Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System

by Richard K. Lester, David M. Hart

Overview

Experts outline a plan to overhaul the U.S. energy innovation system for accelerated, large-scale adoption of reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy technologies.

Energy innovation offers us our best chance to solve the three urgent and interrelated problems of climate change, worldwide insecurity over energy supplies, and rapidly growing energy demand. But if we are to achieve a timely transition to reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy, the U.S. energy innovation system must be radically overhauled.

Unlocking Energy Innovation outlines an up-to-the-minute plan for remaking America's energy innovation system by tapping the country's entrepreneurial strengths and regional diversity in both the public and private spheres. “Business as usual” will not fill the energy innovation gap. Only the kind of systemic, transformative changes to our energy innovation system described in this provocative book will help us avert the most dire scenarios and achieve a sustainable and secure energy future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262300186
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/21/2011
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	570 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard K. Lester is Japan Steel Industry Professor and Head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and Founding Director of MIT's Industrial Performance Center. He is the author or coauthor of The Productive Edge and other books.

David M. Hart is Professor in the School of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy at George Mason University. He is the author of Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921–1953. He served as Assistant Director for Innovation Policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2011 to 2012.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Zero to Eighty in Forty 1

1 Beyond Wishful Thinking: Facts, Deductions, and Grounded Assertions About Climate and Energy 9

2 An Energy Innovation System That Works 29

3 Electric Utilities and the Three Waves of Energy Innovation 57

4 The First Wave of Innovation: Energy Efficiency in Buildings 77

5 The Second Wave of Innovation-Part 1: Low-Carbon Electricity Supply 99

6 The Second Wave of Innovation-Part 2: The Rest of the Electricity System 121

7 The Third Wave of Innovation: Creating Breakthrough Options 143

8 Building a New American Energy Innovation System: A Ten-Point Framework 159

Notes 169

Bibliography 185

Index 195

What People are Saying About This

Dan W. Reicher

Lester and Hart have perceptively described what a vastly improved U.S. energy innovation system would look like and the significant economic and environmental benefits it could deliver. Equally important, they have laid out a thoughtful initial approach to building this system over the near and long-term.

Endorsement

Lester and Hart have perceptively described what a vastly improved U.S. energy innovation system would look like and the significant economic and environmental benefits it could deliver. Equally important, they have laid out a thoughtful initial approach to building this system over the near and long-term.

—Dan W. Reicher, Executive Director, Stanford University's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

From the Publisher

Richard Lester and David Hart offer a thoughtful analysis about the special challenges of innovation in energy. Their book will generate discussion and indeed debate about the relative roles of government and markets in bringing innovation about.

—Daniel Yergin, author of The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

Lester and Hart have perceptively described what a vastly improved U.S. energy innovation system would look like and the significant economic and environmental benefits it could deliver. Equally important, they have laid out a thoughtful initial approach to building this system over the near and long-term.

—Dan W. Reicher, Executive Director, Stanford University's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Daniel Yergin

Richard Lester and David Hart offer a thoughtful analysis about the special challenges of innovation in energy. Their book will generate discussion and indeed debate about the relative roles of government and markets in bringing innovation about.