David M. Hart, George Mason University
To address climate change over the coming decades, all nations will need to transition to energy resources that emit less carbon. This transformation, already underway, will require many new technologies.
The United States is a world leader in scientific research and technological development. But new inventions have to be brought to market and then widely adopted to have a deep impact. And in the clean energy field, the United States doesn’t do as well at making that happen as one might be expect, given its strength in basic research.
The energy transition might stall if the U.S. doesn’t overcome this problem, endangering human health and the environment. Research I carried out with Jetta L. Wong, the founding director of the Office of Technology Transitions at the U.S. Department of Energy, suggests that creating a new foundation that would be authorized by Congress to work closely with the Energy Department could help.
‘Valley of death’
Government policies to help clean energy companies commercialize their technologies are necessary because markets tend to be biased against them. This is true for many types of innovation, but it is particularly so for low-carbon innovation.
The general problem is so well known it has a catchy name: “the valley of death.” It takes money to turn a prototype into a product and persuade customers to buy it. It’s also risky. And it takes time. These hurdles deter investors, particularly when a project requires a lot of money, takes a long time and has uncertain returns.
The valley of death – often depicted as a desert – is a metaphor for what innovators experience. They have to stay on a tight budget for as long as it takes for their businesses to become self-sustaining.
The valley of death is less challenging for software innovations like smartphone apps. A few people can write the code. If the app is a hit, it can be distributed almost instantly to billions of users. Profits can come in quickly and really pile up.
But for hardware innovations that can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change – innovations like new ways to make steel or cement or generate electricity – the valley is much wider and deeper. These methods and machines are very complex and expensive to develop and install. They would replace existing systems that are more familiar, and usually less costly, and may last a long time. Most potential customers prefer to see multiyear track records of reliability and affordability before they commit to adopting such innovations.
As a result, many energy innovators never get enough funding to cross the valley of death. Promising tech never gets a chance to prove what it can do. Some technological pathways are never pursued because of a fear of failure.
The Energy Department has sought to bridge the valley of death for clean energy innovations, with some success. But its efforts are inevitably limited by the complex legal requirements that bind all federal agencies and a risk-averse culture that makes it difficult to move quickly and aggressively.
Precedents since 1935
The idea that a government agency like the Department of Energy should create a private foundation to help it solve a problem like the “valley of death” may strike you as odd. But there are precedents.
The oldest federal philanthropic partner of this kind, the National Park Foundation, dates from 1935. Our research turned up eight others with missions ranging from agricultural research to public land stewardship to advancing military medicine.
Since they are free from many government regulations and raise most of their funding from private sources, these foundations can undertake tasks that federal agencies might have trouble carrying out. They can move more quickly, too.
This model is particularly useful for creating and funding complex public-private partnerships to advance science and technology related to an agency’s mission.
A great example is Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines. The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health coordinates this partnership, which involves government agencies, funders and drugmakers. Set up in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2020, it has already led to numerous clinical trials.
A to-do list
The work of a clean energy foundation set up along these lines might focus on challenges that are too complex for either the public or the private sector to tackle alone. Such challenges cause particularly wicked valleys of death for would-be innovators.
For instance, maritime shipping causes about 3% of global carbon emissions. Cleaning up emissions from ships and port operations is not as simple as swapping out dirty engines for clean ones. Zero-carbon ports may need new kinds of fueling facilities for ships and trucks and new systems for handling freight and passengers. Their physical layouts may need to be redesigned.
Getting these tasks done will require many different kinds of companies to collaborate with public agencies from all levels of government, including the Navy.
Innovators trying to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture, mining, construction and manufacturing will have to surmount similar challenges.
A clean energy foundation might convene stakeholders, mobilize private and philanthropic partners and devise strategies to bring technology solutions to these challenges to market. It could bring to these collaborations access to the world-class expertise and facilities of the department’s 17 national laboratories and network of academic researchers.
A clean energy foundation could also work with states and localities to deepen the public-private partnerships that fuel these efforts. For instance, it could help the National Renewable Energy Laboratory just outside of Denver to collaborate more easily and fruitfully with Colorado clean energy innovators. It could also tap into experts affiliated with the Energy Department to fill gaps in places lacking major federal labs.
A foundation focused on technology commercialization would complement many existing Energy Department programs, rather than substitute for them. For instance, it may be able to work around bureaucratic barriers to seed new initiatives that could then be taken up on a larger scale by the government itself.
Next steps
A clean energy foundation would work best if Congress authorized it, and lawmakers are moving in that direction. After a hearing in July on Capitol Hill, a bipartisan authorization measure was included in an energy package that passed the House of Representatives on Sept. 24.
