Full Title: Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation
Author(s): Harvard University Belfer Center
Publisher(s): Harvard University Belfer Center
Publication Date: November 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The United States and the world need a revolution in energy technology—a revolution that would im- prove the performance of our energy systems to face the challenges ahead. A dramatic increase in the pace of energy innovation is crucial to meet the challenges of:
• Energy and national security, to address the dangers of undue reliance on dwindling supplies of oil increasingly concentrated in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and to limit the connection between nuclear energy and the spread of nuclear weapons;
• Environmental sustainability, to reduce the wide range of environmental damages due to energy production and use, from ne particulate emissions at coal plants, to oil spills, to global climate disruption; and
• Economic competitiveness, to seize a signi cant share of the multi-trillion-dollar clean energy technology market and improve the balance of payments by increasing exports, while reducing the hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year on importing oil.