1

The ICARUS Project

1.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector looking at the past

2.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector through Expert Elicitation

3.  Projecting into the future

MAIN PURPOSE: Improve modeling of innovation in Integrated Assessment models, accounting for the crucial fact that innovation is an uncertain process

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Learning from the past

•  Drivers of Innovation

(demand-pull versus supply effects, crowding-out public/private,

energy/non energy)

•  Knowledge stock, international and intersectoral spillovers

•  Drivers of Diffusion (focus on IPR regimes, absorptive capacity)

•  Energy Technologies Innovation Case Studies

19-20 May 2011, Venice: International Workshop on “Innovation in

energy technologies: what can we learn from patent data?” Organized by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, International Center for Climate Governance and Centro

Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici in collaboration with the OECD and Tilburg University

3

The ICARUS Project

1.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector looking at the past

2.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector through Expert Elicitation

3.  Projecting into the future

MAIN PURPOSE: Improve modeling of innovation in Integrated Assessment models, accounting for the crucial fact that innovation is an uncertain process

4

Elicitation of experts

Experts’ opinion on: •  the current state of efficiency and cost of

technologies •  the role of R&D programs in reaching breakthroughs

(focus on 2030) •  diffusion of technologies after breakthroughs (focus on

2050)

Understand the supply of prominent technologies : experts’ opinions on subjective probabilities on the future states of selected technologies, conditional on the level of funding

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Technologies Investigated

Biofuels for transportation

Storage for transportation (Electric Drive Vehicles)

Solar technologies (PV and CSP)

Nuclear (with Harvard)

CCS (with University of Massachusetts)

Bioenergy

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Solar Survey Expert Pool

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US- EU Comparison

•  7-8 April 2011, Venice: International Workshop on “The role of nuclear power in meeting future climate and energy challenges” •  The objective of the Workshop is to present the main results of an expert elicitation survey that was conducted both in the United States and in the European Union

•  Organized by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, the Science Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard University Kennedy School, and International Center for Climate Governance in collaboration with the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change.

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The ICARUS Project

1.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector looking at the past

2.  Understanding Innovation in Energy sector through Expert Elicitation

3.  Projecting into the future

MAIN PURPOSE: Improve modeling of innovation in Integrated Assessment models, accounting for the crucial fact that innovation is an uncertain process

9

Using numbers in the WITCH model

Running one single stochastic scenario (instead of several deterministic) in which a set of possible states of the world can materialize

Link the probability of commercially succesfully technologies to R&D expenditure using the opinions of the experts and use these probabilities to populate the scenario tree

Understand the value of technology considering the R&D investments needed for technology success

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CCS Nuclear energy

Wind & Solar

Bioerg pot.

On/High   X X X X

Off/Low  

Each node is weighted by a probability

linked to the R&D expenditure required to get to that state of

nature with that probability (according to experts’ opinion)

Each

nod

e is

a p

erm

utat

ion

of

tech

nolo

gy s

tatu

s

2030 or 2050 Today

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Using numbers in IAMs

Data collected will be made available to the modeling community so that other models can include them and perform analogous analyses

ISSUES: •  How to estrapolate the global RD&D portfolio expenditure

from US- and EU-centered expert’s opinions

•  How high and low cost (potentials/availability) of technologies can be harmonized across modelling groups (this is an issue in common with the whole EMF24 exercise)

•  How to report results from uncertainty group in a intelligible and policy relevant way?

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Organizing collected data for other IAMs

August 2011, Snowmass: Workshop on RD&D Portfolios and innovation uncertainty in collaboration with W. Nordhaus, Yale University

www.icarus-project.org