work with.
Now there’s even more.
IIASA Alumni Day will take place on April 29, 2014, and we are inviting alumni to send their memories and photos of their time at IIASA.For more alumni memories, see the IIASA Alumni Web page.
From left, Alan McDonald, Sue (Buffery) McDonald, David McDonald (no relation), Walter Foith, Linda Foith, and Bill Godwin-Toby taking a break during the July 4th games, 1980.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Jessica Jewell, Research Scholar, IIASA Energy Program
How would action to mitigate climate change affect energy security for countries around the world? In two recent studies that I worked on with colleagues in IIASA’s Energy Program and three other European research centers, we explored this question under a range of different policy scenarios. We found that in the long term – 40 to 90 years from now – climate policies would actually benefit energy security. Our studies showed that policies to limit climate change would lead to lower oil and gas trade. Since both of these fuels are supplied by only a few countries, shifting to other fuels could alleviate concerns for countries which import these energy sources. Our research also shows that a climate-friendly energy system would be more resilient to energy supply and price shocks as well as economic and fossil resource uncertainty.
An oil rig off the coast of California. New research shows that transitioning away from fossil fuels would be good for long-term energy security. Credit: Arby Reed via Flickr: Creative Commons License
Taking action to slow climate change requires a massive change in how our society supplies and uses energy. But achieving a low-carbon energy system – one which releases less greenhouse gases – will only be possible if it doesn’t compromise national energy priorities. One of the main energy priorities for decision-makers is ensuring energy security – that is, the stability and resilience of energy supply and infrastructures.
In our studies, published in Energy Policy and Climatic Change we aimed to figure out whether phasing out fossil fuels would alleviate energy dependence concerns or if decarbonization would simply replace existing vulnerabilities with new ones. Intuitively, addressing climate change would mean increasing renewables and would clearly lead to lower energy dependence. After all, Putin doesn’t own the wind. But would climate policies lead to some unintended consequences? Would oil be phased out only to be replaced with biofuels and Brazil as the new fuel-exporting superpower? And what would happen without climate policies? Would energy trade naturally decline as oil and gas reserves are used up or would it continue to increase?
In our research we used a number of energy scenarios which depict:
a world with an energy system which continues to develop in the same way it has developed over the last 50 years (i.e. business as usual)
a world which implements ambitious policies to mitigate climate change and stabilize the climate at 2°C above pre-industrial levels (i.e. climate scenarios).
We looked at each type of world under a range of different policy choices: for example, phasing out nuclear energy or limiting the penetration of solar and wind energy, and including uncertainties such as different growth rates and fossil fuel availability over the long term.
We found that under a business as usual scenario global trade in oil, gas, and coal quadruples. Under a range of different climate-friendly scenarios, trade stabilizes at between half and twice the current level by 2030 and then falls throughout the rest of the century.
Falling trade would have significant implications for the interconnectedness of different world regions. In a business as usual scenario, the energy systems of all world regions remain interconnected, and becomes even more so. But under climate policies, regional energy systems diverge as each region gravitates to its own energy mix. This could decrease states’ investment in existing energy institutions and lead to a massive upheaval in the global energy governance landscape – thus rendering existing institutions obsolete.
Climate policies would affect not only the volume of energy trade but also how and where energy is exported and imported. Today, oil accounts for over 90% of transport demand and there are no real substitutes for fuel cars, trains and planes. Half of all countries in the world import more than 75% of their oil from only a few number of countries. That makes oil the most problematic fuel for energy security (for more on this see the Global Energy Assessment). Under the business-as-usual scenarios, these dynamics get worse over the next few decades.. However, under de-carbonization oil is phased out and no other fuel takes on similarly problematic dynamics.
It’s important to note though that over the short-term, climate policies could make oil even more of a problem: as cheap unconventional resources rise in price due to their carbon intensity, the geographical concentration of oil production would actually rise.
However, over the medium and long-term (three to four decades), climate action would make the energy system much more resilient compared to the business-as-usual case. Resilience, or the capacity for energy systems to respond to disruptions is just as important as avoiding risks such as decreasing energy dependence. Under climate scenarios, the diversity of energy options rises which means all our “energy eggs” would be distributed between different baskets. In addition, the energy system would become less sensitive to fluctuations in GDP, fossil resource assumptions, and energy intensity. This means that a low-carbon energy system would be less exposed to both price and supply shocks.
Reference
Jessica Jewell, Aleh Cherp, Keywan Riahi. (2014). Energy security under de-carbonization scenarios: An assessment framework and evaluation under different technology and policy choices. Energy Policy. Volume 65, February 2014, Pages 743–760http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513010744
Aleh Cherp, Jessica Jewell, Vadim Vinichenko, Nico Bauer, Enrica De Cian. (2013). Global energy security under different climate policies, GDP growth rates and fossil resource availabilities. Climatic Change. November 2013. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-0950-x
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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