Public policy and financial resource mobilization for wind energy in developing countries: A comparison of approaches and outcomes in China and India

We analyze and contrast how China and India mobilized financial resources to build domestic technological innovation systems in wind energy. To that end, we identify distinct stages of technology diffusion in the two countries in the period 1986–2012, and analyze the interplay between public policies and the development of the technological innovation system across the different stages. We show that the two countries’ distinct development strategies for wind energy – China developed wind energy largely through its state-owned enterprises, while India opened up wind energy investment to the private sector in the early 1990s – influenced system outcomes in terms of technology diffusion, domestic industry structure, competitiveness, and ownership. By unraveling the interplay between public policies, investment risks and returns, and actor characteristics, we explain the differences in system outcomes and identify important policy trade-offs between the two strategies. Our analysis provides novel insights about the process of financial resource mobilization in technological innovation systems, the dynamics of innovation-system growth, and the policy trade-offs that must be reconciled by countries that aim to promote the diffusion of a particular technology

Life cycle water use of energy production and its environmental impacts in China.

The energy sector is a major user of fresh water resources in China. We investigate the life cycle water withdrawals, consumptive water use, and wastewater discharge of China's energy sectors and their water-consumption-related environmental impacts, using a mixed-unit multiregional input-output (MRIO) model and life cycle impact assessment method (LCIA) based on the Eco-indicator 99 framework. Energy production is responsible for 61.4 billion m(3) water withdrawals, 10.8 billion m(3) water consumption, and 5.0 billion m(3) wastewater discharges in China, which are equivalent to 12.3%, 4.1% and 8.3% of the national totals, respectively. The most important feature of the energy-water nexus in China is the significantly uneven spatial distribution of consumptive water use and its corresponding environmental impacts caused by the geological discrepancy among fossil fuel resources, fresh water resources, and energy demand. More than half of energy-related water withdrawals occur in the east and south coastal regions. However, the arid north and northwest regions have much larger water consumption than the water abundant south region, and bear almost all environmental damages caused by consumptive water use

Balancing solar PV deployment and RD&D: A comprehensive framework for managing innovation uncertainty in electricity technology investment planning

We present a new framework for studying the socially optimal level of generating capacity and public RD&D investments for the electric power sector under decision-dependent technical change uncertainty. We construct a bottom-up stochastic electricity generation capacity expansion model with uncertain endogenous RD&D-based technical change, focusing on solar PV RD&D investment planning for its current prominent role in sustainable energy and climate policy deliberations. We characterize the decision-dependent process of technical change uncertainty as unknown outcomes of RD&D investments that increase the likelihood of success with increasing amounts of RD&D, and calibrate to a novel expert elicitation dataset that accounts for this decision-dependence. The problem is framed as a multi-stage decision under uncertainty, where the decision maker learns and adapts to new information between decision periods. Specifically, our application considers four decision stages, with the decision-maker choosing investment levels for new capacity and solar PV RD&D, while learning about RD&D outcomes that can reduce solar PV costs between each stage. The problem is thus formulated to match the manner in which real-world decisions about RD&D investments in renewable energy are made, and avoids common assumptions of perfect foresight, or uncertainty but no learning, that are often used in practice. Numerical results show that when uncertainty and learning features are both included, the optimal solar PV RD&D investment strategy changes from solutions using other methods. Considering uncertainty and learning results in solar RD&D investment differences as high as 20 percent lower in the first-stage, and 300 percent higher in later stages. We also show that when uncertainty is considered without learning, the fraction of new solar PV capacity investments can be depressed. Overall, this paper shows that it is possible to unify several realistic features of the deployment and development problem for the electricity sector to meet sustainability goals into one framework

‘The future costs of nuclear power using multiple expert elicitations: effects of RD&D and elicitation design

Characterization of the anticipated performance of energy technologies to inform policy decisions increasingly relies on expert elicitation. Knowledge about how elicitation design factors impact the probabilistic estimates emerging from these studies is, however, scarce. We focus on nuclear power, a large-scale low-carbon power option, for which future cost estimates are important for the design of energy policies and climate change mitigation efforts. We use data from three elicitations in the USA and in Europe and assess the role of government research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments on expected nuclear costs in 2030. We show that controlling for expert, technology, and design characteristics increases experts' implied public RD&D elasticity of expected costs by 25%. Public sector and industry experts' cost expectations are 14% and 32% higher, respectively than academics. US experts are more optimistic than their EU counterparts, with median expected costs 22% lower. On average, a doubling of public RD&D is expected to result in an 8% cost reduction, but the uncertainty is large. The difference between the 90th and 10th percentile estimates is on average 58% of the experts' median estimates. Public RD&D investments do not affect uncertainty ranges, but US experts are less confident about costs than Europeans

Assessing Future Water Availability in Arid Regions Using Composition and Salience of Decision Criteria

Water resources development options are usually selected on a least-cost basis. While economic considerations are dominant in choosing projects, there are also a mix of other factors including social demands, political expediency, social equity, and environmental considerations that impact final decisions and development of water supply systems. Understanding local priorities in water resource management decisions can allow for forming expectations of future regional water availability. In this research, we propose that future water availability in arid regions may be assessed by considering key projects that have been identified or planned by regional experts. Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis methods as a framework to organize set of decision criteria and their relative salience, the likelihood of selection (and development) of a project can be determined and used to form expectations of future regional water availability. We use this approach in a case study for Jordan, and find that large-scale desalination projects—that have been in the planning books for decades—are now most likely to be pursued and implemented in the country. Finally, we discuss strengths, limitations, and the general applicability of this method for assessing future water availability in other arid regions

