SCALE AND TECHNOLOGICAL
CHANGE FOR ENERGY
SUSTAINABILITY
Thomas J. Wilbanks
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Center for International Development
Harvard University
December 7, 2004
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The Topic “Scale and Technological Change
For Energy Sustainability” Weaves Together
Several Strands of Research Over Thirty Years
or So:
• Energy for sustainability: meeting enormous needs
for energy services while reducing environmental
impacts
• Accelerating rates of technological change, especially
in developing countries, to promote economic
development
• Roles of geographic scale in understanding and
encouraging actions in the interest of sustainability
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Energy For Sustainability:
• According to Our Common Journey, one of the most
profound challenges for a sustainability transition, calling
for new “knowledge-action collaboratives,” is increasing
energy and materials services while reducing environmental
impacts from the associated supply systems
• Analyses from the 1992 Rio Conference suggest the
magnitude of this challenge
• My perspectives draw on nearly 30 years of research and
assessment on energy and the environment:
• In the U.S., an evolving discourse on what makes sense: e.g., from
1970s energy policy development to 2002+ CETE
• In developing countries, on the ground work in more than 40
countries over 20+ years
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Accelerating Rates of Technological
Change:
• Where my academic career started…
• Attention for 30 years to determinants, especially in
developing countries:
• Issues in technology transfer
• Institution-building for technology transfer and use
• Lessons learned from success experiences
• IEA book elements concerned with “technology
deployment”
• Other work at ORNL on “energy transitions” -- not just
where we want to get but also how to get from here to
there
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Barbados Solar Water Heater
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Roles of Geographic Scale in Actions That
Work Toward Sustainability:
• Related to the emphasis of sustainability science on
place-based studies as crucibles for integrating naturesociety systems and interactions
• The AAG “Global Change and Local Places” project,
1996-2001
• A variety of other recent experiences, such as NACC,
IPCC/AIACC, MA, and place-based projects
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The Basic Challenges in Accelerating An
Energy Transition Are:
• Visualizing where we need to get
• Assessing the most likely strategies for getting
there
• Identifying and addressing the principal
challenges
• Plotting the course from here to there
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The Heart of Energy Sustainability Is The Most
Fundamental Energy Transition Since the
Shift from Wood to Fossil Fuels:
• In the context of much higher global consumption of energy
services than now
• Moving toward energy systems that feature, by the latter half of
this century:
• Much higher levels of efficiency than at present
• Most of our energy services from the sun and/or the atom
• Most of the prominent energy technologies different from
technologies we know now
• A shift toward technological innovativeness, away from
physical resource endowment
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The Most Likely Strategies for Getting
There:
• Recognize constraints:
• Growing demands and needs
• Limits on what current technologies can contribute
— Fossil too dirty
— Nuclear too hazardous
— Renewables too small and expensive
— Efficiency linked to a depletable resource
• Push the boundaries of all the currently acceptable technology
options:
• Adding together multiple “wedges”
• Paying specific attention to transitions: the “how” as well as the “what”
• Move beyond incrementalism:
• Strengthen connections between basic research and applied research
• Invest in R&D to make new options possible: e.g., near ambient temperature
superconductivity, affordable fuel cells, carbon capture
• Consider new science/technology approaches: e.g., energy through
biotechnology
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Limits on the Use of Current Energy
Technologies For Getting There
(after Hoffert et al., Science, 2002)
• Efficiency improvement: physical limits, declining returns on
investment, magnitude of growth on energy service demands
• Decarbonization: enormous requirements for capture and
sequestration to make a difference globally, technology limitations
• Renewable energy: low areal power densities, intermittency, scaleup requirements to power an urban-industrial complex
• Nuclear fission: fuel availability, waste disposal, proliferation
• Nuclear fusion: not yet close to demonstrating net electric power
production
• Geoengineering: costs, potentials for unintended consequences
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An Example of an Energy Transition
Challenge -- DOE’s Goal of MarketCompetitive Hydrogen Vehicles by 2020:
• Science and technology challenges include:
• High-density hydrogen storage
• Affordable fuel cells (non-noble metal catalysts)
• Deployment challenges include:
• Safety codes and standards for hydrogen production,
storage, transmission, and use
• Centralized or decentralized hydrogen production?
• Fuel supply infrastructures: transmission, storage, point-ofpurchase supply (hydrogen service stations?)
• Vehicle maintenance infrastructures
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Illustrating Linkages Between Basic Research and
Applied Energy R&D: Focusing Inward on the Applied
Need
Catalysis
Separation
Sciences
Carbon
Capture
Separation
Sciences
Microbial
Processes
Hydrogen
Production
and Use
Nanostructured
Materials (for Storage)
Electrochemistry
Welding and
Joining Sciences
Improved
Batteries
Superconductivity
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Efforts to Trace Out Plausible Trajectories of
Change Have Found the Way Difficult:
• Discomfort with developing scenarios of longer-term
change, e.g.,
• Projecting technological change
• Projecting institutional change
• Discomfort with considering positive changes in policy conditions and
constraints
• Challenges in addressing plausible decisions by major
developing countries
• Avoiding tradeoffs between environmental sustainability
and economic sustainability: e.g., efficiency improvement
with abundant services, renewable energy sources with
affordable energy, what “well-being” means
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Motor Vehicle Use In New Delhi,
in thousands (Pew Center)
Year
Scooters and
Motorcycles
Auto/
Rickshaws
Cars/
Jeeps
Taxis
Buses
Trucks
All
1971
93
10
57
4
3
14
180
1980
334
20
117
6
8
36
521
1990
1,077
45
327
5
11
82
1,547
2000
1,568
45
853
8
18
94
2,584
2010
2,958
103
1472
14
39
223
4,809
2020
6,849
209
2760
28
73
420
10,339
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How Do We Get From Here to There -Faster Than “Business as Usual”?
