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How much more research can you do, realistically? If we want any chance at meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement we (the whole world) need to be at net zero emissions in at most twenty years (assuming a linear reduction starting now!). That doesn't seem to be enough time to go from research to market. We already have the technology we need. More research might make it cheaper, or it might not. But more money for deploying the technology we have has an immediate effect.

By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the emissions from the developing world are coming from consumption that happens in the rich countries. A carbon tax that is also applied to imports would be a pretty good incentive for countries like China to push harder for carbon neutrality (not that they're currently not pushing harder than most of the western countries).

We think it's very effective to spend more. Consider that, globally, only $22 billion in public funds are spent on clean energy R&D annually—this is only 0.02% of World GDP. For comparison, world energy expenditure was 6% of the World's GDP. This means we spend about 300 times as much on energy than on making energy better.

Why is there so little investment in clean energy innovation?

Generally, basic R&D is under-supplied at both the private and public level. There are several theoretical reasons for this:

On a global level, basic clean energy R&D is under-supplied by both governments and the private sector. Why? Because it suffers from the free-rider problem, as all basic R&D and public goods do. Countries and firms can just let others do the basic research and then reap the benefits because knowledge is hard to protect internationally. Private R&D cannot be protected perfectly because patents expire or industry know-how diffuses to other firms and not all rents from investments can be captured. This results in a socially suboptimal investment.

In other words, additional public investment through basic R&D funding and subsidies increase social surplus, because private capital can only capture a fraction of the social surplus pie. Generally, venture capital and the market neglect capital-intensive, high-risk, high-return, long time-horizon investments.

Clean energy R&D, in particular, is under-supplied because externalities of carbon are not priced adequately, leading to insufficient commercial applications for clean energy R&D.

So, advanced economies should be spending much more on clean energy R&D. This view is shared by a number of academics, international organizations, and members of the private sector, including:

1. Daron Acemoglu, the most cited economic scholar in the recent decade, who argues that optimal climate change policy requires both carbon pricing and subsidies for clean energy research. Clean energy research should be heavily front-loaded to carbon taxation, which can be phased in gradually to minimize switching costs for industry.[19] This argument is not about how high carbon taxes should be in absolute terms or when exactly they should come. It merely suggests that we need to prioritize clean energy R&D, because it would not make much sense to create better clean energy technology later this century. In short, there is good reason to prioritize clean energy R&D.

2. The International Energy Agency notes that public R&D on energy technologies grew at an average rate of only 2% per year in the last 5 years.[20] For that reason, they argue that more spending on public and private clean energy R&D would be productive and is needed.[21]

3. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition,[22] a private sector coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates, has started a venture to invest in breakthrough energy projects. According to recent analyses, public energy R&D can productively absorb large amounts of additional funding[23] and should increase 5-fold to be socially optimal. The US R&D budgets should even increase 10-fold.[24]

A 2018 meta-analysis summarized the results of several studies[25] that all asked several experts by how much clean energy prices if clean energy R&D were to increase. The meta-analysis concludes:

"[...] experts largely believe that increased public RD&D investments will result in reductions in future technology costs by 2030, although possibly with diminishing marginal returns. [....] for all technologies, experts see the possibility of breakthroughs that would make the technology cost competitive, envisioning sustained annual rates of cost reduction on the order of 10 percent per year. Moreover, such breakthroughs appear more likely under higher RD&D."[26]

The results from these experts surveys: moving from low to medium or high R&D investment scenarios might decrease clean energy costs by several percent.

You can find all citations and the full report here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy

Thanks for the references! I'll have a look and update my opinion.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

> Why is there so little investment in clean energy innovation?

Because the expected value of ROI is not strong.

Of course, that's ultimately it. I was just attempting to explain why this is and why there is a market failure. Because carbon externalities are not fully internalized.

The problem though is inherent in clean energy forms given that most of them are not really going to provide us with anything even close go the energy density and dual use as especially oil(ex plastic) but also to some extent coal an nuclear.

I have been trying to find things to invest in in this area and its not really positive what Ive realized. We made most of the big discoveries and breakthroughs with fossil fuels and nuclear and there just isnt that many other opportunities out there to do anything with the density of ex coal which makes it hard to compete with since both ex sun and wind would need backup of either coal or nuclear which at the moments isnt factored into the price of sun and wind.

Fuell cells is also far far away for now which leaves fusion but that require ex magnetic force that can contain plasma.

In other words at the end of the day if we want to continue to live modern lives with all its benefits, if we want other countries to improve their lives too, its time to be honest and realize that fossil fuels and nuclear is going to be our primary source of energy for a long long time.

I would love to be proven wrong and would invest right away but i fear we will have to accept whatever the climate will throw at us and adopt as we have for thousands of years.

Nuclear is clean energy, so more nuclear and less fossil fuel is already a win. Investments are needed here, though I can't say whether they're good from investor's POV.

Yeah but nuclear isnt politically in vogue

Money can move politics. Also, while large plants are definitely not popular right now, small reactors just might. There's been some work done in miniaturizing nuclear reactors; it may be worth looking into.