The Future Costs of Nuclear Power Using Multiple Expert Elicitations: Effects of RD&D and Elicitation Design

Characterization of the anticipated performance of energy technologies to inform policy decisions increasingly relies on expert elicitation. Knowledge about how elicitation design factors impact the probabilistic estimates emerging from these studies is, however, scarce. We focus on nuclear power, a large-scale low-carbon power option, for which future cost estimates are important for the design of energy policies and climate change mitigation efforts. We use data from three elicitations in the USA and in Europe and assess the role of government research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments on expected nuclear costs in 2030. We show that controlling for expert, technology, and design characteristics increases experts' implied public RD&D elasticity of expected costs by 25%. Public sector and industry experts' cost expectations are 14% and 32% higher, respectively than academics. US experts are more optimistic than their EU counterparts, with median expected costs 22% lower. On average, a doubling of public RD&D is expected to result in an 8% cost reduction, but the uncertainty is large. The difference between the 90th and 10th percentile estimates is on average 58% of the experts' median estimates. Public RD&D investments do not affect uncertainty ranges, but US experts are less confident about costs than Europeans

Why matter matters: how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies

Previous work stresses that actors use strategic technology framing—i.e. purposeful language and rhetoric—to shape technology expectations, persuade stakeholders, and influence the evolution of technologies along their life-cycle. Currently, however, the literature predominantly describes strategic technology framing as a sociopolitical process, and provides only limited insights into how the framing itself is shaped by the material characteristics of the technologies being framed. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a comparative, longitudinal case study of two leading research organizations in the United States and Germany pursuing competing solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies to examine how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies. We show that to frame PV technologies in their own favor, executives made use of four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession). Moreover, we show that which framing dimensions and tactics actors selected depended on the maturity and evolution of the technology they pursued, respectively. By highlighting how technology characteristics shape strategic technology framing, we contribute to the literatures on social movements, institutional entrepreneurship, and impression management. Additionally, by providing a coherent framework of strategic technology framing, our study complements existing findings in the literature on the sociology of expectations and contributes to a better understanding of how technology hypes emerge

A spatially-resolved inventory analysis of the water consumed by the coal-to-gas transition of Pennsylvania

Life cycle assessments (LCA) typically exclude spatial information in estimating the water consumptionassociated with a product, resulting in calls to improve regional detail to better reflect spatial variation. Inresponse to these calls, we have compiled a spatially-resolved inventory of changes in water con-sumption associated with the coal-to-gas transition in Pennsylvania at the resolution of watersheds from2009 to 2012. Results indicate that the total water consumption of the fuel extraction and power sectorsin Pennsylvania increased by 7.6 million m3(2 Bgal) over four years. At the state and watershed scales,we compare total water consumption for the coal-to-gas transition to a case where only the waterconsumed across two life cycle stages of electricity generation is considered e fuel extraction and use atthe power plant to generate electricity. The results for the latter indicate that water consumptiondecreased by over 15.1 million m3(4 Bgal). For both cases, watershed-level results showed water con-sumption generally increased in watersheds with growing shale gas activity or new natural gas capacity,while it decreased with diminishing coal-fired generation. Watershed-scale water consumption from2009 to 2012 may be reversed from a net increase to decrease (and vice versa) when the total waterconsumption is compared to the water consumed specifically for life cycle stages of electricity genera-tion, reinforcing the importance of further developing spatially-resolved inventories for LCA. Focusing onthe water consumption associated with only electricity generation and its fuel use does not capture thefull effects of fuel extracted for use in other sectors. We suggest that spatially-explicit inventories thatinclude multiple life cycle stages should be a critical component in the development of more compre-hensive, spatial LCA methodology. Spatial differentiation in inventories is necessary to adequatelycharacterize watershed-level impacts that can be normalized over a functional unit. The approach can beused as a complementary assessmen t to LCA that can inform policy-makers and investors about whereenergy developments may pose additional risks to water supply and availability

Formulating Expectations for Future Water Availability through Infrastructure Development Decisions in Arid Regions

Water resources development options are usually selected on a least-cost basis. While economic considerations are dominant in choosing projects, there are also a mix of other factors including social demands, political viability, social equity, and environmental considerations that impact final decisions and development of water supply systems. Understanding local priorities in water resource management decisions can allow for forming expectations of future regional water availability through new infrastructure projects. In this research, we propose that future human mediated water availability in arid regions may be assessed by considering key projects that have been identified or proposed by regional experts and organizations. Using Multicriteria Decision Methods as a framework to organize a set of decision criteria and their relative salience, the likelihood of selection (and development) of a project can be determined and used to form expectations of future regional water availability. We apply this approach in a case study of Jordan, and find that large-scale desalination projects—that have been in the planning books for decades—are now most likely to be pursued and implemented in the country. Finally, we discuss strengths, limitations, and the general applicability of this method for assessing future water availability in other arid regions