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ID:
162345
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent climate change initiatives, such as ‘Mission Innovation’ launched alongside the Paris Agreement in 2015, urge redoubled research into innovative low carbon technologies. However, climate change is an urgent problem – emissions reductions must take place rapidly throughout the coming decades. This raises an important question: how long might it take for individual technologies to emerge from research, find market opportunities and make a tangible impact on emissions reductions? Here, we consider historical evidence for the time a range of energy supply and energy end-use technologies have taken to emerge from invention, diffuse into the market and reach widespread deployment. We find considerable variation, from 20 to almost 70 years. Our findings suggest that the time needed for new technologies to achieve widespread deployment should not be overlooked, and that innovation policy should focus on accelerating the deployment of existing technologies as well as research into new ones.
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| 2 |
ID:
180863
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| Summary/Abstract |
Delivering net zero by 2050 will require governments to utilise all available abatement opportunities, yet current policy largely ignores socially-driven mitigation in favour of technological innovation in the energy sector. Past energy transitions have typically taken several decades, but policymakers remain confident that low carbon technology can be deployed in time for a 2050 mitigation target. We consider the potential for social transitions to deliver emissions reductions within this time frame. Based on detailed analysis of 12 past transitions, we develop frameworks for technological and social transitions which draw out the relationships between progress, policy and diffusion. Using our generalised frameworks we compare the duration of transitions, finding that the technological transitions in our study take on average four decades longer than the social transitions to go from initial conception to market or behaviour saturation. Our evidence suggests that policymakers who continue to rely on technology transitions to reduce emissions will be unable to deliver climate targets by 2050. By engaging with the public to stimulate social transitions governments could have more impact, more swiftly. Only by utilising both technological and social transitions can policymakers hope to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
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