Nuclear reactors are already miniaturized. That's what we use on nuclear powered ships and subs. They're also safer than utility scale. SMRs can be mass produced under strict QA, transported and assembled on site and offer important safety guarantees.

https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits

> Nuclear is clean energy

Except the biggest problems with nuclear has to do with extremely hazardous materials.

This is quite literally a non-problem. Next-gen plants will happily burn this waste, but even without them, I don't think you realize how little of that waste is generated per gigawatt hour - on the order of 150 grams. It's dangerous, sure (just like a lot of other chemical waste we produce on industrial scale), but we know how to store it well, and there's so little of it. If you reprocess the waste (take out the parts that can be used again as fuel), you end up with a nasty chemical sludge with half-life on the order of only 40 years, which is not that much. Storing that waste over centuries is a difficult problem, but is a really nice problem to have compared to making the planet uninhabitable and/or shutting down civilization.

I agree that is a mostly solved problem.

It still seems weird to call nuclear "clean", when the thing you have to obsess over is not leaking one of the deadliest materials in existence.

But I suppose you could argue it's cleaner than everything else (when considering manufacturing).

There's plenty to worry about not leaking in solar too; nothing high-tech is truly clean, especially if you consider manufacturing.

Anyways, despite being near-synonymous with "renewable", I always understood "clean" in "clean energy" to mean "doesn't pollute the atmosphere". Nuclear doesn't pollute the atmosphere, so it qualifies. Even if you extend it to "doesn't pollute the environment", nuclear generally doesn't, as the little waste that's produced is stored as a part of the process - as opposed to waste products of traditional fossil fuel plants. Some new reactor designs allow you to further burn the waste, making it almost truly non-polluting in the general sense.

In all honesty, like many pro-nuclear people, I do emphasize calling nuclear "clean energy" on purpose, precisely to counter people like 'ThomPete upthread who lump together nuclear with fossil fuels. While still having some (and admittedly dangerous if mishandled) waste, in terms of cleanness, nuclear is really much much closer to solar & wind than it is to coal and gas - it is an ecological source, and grouping it together with fossil sources makes people dismiss one of the more effective ways at generating power in climate-protecting way.

> and grouping it together with fossil sources makes people dismiss one of the more effective ways at generating power in climate-protecting way.

To play devil's advocate, there's a good reason to group nuclear together with fossil fuel sources: both are thermal power plants, they only differ in the source of the heat. In terms of power generation, nuclear is much closer to coal and gas than it is to solar and wind.

That's fair, but if you want to go this way, you'll end up grouping them together with wind, hydro and concentrated solar, as they're all based on spinning coils around magnets (or the other way around). While this categorization may be useful for some specialized engineering discussions, it's useless when talking about environmental issues. When talking climate, we care about pollution and emissions - both of which put nuclear in the same group as renewables.

(The one potential environmental aspect where "thermal plants" as a category is useful is that thermal plants need a heat sink to operate, which usually means a river or a pond. On the scale of climate issues, however, this is a negligible point that I haven't even seen brought up once by anyone.)

No, the biggest problem with nuclear is that it isn't economically competitive.

> I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the emissions from the developing world are coming from consumption that happens in the rich countries.

That's exactly what's happening. Just look at the US China trade "imbalance".

The point is not to shift responsibility away from advanced economies. They have been responsible for more emissions historically and the carbon footprints of their citizens are much higher.[112] The typical per capita carbon footprint in an emerging economy is only one tonne per year, compared to up to 30 tonnes per year in advanced economies such as the U.S. and Luxembourg[113]. And yes, maybe this disparity is even worse due to the fact that advanced economies are consuming energy-intensive goods that are imported from emerging economies[114]). ]

But the problem of population growth and higher overall populations in emerging economies adopting more energy intensive lifestyles remains. These economies and their citizens are likely to use an enormous amount of cheap energy to grow their economies: Global energy demand is forecasted to rise by 30% as of 2040[119] because energy demand and thus per capita carbon footprints increase in proportion to income.

Also, xarbon tariffs (or border carbon adjustments) might prevent some, but not all,[152] carbon leakage and reduce emissions but are very difficult to calculate and lower trade flows and welfare, especially in emerging economies.[153]

citations here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy

"per capita carbon footprints increase in proportion to income." If this statement is unconditionally true, no one will be willing make the necessary sacrifices to prevent climate change.

If the rich show that they are willing to make some sacrifices and reduce their footprint significantly, then the poor will be more willing to participate in the fight against climate change.

> Advanced economies like the US and EU are prioritizing reducing their own emissions.

I'm not sure we're living in the same US. The USA I live in is one of the few countries not agreeing to climate change, with a subset of its population not even believing it is real.

I'm glad you are doing policy work - it is important. But I'm not ready to declare the problem solved in our own backyards quite yet.

Yes, countries are not doing enough to reduce their own emission either, but this is precisely the reason why clean energy R&D is such a good climate policy. Making clean energy cheaper also makes decarbonizing more politically palatable for advanced economies. Especially the US is worried about economic competitiveness.