• Accelerating technological change in key countries
and localities
• Considering complementary roles of different
scales of decision-making and action
• Toward the main elements of a strategy (a
hypothesis?)
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What Do We Know About Accelerating
Technological Change?
• Determinants of technological change:
• A complex process, involving interplays between technology
characteristics and market characteristics
• Rooted in a changing portfolio of technologies available
• A fragile equilibrium between “supply push” and “demand pull”
• Special circumstances in developing countries:
• Determining needs for energy services, beyond current demands
(IEA: 1.6 billion now without access to electricity)
• Rapid growth in needs, especially if N-S gaps are to be reduced
• Limited influence on global technology and policy agendas
• Limited capacities to assimilate relatively rapid changes:
—
—
—
Capacity to accept risks
Infrastructures for technology support: e.g., maintenance
Infrastructures for problem-solving
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Technology Deployment Process (Schematic)
Market
Competitiveness
Cost
Market
Size
Market
Competition
Scale
Basic
Research
Applied
R&D
Technology
Development
Technology
Demonstration
Technology
Adaptation
Target
Niche
Marketing
Market
Market
Penetration
Saturation
Institutional
Structures
Infrastructure
Suitability
Social and
Environmental
Consequences
Public Policy
Assistance
Social
Change
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The Technology Development
Process
Typical
Technology
Use
Current
Commercial
State-of-the-Art
Current
Technology
Frontier
State of Technology Development
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Balancing “Push” and “Pull Forces:
Demand
Pull
Supply
Push
Technology Supply:
Services, CostCompetitiveness,
Marketing
Technology
Deployment
Technology Demand:
Consumer Needs,
Consumer Preferences,
Market Conditions
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Some Challenges Related To The
Fruits of Global Energy R&D Agendas:
• Mismatches in technology characteristics:
• Scale
• Affordability
• Robustness
• Fine-grained differences in what makes sense: “one size
does not fit all” vs. economies of scale
• Gaps in technology portfolios, e.g.:
• Solar cooling
• Energy and resource-efficient industrial complexes
• Acceptable ways to dispose of nuclear wastes
• Weak knowledge-action collaboration, especially in
developing countries: e.g., PACER in India
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There Are Reasons To Believe That Reaching
Sustainable Energy System Goals Will Need
Local-Scale Initiatives As Well as Global-Scale
Initiatives:
• Experiences since the late 1990s with global agreements
and national policy actions contrasted with experiences
with regional and local actions
• Based on GCLP, enhancing local potentials for GHG
emission reduction depends on:
• Recognizing that local stakeholders often possess knowledge
bases not reflected in available data bases
• Giving local communities greater control of a significant portion of
their emissions
• Increasing a perception that emission reduction is in the interest
of the area
• Giving local communities access to technological and institutional
means that are not currently available
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Developing an Effective Multi-Scale
Approach:
• Agency vs. structure
• Scale and function
• Scale differences
• Variance
• Knowledge bases
• Cross-scale interactions
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Some Implications of This Story Line:
• Over-emphasis on top-down forces threatens
sustainability: backlash from disenfranchised local
stakeholders, insensitivity to local contexts, lack of
empowerment of local creativity
• Over-emphasis on bottom-up forces threatens
sustainability: importance of larger-scale driving
forces, insensitivity to larger-scale issues, lack of
information about linkages between places and scales,
lack of access to resources
• But philosophies, processes, structures, and
knowledge are lacking to assure balance and effective
interactions
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Toward The Main Elements of a Strategy:
 Seek to combine top-down and bottom-up roles, drawing on
distinctive contributions of each but emphasizing the power of
local initiatives:
 Top-down roles:
 The technology portfolio, suited to local realities (relating R&D
agendas more closely to user needs)
 Availability of financing through distributed mechanisms (e.g., rural
electrification in DR (1980s), growing credit card use in W. India)
 Market and policy conditions that promote and empower local roles
 Supporting infrastructures, such as technology standards and
problem-solving
 Bottom-up roles:
 Relevance of the strategy to local agendas:
 Contributions to reducing current local stresses
 Bundling of energy technology characteristics with other valued
attributes (e.g., India refrigerators)
 Demonstration of technology performance under local conditions
 Incentives for support by local parties with influence
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Toward The Main Elements of a Strategy
(contd.):
 Bottom-up roles (contd.):
 Importance of local leadership: identify and work through
effective local leaders who are interested
 A mosaic of different local responses as a part of the strategy,
rather than as a part of the problem
 Central issues:
 Breaking new ground in complex and changing institutional
contexts:
 Overcoming top-down inclinations to exercise control
 Finding and building capacities of the right local partners
 Building relationships across scales that embody credibility and
trust (sometimes through boundary organizations): relationships
are processes, not events -- can take time…
 Turning isolated success experiences into models for others:
challenges in generalizing from somewhat unique cases
 Understanding that some (many?) promising efforts may fail
because of external conditions
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Toward The Main Elements of a Strategy
(contd.):
 Central issues (contd.):
 Improving information exchanges involving local
parties:
 Appropriate and relevant structures and modes
 Key roles of local experts
 Potential applications of the information technology revolution
 Why should the U.S. care (PCAST/CETE)?
 Because sustainability is so essential…
 Because energy sustainability is in our own interest:
 Trade
 Environmental management
 National security
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