The aim of this broad sweep through the area of energy innovation, highlighting the main actors, activities, policies, institutions, and their interactions that eventually underlie energy technology development and deployment, was to present an overview of the current state of and challenges to energy innovation.
A diverse cast of actors, with flows of finances, technology, and knowledge among them, are involved in energy technology innovation. Various policies (e.g., energy, fiscal, trade, competitiveness, environmental), as well as other macroeconomic and institutional factors, shape this ‘‘energy innovation system’’ and also influence its output.
Most energy technology development takes place within firms, although other organizations (e.g., government laboratories, universities) also contribute to this process. Governments and the private sector direct large expenditures toward energy research & development.
Although most of the world’s activities on energy technology innovation focus on users and consumers in the commercial energy arena, there are much smaller but parallel innovation subsystems that focus on the energy service needs of the poor in developing countries. Many of the actors in these subsystems are often quite different from the actors in the mainstream energy innovation system, although there are linkages between the two groups and their activities.
Trends in global renewable energy research & development expenditures give some cause for concern due to the burgeoning challenges facing the energy systems, although the potential for meeting these challenges may be hobbled more by ineffective deployment of suitable energy technologies than by insufficient energy research & development.
For any new energy technology, the move from the pre competitive stage to deployment faces numerous barriers. Thus, successful energy innovation requires concerted, synergistic, and sustained efforts by a range of actors, institutions, and policies not only to develop technologies but also to bring them to the marketplace.
Government policies such as moving toward full cost energy pricing are perhaps the most important drivers of energy innovation by creating a demand for new and improved energy technologies that, in turn, creates an impetus for energy research & development as well as deployment.
Although there have been a number of efforts in different countries to guide the energy innovation system, much more effort will be needed to enable it to meet the energy-related challenges facing humanity. We know a fair bit about some aspects of energy technology innovation (e.g., energy r&d inputs, various actors and interactions among them, deployment issues), but we know much less about some others (e.g., efficiency and effectiveness of energy research & development, sufficiency in relation to challenges). Improving the understanding of such issues, and finding the social and political will to act on the lessons that emerge, will ultimately determine our ability to meet these daunting challenges.
