Most clean energy advocates believe that the world has all the low-carbon technologies
needed to effectively address climate change. In their view, we don’t need technology
breakthroughs; we need political breakthroughs that will establish regulatory mandates,
subsidies for clean energy, and taxes on “dirty energy” that will drive widespread
deployment of clean energy technologies. Unfortunately, this widely held “Deployment
Consensus” is largely misguided: existing technologies still cost more, often substantially
more, than fossil fuels, while exhibiting sub-optimal performance. Only when clean energy
is cheaper than fossil fuels will it be massively deployed globally because countries,
companies, and individuals will want to adopt it—not out of civic mindedness, but out of
self-interest. And the only way for that to happen is through a robust global clean energy
innovation strategy.