This measure would direct the Energy Department to establish a nonprofit, independent foundation to work with it on innovation initiatives. The foundation would have the ability to raise funds from private donors to support technology commercialization. It would direct the department to work closely with the foundation and cut some of the red tape that would otherwise impede a close relationship.
Companion legislation is pending in the Senate.
David M. Hart, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A ” clean energy foundation! “What a great idea for pouring more money into solving a non – problem. Just like Prince William and David Attenborough ( and all the pretty girls ) getting together to save the planet with “Earthshot .” Look out for Clean Energy Foundation , then Clean Energy Foundation and Empire ,and finally Second Clean Energy Foundation.( h\ t Isaac Asimov )
Go for it. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1022089
Could it?
P.S.
The head article was printed in “The Conversation”. This rag, claiming to be scientific, froze my account years ago and refuses to open it. It is possible that I am the first scientist it censored permanently. Therefore, I think it appropriate to use The Conversation as a living example of the bureaucratic takeover process I just discussed.
Naturally, the Conversation chief guy will appear here and give a well-deserved reasoned argument displaying how horrid I was to get banned, while being unable to reproduce any of the actual circumstances or quotes. It is typical of the takeover methodology to get government money, then to assume power to consor and to refuse right of reply. Part of their readership regards this as good, modern, progressive methodology. I do not. Geoff S
Goodness me. They’ll be deciding nuclear is the way to go! Oh wait, we’ve tried that and abandoned it as it was too successful.
I could use a grant to research on gyroscopic negative inverse-barrier precession electromagnetic ion exchange over-unity super green clean generators but I’m afraid that private big tobacco-oil corporations might hire hitmen to take me down and deprive humanity from the benefits of my climate saving invention.
However, a government linked foundation might be just the right institution to fund me further.
on matter of ‘ speeding the spread
The old apple cider drinking Isaac while trying to converting a bit of lead to gold, as any other genius would do, mumbled to himself ‘this is a slow business, I need to increase speed of the speed of this chemistry by applying a bit of force here, but … but how much? Let’s have another jar …. and in order not to forget it, he scribbled on peace of paper ‘force I need is mass of lead I have X speed of the speed’. I’m sure you know the rest.
The Department of Energy, under The Office of Nuclear Energy, already has advanced, modern, “clean” (means low carbon!), projects ready to go. As Phillip Bratby notes above they have already had a good start, but actually have advanced nuclear energy designs ready to proceed to wide-spread adaptation and construction. In the David M. Hart article he gives a clear clue to his tendencies when he fails to name project “Warp Speed”, because that would be giving credit where it pains him. MAGA!
I was hoping to read a write up about a new form of glass, unfortunately Schrodingers cat got in the way and it turned out to be an article on the history of the business.
logging off to go and watch paint dry
Communists always believe they can create a better outcome than the market and they are never right.
You must be a masochist to finish reading these types of articles.
I stopped reading after “To address climate change …”
This Hart clown call what he did “research”?
“Sometimes promising innovations, such as this glass that can harness solar energy, developed by scientist Lance Wheeler, take a long time to reach consumers.”
Sometimes scam innovations, such as the theory that is human CO2 will ruin the planet, developed by ‘scientist’ Michael Mann, take a while to make unscrupulous entrepreneurs as rich as Croesus. So we need tyo think of ways to speed the process up…..
There. Fixed that for you….
End the Department of Energy. Fire every Federal employee that works for it. Privatize all the pension and retirement/health benefits that have vested in those employees, and absorb those costs as a one-time hit, and be done with this hot-bed of cronyism, graft and waste for all time.
That’s what I would do.
So the problem is that investors foolishly think that businesses might choose a competitive product that costs less and lasts longer, rather than a Rube Goldberg scheme? Those stupid capitalists gotta go!
I agree with the author that the obvious solution is to set up a new bureaucracy to eliminate the nefarious influence of profit-seeking capitalist running dogs. I’d suggest that we hire 23-year old woke experts fresh out of a victim studies curriculum, utterly devoid of any inhibitions arising from the knowledge of engineering, finance, or common sense. These Wunderkinder will pour tax dollars into crony capitalist companies that would normally go bankrupt from having no viable product to sell.
The cronies will be selected based on their proven loyalty to the “Democratic” Socialist party and their promise to “invest” some of the government largesse on campaign contributions to the gatekeepers. Remember how well this model worked in the good old days of Solyndra?
While this approach shows great promise, I submit that we also need to raise consciousness about the urgency to get less efficient. Maybe if we could finally just convince the media to get the word out that we face an existential threat of unprecedented catastrophe, the public would demand the use of more expensive, less reliable technologies?
But sadly, the media remain scandalously silent. When was the last time you heard anything about climate change in the mainstream media? How can we expect ordinary folks to demand skyrocketing electric bills and much more expensive lower-quality products, if we don’t explain it to them?
