Energy Innovation Systems From the Bottom Up:
Technology Policies for Confronting Climate Change

A Project of the Clean Air Task Force and the Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, in close cooperation with the project's sponsor, Bipartisan Policy Center's National Commission on Energy Policy.

Findings

The study's final report, Innovation Policy for Climate Change: A Report to the Nation, completed in the summer of 2009, makes four major findings and recommendations for the reform of U.S. energy innovation policy:

• Competition within government

  Competition among different government agencies has been critical for key areas of innovation, ranging from U.S. military technologies to the information technology revolution. Energy innovation policy and programs should not be a monopoly of the Department of Energy; other agencies, such as Department of Defense, have much to contribute.

• A public works approach to deployment

  Carbon reduction must be recognized as a public good, like sanitation. The government must be prepared to make major public expenditures for efforts like scrubbing carbon from coal plants, which provide half of the nation's electricity.

• Effective demonstration and scale-up

  The federal government needs to pay for multiple large-scale demonstrations of technologies like coal plant carbon removal, and next generation solar cell systems. Research alone will not provide the necessary innovation at the pace we need.

• Government as a large-scale customer

  The U.S. government spends tens of billions of dollars a year on energy and energy production. The government must consciously steer its large purchasing power to catalyze clean energy innovation.