An energy system transformation: Framing research choices for the climate challenge

摘要

Effective climate change mitigation policy must accomplish the transformation of modern industrial economies from a high-carbon, low-efficiency energy system to a low-carbon, high-efficiency alternative. The scale of this transformation dwarfs that of most prior problems of technology policymaking. Success requires the development, commercialization, and diffusion of many "suites" of complementary energy technologies throughout society. Effective research policy will pursue the best way to generate and coordinate a range of parallel changes, both macro and micro, in the way economies produce, distribute, and use energy. It must also confront the shifts in corporate and national power that will inevitably accompany this transformation. These ends, and not success in any one technology, should be the goal of the research policy choices we make.