Speaker: Gregory Nemet, La Follette School of Public Affairs
Abstract: Meaningfully addressing the large scale challenges associated with the way we use and consume energy -- including security of supply, air pollution, and climate change -- will require transformation of the global energy system. Designing policies to encourage this change in societally beneficial directions is plagued by an array of uncertainties. In particular, attempts to model optimal policy design reach vastly different normative conclusions depending on assumptions about the expected rate of technical change and the extent to which government actions can affect it. Empirical work on parameterizing technical change is plagued by concerns about the inherent stochasticity of the process of innovation and the idiosyncrasies of individual technologies. Still, the search for useful models of technological change continues. This talk presents recent efforts to model the process of technological change in low-carbon energy technologies.