The real story here should be the need to root out the reactionary forces in the mainstream media who are suppressing the Truth about Climate Change, isn’t it?
This article is backwards in so many ways. First the diagram showing inventions come from the government. That is a lie by omission. Some inventions do come from government funded research, but many more (successful) ones come from private industry. I know, I was an industrial chemist.
The reason so many “green” energy projects need government money is because they lose money or aren’t fit for purpose. I would say wind and solar fit the bill on both counts. If “green” energy could supply electricity 24/7 at 3 cents per kWh, people would run over the government trying to buy it.
This article is balderdash.
Under the guise of “innovation”, they propose an even better way of funding the fraudulent Green Machine. How diabolical of them. Greenie ideation is never an improvement on what we have now because the focus is on “reducing carbon”, and this always costs way more, and they know it. So, they need to hide behind the skirts of Big Government.
They can’t be serious. Are they? A Energy Foundation to bring new materials to market..sounds noble doesn’t it? Yea, too bad it will be just as corrupt and full of cronyism as the Department of Energy in the end. A rose by any other name ya know.
What about that glass? Dang, where can I get that stuff? I wouldn’t mind some energy producing windows in my house, lessen the amount I pay for off the grid. But I guess as a plebe, it’s as big a pipe dream as cold fusion for my future.
There’s nothing wrong with innovation.
There’s nothing wrong with supporting innovative development.
There’s something wrong with legislating it’s usage as a mandate.
There’s something wrong with legislating an unfair advantage to new technologies and shaming/taxing the use of proven ones
Some of the inherent difficulty in the Govt funding of potential comercial winners can be seen if you explore further the profile of the above -mentioned Lance Wheeler .
From his profile :
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mtlHCs8AAAAJ&hl=en
We can see that he is a Govt materials scientist of remarkable ability in both the chemistry of photovoltaics and the physics of their applications. One of the areas he is working on (to judge from publications – I have no personal knowledge of him ) is the area of integrating photovoltaics into building stuctures , in particular using the glass windows as both a source of photovoltaic power and of course , as a conventional window.
eg see: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsenergylett.9b01316
Links from that paper take you to others where a potential application is considered :
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsenergylett.7b01346?ref=recommended
Quantum dots in the window glass act as NIR luminescent solar concentrators relaying photons to edge strips of silicon photocells, whilst still allowing 44% visibility . Tinting of the glas is probably not a problem because in most US buildings I have been in (not a lot admittedly) the glass is tinted anyway. However the power captured is limited. To quote :
-“Performance modeling predicts >1 GWh annual electricity production for a typical urban skyscraper in most major U.S. cities, enabling significant energy cost savings and potentially “net-zero” buildings.”-
But that is only about 0.3MW for the building during an 8 hr working day , which will not power many PCs, printers and espresso machines. And what if the windows are double glazed and the heat trapped affects the PV efficiency (not factored in I think).
So even though the basic research is excellent and, to any materials scientist, absolutely fascinating, ultimately there are limits to its application and the high risk that pushing for practical application because of the high political profile of such work would waste taxpayers money. We went through this in UK in the 60s and 70s with both Labour and Tory govts trying to create industry “winners” with public money. Not an unqualified success in retrospect.
This concept will be perfect at breeding large numbers of Solyndra solar scams. As a long-term investor in the lowest cost solar PV producer I was better equipped to watch (with horror) the corrupt Obama Administration in its support of fake and nonplayer companies in solar PV and solar CSP. I had already watched Solyndra get rejected by the private sector and the IPO market only to get grants and loans from taxpayers for a product that was not competitive and going nowhere fast. Solyndra had bulked up with more employees than one would expect for a noncompetitive prototype company acting like it had full production scale. It was saved from layoffs and closure with targeted help from politicos just before it defaulted as planned. In addition to that case, there were many other technologies and startup companies being ‘shopped’ to state governments lacking competence in due diligence. There was also ultra-scammer Nano Solar that touted the building of the world’s largest PV production plant in San Jose as if a building itself was all you needed to succeed. In conclusion, you can certainly ramp up the loss rate to taxpayers with industrial scale lack of due diligence by institutionalizing it.
About a third of the way through the bullshit, I decided to do a search on “Nuclear” Lo and behold five hits and all in the comments section. That’s about all you need to know.
Georg Mason Universi -Tea. Is that with one Shukla or two?
The reason this will not work is one word: politicians
David Hart should do his homework. He should compare the returns on glamorous research projects like those he favors and ordinary projects that draw little attention and struggle for funding. He would find that the latter give far more value for money and come up with far more beneficial results. The foolish thing is to trust governments to choose winner and losers. They have a terrible track record.