Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System

Richard K. Lester · David M. Hart

Oct 2011 · MIT Press

About this ebook

Experts outline a plan to overhaul the U.S. energy innovation system for accelerated, large-scale adoption of reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy technologies.

Energy innovation offers us our best chance to solve the three urgent and interrelated problems of climate change, worldwide insecurity over energy supplies, and rapidly growing energy demand. But if we are to achieve a timely transition to reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy, the U.S. energy innovation system must be radically overhauled.

Unlocking Energy Innovation outlines an up-to-the-minute plan for remaking America's energy innovation system by tapping the country's entrepreneurial strengths and regional diversity in both the public and private spheres. “Business as usual” will not fill the energy innovation gap. Only the kind of systemic, transformative changes to our energy innovation system described in this provocative book will help us avert the most dire scenarios and achieve a sustainable and secure energy future.

About the author

Richard K. Lester is Japan Steel Industry Professor and Head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and Founding Director of MIT's Industrial Performance Center. He is the author or coauthor of The Productive Edge and other books.

David M. Hart is Professor in the School of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy at George Mason University. He is the author of Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921–1953. He served as Assistant Director for Innovation Policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2011 to 2012.