Technology policy and global warming: Why new policy models are needed (or why putting new wine in old bottles won't work)

By David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson, Ben R. Martin. 2010

412 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent years, the threat of global climate change has come to be seen as one of the most serious confronting humanity. To meet this challenge will require the development of new technologies and the substantial improvement of existing ones, as well as ensuring their prompt and widespread deployment. Some have argued that the urgency of the situation requires a "Manhattan Project" or an "Apollo Program". This paper examines why such a policy model is inappropriate, arguing that the nature of the policy context for confronting climate change necessitates a different kind of technology policy than that for building an atomic bomb or for achieving a manned lunar landing. Instead, it seeks to draw lessons from three sectors that seem to be more pertinent and where government technological development and deployment programs have been pursued with some success in the United States - namely, agriculture, biomedical research and information technology. It compares and contrasts these with the policies pursued with regard to the first two of these sectors in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for the design of policies supporting technological development and innovation to address the problem of global climate change.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1085f17eebff383a020f155469ea22310506d8f0

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In Economics and Econometrics

In Global and Planetary Change

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

The two faces of market support—How deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry (2013, background): “Therefore, a question of significant importance is how public policies can foster technological progress in the field of clean energy technologies (e.g. Mowery et al., 2010).”
Technology transfer, climate change mitigation, and environmental patent impact on sustainability and economic growth: A comparison of European countries (2020, background): “In addition, governments in various countries have developed programs to facilitate the development and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies (Jong et al., 2016; Mowery et al., 2010; Watson et al., 2015).”
Beyond market failures: the market creating and shaping roles of state investment banks (2016, neutral): “In recent years, there have been calls for a return to such policies to address “grand societal challenges” (see Mowery, Nelson, and Martin 2010).”
Innovation Policy for Grand Challenges. An Economic Geography Perspective (2015, background): “…or the Apollo project) is a greater appreciation of and attention for broad system transformation (Borrás and Edler 2014), demand side policies (Mowery et al. 2010) and transformative change, i.e. radical, long-term alterations in both production and consumption that significantly modify ©…”
Environmental and climate innovation: Limitations, policies and prices (2013, background): “Mowery et al. (2010) conclude from research in agricultural, biomedical and information technology that a focus on major, radical innovations and deviant technologies is needed.”