Thursday, January 29, 2009

WorldBank report discusses the need for technology acceleration

The report "Accelerating Clean Energy Technology Research, Development, and Deployment Lessons from Non-energy Sectors" clearly makes a case for clean-tech acceleration as the means to break through the system bottlenecks that have plagued this nation for over 35 years.

Figure 5 (The “Valley of Death” between Public- and Private-Sector Development) and Figure 6 (The “Mountain of Death” of Technology Costs) provide an excellent glimpse into the systemic challenge:



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2 Comments:

At 7:17 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark,
Would you support a Solar-Hydrogen solution or are you stuck with Wind Energy?
Gbenga Adesanya

 
At 8:25 AM, Blogger Mark Paul said...

I am absolutely no stuck on wind... as the rest of this blog should convey. I *am* stuck on the fact that we're not "Minding The Gap": The place in between research (where "progress" is typically measured by the # of patents and/or papers) and utilities (which have a fiduciary responsibility to customers and shareholders to remain low risk and keep the lights on [i.e. O&M]). The part in between is missing. And has been missing: which is why we're in this mess. What is required is technology acceleration!

Which areas should we focus on?

=> High-density energy storage
=> Smart-grid
=> "Pre-plug" Energy efficiency*
=> Distributed generation
=> Low / no-carbon energy production

For a road-map of how to solve our problems, buy the research report "The 21st Century Energy Initiative". To see a real-life technology accelerator, check out www.nxergy.com

 

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