How to Solve the Energy Crisis

• A recent study from researchers at MIT underscores the major problems for the future of energy. With many of today’s methods not working, the study suggests ways to improve innovation for energy technology.
• With some of the best ideas including tidal power and artificial photosynthesis, the future of energy technology clearly relies on innovation. A new study from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) highlights how business strategies and investment policies could encourage energy-related innovation.
  Students and faculty from nine departments assisted in the study, which was coordinated by MIT’s Industrial Performance Center. Their conclusion was startling: without radical social and economic changes, the world is unlikely to avoid the consequences of climate change or find a reliable, renewable energy source.
  “We face a very big innovation challenge over the next few decades, bigger than most people recognize. And the system as a whole isn’t close to being up to the task,” said Richard Lester, the Japan Steel Industry Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. The study is the basis for a book, Unlocking Energy Innovation, coauthored by Lester and David Hart, a professor of public policy at George Mason University.
  In the study, researchers noted four different phases of innovation technology. First, new technology is discovered and then prototypes are developed. Next, companies implement initial full-scale versions. In the final stage, technology already in commercial use is fine-tuned.
  The researchers found that the two middle stages (developing prototypes and implementing the first full-scale versions) lack management and often become a “valley of death” for managing and funding innovation. To encourage growth at these and other stages, the researchers suggest fostering competition and requiring timely decisions on new concepts.
  They also suggest a region-based system to encourage speed in innovation. “The federal government is structurally unable to play this role effectively,” Lester said. This method “would expand the scale of the energy-innovation system considerably, but reduce the federal role.”
  With the energy shortage more apparent now than ever before, scientists and others in the energy industry must work to improve not only innovation but also how innovation is approached.