Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation

The United States and the world need a revolution in energy technology—a revolution that would improve the performance of our energy systems to face the challenges ahead. A dramatic increase in the pace of energy innovation is crucial to meet the challenges of: • Energy and national security, to address the dangers of undue reliance on dwindling supplies of oil increasingly concentrated in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and to limit the connection between nuclear energy and the spread of nuclear weapons; • Environmental sustainability, to reduce the wide range of environmental damages due to energy production and use, from fine particulate emissions at coal plants, to oil spills, to global climate disruption; and • Economic competitiveness, to seize a significant share of the multi-trillion-dollar clean energy technology market and improve the balance of payments by increasing exports, while reducing the hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year on importing oil. In an intensely competitive and interdependent global landscape, and in the face of large climate risks from ongoing U.S. reliance on a fossil-fuel based energy system, it is important to maintain and expand long-term investments in the energy future of the U.S. even at a time of budget stringency. It is equally necessary to think about how to improve the efficiency of those investments, through strengthening U.S. energy innovation institutions, providing expanded incentives for private-sector innovation, and seizing opportunities where international cooperation can accelerate innovation. The private sector role is key: in the United States the vast majority of the energy system is owned by private enterprises, whose innovation and technology deployment decisions drive much of the country’s overall energy systems. Efficiently utilizing government investments in energy innovation requires understanding the market incentives that drive private firms to invest in advanced energy technologies, including policy stability and predictability. The U.S. government has already launched new efforts to accelerate energy innovation. In particular, the U.S. Department of Energy is undertaking a Quadrennial Technology Review to identify the most promising opportunities and provide increased coherence and stability. Our report offers analysis and recommendations designed to accelerate the pace at which better energy technologies are discovered, developed, and deployed, and is focused in four key areas: • Designing an expanded portfolio of federal investments in energy research, development, demonstration (ERD&D), and complementary policies to catalyze the deployment of novel energy technologies; • Increasing incentives for private-sector innovation and strengthening federal-private energy innovation partnerships; • Improving the management of energy innovation institutions to maximize the results of federal investments; and • Expanding and coordinating international energy innovation cooperation to bring ideas and resources together across the globe to address these global challenges

A complex systems approach to planning, optimization and decision making for energy networks

This paper explores a new approach to planning and optimization of energy networks, using a mix of global optimization and agent-based modeling tools. This approach takes account of techno-economic, environmental and social criteria, and engages explicitly with inherent network complexity in terms of the autonomous decision-making capability of individual agents within the network, who may choose not to act as economic rationalists. This is an important consideration from the standpoint of meeting sustainable development goals. The approach attempts to set targets for energy planning, by determining preferred network development pathways through multi-objective optimization. The viability of such plans is then explored through agent-based models. The combined approach is demonstrated for a case study of regional electricity generation in South Africa, with biomass as feedstock.

The Implications for Renewable Energy Innovation of Doubling the Share of Renewables in the Global Energy Mix between 2010 and 2030

Benefits of increasing the renewable energy (RE) share in the total energy mix include better energy security, carbon dioxide emission reductions and improved human health. This paper identifies the potential of RE technologies and role of innovation to double the global RE share from 18% to 36% between 2010 and 2030. As a first step, a Reference Case is developed based on national energy plans of 26 countries which increases the RE share to 21% by 2030. Next, the realizable potential of RE technologies is estimated beyond the Reference Case at country and sector levels. By aggregating country potentials, this paper reveals that the global RE share can double to 36% by 2030. Despite differences in starting points and resource potentials, there is a role for each country in achieving a doubling. For many countries their Reference Cases result in low RE shares and many countries are just beginning to explore ways to increase RE use. The paper identifies action areas where innovation can increase technology development and improve cost-effectiveness, thereby accelerating global RE deployment. More research is required to specify these action areas for individual countries and specific technologies, as well as to identify policy needs to address them

A Global Renewable Energy Roadmap: Comparing Energy Systems Models with IRENA’s REmap 2030 Project

International audienceIn 2014, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a global renewable energy roadmap—called REmap 2030—to double the share of renewables in the global energy mix by 2030 compared to 2010 (IRENA, A Renewable Energy Roadmap, 2014a). A REmap tool was developed to facilitate a transparent and open framework to aggregate the national renewable energy plans and/or scenarios of 26 countries. Unlike the energy systems models by IEA-ETSAP teams, however, the REmap tool does not account for trade-offs between renewable energy and energy efficiency activities, system planning issues like path dependency and investments in the grid infrastructure, competition for scarce resources— e.g. biomass—in the commodity prices, or dynamic cost developments as technologies get deployed over time. This chapter compares the REmap tool with the IEA-ETSAP models at two levels: the results and the insights. Based on the results comparison, it can be concluded that the REmap tool can be used as a way to explicitly engage national experts, to scope renewable energy options, and to compare results across countries. However, the ETSAP models provide detailed insights into the infrastructure requirements, competition between technologies and resources, and the role of energy efficiency needed for planning purposes. These insights are particularly relevant for countries with infrastructure constraints and/or ambitious renewable energy targets. As more and more countries are turning to renewables to secure their energy future, the REmap tool and the ETSAP models have complementary roles to play in engaging policy makers and national energy planners to advance renewables

Policies for the Energy Technology Innovation System (ETIS)

The development and introduction of heat pumps provides an interesting illustration of policy influence and effectiveness in relation to energy technology innovation. Heat pumps have been supported by several countries since the 1970s as a strategy to improve energy efficiency, support energy security, reduce environmental degradation, and combat climate change. Sweden and Switzerland have been essential to the development and commercialization of heat pumps in Europe. In both countries, numerous policy incentives have lined the path of technology and market development. Early policy initiatives were poorly coordinated but supported technology development, entrepreneurial experimentation, knowledge development, and the involvement of important actors in networks and organisations. The market collapse in the mid 1980s could have resulted in a total failure ‐ but did not. The research programmes continued in the 1980s, and a new set of stakeholders formed ‐ both publicly and privately funded researchers, authorities, and institutions ‐ and provided an important platform for further development. In the 1990s and 2000s, Sweden and Switzerland introduced more coordinated and strategic policy incentives for the development of heat pumps. The approaches were flexible and adjusted over time. The policy interventions in both countries supported learning, successful development and diffusion processes, and cost reductions. This assessment of innovation and diffusion policies for heat pump systems can be used to generalise some insights for energy technology innovation policy