The Challenges of Scale and Sustainability in U.S. Energy Policy

The pace of technology improvement and deployment could significantly reduce the cost of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations and improve the nation's energy security. Given the need for a large-scale energy transformation, the challenge is to move toward actions that go beyond technology R&D to strategies that target the rapid and large-scale absorption of clean energy technologies into the economy. However, there are numerous barriers to the commercialization and deployment of technology innovations; those that are imposed by administrators, legislatures, and regulators are particularly of interest as they operate at cross-purposes with the U.S. government's GHG reduction goals. This talk focuses on these public policy issues, particularly the challenges of scale and sustainability.