The rise and fall of public funding for energy research

摘要

The scale of energy R&D and particularly the amount of public funding available for it has varied considerably over the last 40 years. The 1970s oil shocks and concerns about vulnerability to energy supply disruptions prompted governments in the industrial world to increase their support for energy R&D. Amongst the International Energy Agency countries budgets doubled between 1974 and 1978 and continued to grow into the 1980s.