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Promoting Energy Innovation

An MIT professor has a great idea for a molten metal battery that could outperform lithium batteries. Of course, like many great ideas, this one might not pan out. But even if it does pan out technically, Grist explains one reason why it might never get to the commercial stage:

Ultimately, the thing that makes lithium-ion so tough to topple is something called the "experience curve." The curve maps how, over time, in many different sectors, increases in scale lead to a reliable and predictable decrease in price. It works for solar panels and semiconductors, even contact lenses and motorcycles, and it definitely works for lithium-ion batteries, says Chris Shelton, chief technical officer at energy company AES. In other words, every time you double the volume of lithium-ion battery production, you reduce the cost by more than 15 percent.

A 2017 paper by Liscow and Karpilow explains the problem more fully. As they explain, there are two other reasons why the innovation process tends to snowball, making it harder for newer technologies to take hold. The first is that an established technology has already been the subject of a lot of research and invention, so a new inventor has a lot of ingredients needed for taking another step forward. Inventions often involve taking existing ideas and putting them together in a novel way, rather than creating something new out of whole cloth. The second reason that innovations snowball is that there's already a substantial market for that technology, providing a ready market for incremental improvements.

Because of the snowball effect, Liscow & Karpilow advocate government funding for new energy technologies, including help in making the transition from lab to market. They also argue that the government should not fund research into improving undesirable technologies like fossil fuels, because this just increases the innovation advantage these technologies already enjoy. The idea that R&D funding for dirty technologies can cause lock-in is supported by a more recent economic model (here).

This is one reason the Trump administration's antipathy to ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), which funds cutting edge energy research, is so wrongheaded. A recent report by the National Research Council assesses the ARPA-E. It concludes that "ARPA-E is in many cases successfully enhancing the economic and energy security of the United States by funding transformational activities, white space (technology areas that are novel or underexplored and unlikely to be addressed by the private sector or by other federal research programs), and feasibility studies to open up new technological directions and evaluate the technical merit of potential directions." The New York Times recently described some of the projects funded by ARPA-E, which cover everything from flexible gigantic blades for windmills to using sea kelp as a biofuel. Thirteen percent of ARPA-E projects result in patents. ARPA-E is modeled on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which laid the groundwork for the Internet. It only takes one big success like that to make it all worthwhile. Even Rick Perry has praised the program, calling it "impressive" and "simply a preview of our possibilities," and touting it as one of the reasons the department "has had and is having such a profound impact on American lives."

One major argument for funding innovation is that new technologies create change around the world. It's the simplest way of having a global impact. The "snowball effect" simply amplifies that benefit, since innovation begets more innovation.

Bottom line: We need more funding for these activities, not less. Congress took a step in the right direction in the latest funding bill with a modest boost to ARPA-E's budget. And, as I wrote in an earlier post, states like California should jump in with funding of their own.

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

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Daniel Farber | April 13, 2018

Promoting Energy Innovation

An MIT professor has a great idea for a molten metal battery that could outperform lithium batteries. Of course, like many great ideas, this one might not pan out. But even if it does pan out technically, Grist explains one reason why it might never get to the commercial stage: Ultimately, the thing that makes […]

James Goodwin | April 12, 2018

At House Judiciary Hearing, CPR’s Hammond Calls Out Efforts to Rig Environmental Review Process

This morning, CPR Member Scholar and George Washington University Law Professor Emily Hammond is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law at a hearing that will look at two highly flawed bills. While their particulars differ, each is conspicuously (if a bit clumsily) designed to rig […]

Matthew Freeman | April 11, 2018

CPR’s 2018 Op-Eds, Part One

CPR’s Member Scholars and staff are off to a fast start on the op-ed front in 2018. We list them all on our op-ed page, but here’s a quick roundup of pieces they’ve placed so far. Member Scholar Alejandro Camacho joins his UC-Irvine colleague Michael Robinson-Dorn in a piece published by The Conversation. In “Turning power […]

Evan Isaacson | April 9, 2018

Halftime for the Chesapeake Bay: New Webpage on Midpoint Assessment of Pollution Cleanup Effort

The Center for Progressive Reform has been closely watching the development and implementation of the Chesapeake Bay restoration plan since its inception. As part of our ongoing commitment to ensure the success of the plan, known as the Bay TMDL, we have developed a new web-based resource focused on the issues and decisions related to the TMDL's midpoint assessment […]

David Flores | April 5, 2018

New Policy Research from CPR’s Verchick Featured in Royal Society Report on Paris Climate Accord

A new report in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A published earlier this week presents a suite of new scientific and policy research meant to improve and drive forward progress under the Paris Climate Agreement. The report – from the oldest science journal in the western world – is the culmination of presentations […]

Daniel Farber | April 2, 2018

Climate Change in the Courts

There are three important climate lawsuits pending in federal court. Here’s the state of play and what to expect next. In the first case, Oakland and San Francisco sued leading oil companies. They claim that the companies’ production and sale of fossil fuels is a public nuisance under California state law. They seek an abatement […]

Joel Eisen | March 30, 2018

Coal and Nuclear Plant Bailout Would Be Unjustified Use of DOE’s Emergency Authority

It's no secret that the Trump administration and coal companies have drawn a bullseye on reversing coal's declining fortunes in wholesale electricity markets, where competition and inexpensive natural gas have driven coal's market share down from 50 percent in 1990 to about 30 percent today. Feeling bullish about their prospects in a sympathetic administration, owners […]

Evan Isaacson | March 29, 2018

What Happens on the Land Happens to the Water

This post is part of an ongoing series on the midpoint assessment and long-term goals of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. In my last post, I described how a database housed by the Maryland Department of the Environment allows tracking of land development activities in real time. This database not only gives us the ability to track […]

| March 28, 2018

What the Failure to Account for Growth Looks Like in Maryland

This post is part of an ongoing series on the midpoint assessment and long-term goals of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. In a recent post, I described the broad failure of Chesapeake Bay states to follow EPA’s basic expectations to account for pollution growth under the restoration framework known as the Bay TMDL. This failure is one […]