Full Title: Across the “Second Valley of Death”: Designing Successful Energy Demonstration Projects
Author(s): David M. Hart
Publisher(s): Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Publication Date: July 1, 2017
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Technology demonstration projects pose one of the most difficult challenges in energy-innovation policy. They are necessary to build an adequate portfolio of clean-energy options that have the potential to be deployed globally on a massive scale in the coming decades. They require public investment; private investors will not fully fund them. But the federal government’s track record of selecting, funding, and managing these projects is not encouraging. The title of the leading study of the subject, The Technology Pork Barrel (which was published in 1991 and based on projects carried out in the 1970s and early 1980s), conveys its conclusion: Demonstration projects almost inevitably become “technological turkeys.”