One economic model suggests that "if a carbon tax imposes a dollar of cost on the economy, induced innovation will end up reducing that cost to around 70 cents".[72] Given that political acceptability is mainly a function of cost, making clean energy cheaper might make carbon taxes more likely.

The current US administration was considering significant cuts to its energy R&D budget and has not advanced Mission Innovation.

But recently it appears as if a unique window of opportunity has opened up for policy research on the effectiveness of higher and smarter clean energy R&D spending. The Mission Innovation secretariat is now led by the EU and Canada. And it also now appears as if there will be a slight increase to the US energy R&D budget. It might increase further in 2020, because there is a chance of a change in US leadership after the 2020 elections, which might affect clean energy policy.

citations here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/

Show me anything with even remote promise of delivering like coal, oil and nuclear And you will find a swarm of willing investors. The problem is that energy isnt like technology, its about fundamental physics, something we spent almost 200 years exploring. There isnt just some magical solution out there that can compete with fossil fuels unfortunately.

> Show me anything with even remote promise of delivering like coal, oil and nuclear...

Are you mixing in nuclear with coal and oil and calling it a fossil fuel?

Besides, the efficiency of fossil fuels isn't the issue. Their impact on humanity and the planet is the problem we're trying to solve.

No i understand the difference:)

> The problem is that energy isnt like technology, its about fundamental physics

Do you realize that technically, this sentence doesn't make sense ?

It does. I am talking about technology in its broadest interpretation. Fundamental physics is a very different market than the on established on top of microchips.

Wow, and I thought that I was being too obvious here !

You are.

Engineering, unlike fundamental physics, involves worrying about the competitiveness of what you're trying to do, compared to the other ways of solving the problem.

Freeman Dyson pointed out that in engineering, unlike science, competing ways of approaching a problem rarely coexist. The better (including economically better) solutions drive the others to extinction.

Nuclear right now is on the losing end of this competition. Levelized cost of power from new nuclear power plants is not competitive, and it's not competitive by a wide margin. Nuclear is dead tech walking and, absent some a near-miracle that changes this, will go the way of the zeppelin, the reciprocating steam engine, and the vacuum tube. It could persist in niche markets, but for general use it will be dead.

Levelized cost of nuclear IS competitive compared to wind and sun as nuclear has everything factored in including decomission which sun and wind doesn't.

Sun and wind need backup systems either coal, oil or nuclear once you factor those in and factor in that coal will be more expensive because it only has to run as a backup then you realize that wind and solar is not even close to being relevant. That's not factored in.

Sun and wind currently is about 1% of the entire energy market projected to be 4% in 2040.

The levelized cost of nuclear is the same as solar and wind only when you're looking at the operating and decommissioning costs of fully depreciated existing nuclear plants. The levelized cost of NEW nuclear plants, including amortizing the construction and financing cost, is about 4x that of solar or wind.

New nuclear is grotesquely uneconomical, and unless a cost miracle happens it's dead technology walking.

>We compared 10 climate policies that stimulate innovation (e.g. carbon taxes, deployment subsidies, cutting fossil fuel subsidies) and found that increasing government budgets for public clean energy research and development (R&D) is the most effective—even more effective than carbon taxes.

This causality seems tenuous. I'm confused how an enlarged budget for Renewable Energy R&D necessitates a reduction in emissions? There'a lot of jumps being made there.

On the other hand, a carbon tax is straight forward: a tax is applied on carbon, and it creates a "price signal", where fossil fuels products become more expensive relative to those based on cleaner tech. This fundamental price signal--with the price on carbon increasing year over year--incentives investment into renewable energy and clean tech. The market runs full speed towards a clean transition.

How would "carbon taxes become more politically acceptable"? The arrow of causality is in the wrong direction: it is the carbon tax that MAKES clean energy R&D the obvious thing to do.

And finally, there are tons of studies that have explored what a clean energy mix would look like. Here's Stanford professor Mark Jacobson's: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Coun...

The causal model is that clean energy R&D causes better low carbon technology/energy, which is what most experts agree with. The reduced price increases demand and adoption, which in turns lowers emissions.

How R&D makes carbon taxes more acceptable: One economic model suggests that "if a carbon tax imposes a dollar of cost on the economy, induced innovation will end up reducing that cost to around 70 cents".[72] Given that political acceptability is mainly a function of cost, making clean energy cheaper might make carbon taxes more likely.

We need carbon taxes - there's no question about that. I used to think they're the best policy on the margin, but they do have drawbacks- one being political tractability, and now I've think increasing clean energy R&D is more effective and should be prioritized.

I mean, I'm never giving money to an internet stranger for research, no offense.

BUT if you want to have a meaningful impact, maybe you can verify if us internet folks can buy carbon credits (to stimulate innovation and offset our own footprint)?

I'm deeply concerned about how thorough the auditing and accounting and accuracy of carbon-credits is and would encourage passionate people like yourself to answer these questions.