Energy Innovation: Fixing the Technical Fix

By Lewis Perelman

Energy policy is a mess: a tangle of interconnected problems stirred by competing political agendas. Whether it’s soaring fuel prices, noxious pollution, climate worries, security risks, or threats to the economy and jobs, energy politics are vexed by the tendency of single-issue solutions to make other problems worse.

Many look to technology to break the logjam. But current energy technology mostly is either cheap or “clean”—not both.

With "Energy Innovation," Lewis J. Perelman builds on the emerging consensus of leading analysts who insist that accelerating innovation to create new, breakthrough technology is essential to resolving the mess of energy-related problems.

Yet Perelman warns that achieving really effective technical fixes is easier said than done. Simply throwing more money at R&D is not the answer. The author lists a number of real-world hurdles to creating useful innovations—including corruption, special interest lobbying, money and budget issues, tensions between government and private sector roles, and political instability. And financially strapped governments simply may not have the money others have called for.

To fix the technical fix, Perelman proposes a Plan B strategy for innovation-on-a-budget. Plan B begins with the recognition that a big energy innovation program need not be big in cost to the public treasury to be big in the scope of its reach, engagement, diversity, and impacts.

Instead, Plan B emphasizes decentralizing and opening up energy innovation efforts to broad, international participation by individuals, businesses, philanthropies, and nongovernment/nonacademic organizations—taking full advantage of the mesh of modern information technology.

In Perelman’s prescription, the open innovation model increasingly being applied in both science and industry provides the key to untangling the energy policy mess. Recent experience shows that open crowdsourcing can produce solutions in as little as days to problems that have stumped experts for years.

Applying social and political realism to the big picture of technical challenges, "Energy Innovation" provides an original, timely roadmap toward a more energy-secure global economy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lewis Perelman
• Release date: Jun 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9780985519612

Lewis Perelman

Dr. Lewis J. Perelman has had extensive experience as a consultant, policy analyst, and strategist. He has helped public and private organizations to innovate, improve performance, manage risks, and reduce costs. In the past he worked on federal solar and renewable energy programs at two U.S. national laboratories. He also has been a fellow of the Hudson Institute, the Homeland Security Institute, and the Homeland Security Policy Institute. Dr. Perelman’s previous books include the best-seller School’s Out as well as The Learning Enterprise and The Global Mind. He also edited Energy Transitions: Long-Term Perspectives and contributed chapters to that book as well as to Energy, Economics, and the Environment (G.A. Daneke, ed.) and Market Liberalism: A Paradigm for the 21st Century (D. Boaz and E.H. Crane, eds.).

Book preview

Praise for Energy Innovation

Excellent! Right message for the right time in energy policy. — Dr. Thomas Kuehn, President, Biospherex, LLC; former Executive Director, U.S. Energy Research Advisory Board

"Lewis Perelman’s Energy Innovation is highly informative, comprehensive, thoughtful, and original—a laudable contribution." — Prof. Suresh Kumar, Chief Scientist, CSIR National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Lewis Perelman provides a unique look at the big picture, the entire process, of getting new energy efficient technologies and systems into place. He emphasizes the critical role of human factors, too often overlooked by others. — Dr. Peter J. Denning, Director, The Cebrowski Institute for Information and Innovation

Perelman´s open innovation model, based on evidence from other industries, could be a game-changer. His proposal for open collaboration among developed and developing economies certainly would help realize Chile’s immense renewable energy potential. —Alfredo Barriga, President, South Pacific Business Promotions SA, Santiago, Chile

Perelman's discussion of the social limits to technical fixes makes several well-taken points that should inform work focused on adoption and diffusion of new energy technology. — Dr. Christopher Green, Professor of Economics, McGill University School of Environment, Montreal, Canada

Leaders in government, industry, and academia concerned about energy in the 21st century should all read Perelman’s book. His key insight is that learning ‘how’ to solve the problem with a new generation of methodology and scope for innovation must be a prerequisite for realistically solving the problem. — Dr. Bill Miller, President, 4G Innovation, LLC

"Energy Innovation provides a comprehensive blueprint for a new energy pathway. Lewis Perelman builds a pragmatic framework around realism and bypasses the idealistic viewpoint that promises much but delivers little." — Dr. Barry Stevens, President, TBDAmerica, Inc.

Energy Innovation

Fixing the Technical Fix

Lewis J. Perelman

Copyright © 2012 Lewis J. Perelman

ISBN: 978-0-9855196-1-2

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. Thank you for your consideration.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in commentaries or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Links or  references provided in this book to Websites, addresses, etc. may have  changed since the time this book was written. No warranty is implied or  given about the accuracy of any links or addresses, or the  contents of any Website or other location.

An Intersect Publication

Cover design by D. Kyle and L. Perelman

-

In memory of Dick Holt

Table of Contents

Praise

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Russ Keller

Chapter 1. The Energy Mess

Chapter 2. Easier Said Than Done

How Big Is Big Enough

…Too Much?

…Further Complications

Necessary/Sufficient

More to Innovation Than Just R&D

Chapter 3. Social Limits to Technical Fixes

Snake Oil

Lobbying

Rebound

The Water Balloon

Chapter 4. The Ultimate Technology: Money

Price

Purchasing Power

Financing

Volatility

Chapter 5. Government Role

Allocation

Policy Stability: Wistful Thinking

Chapter 6. Plan B: What If Government Is Stuck

Innovation on a Budget

…Prizes

…In-Q-Tel

…Philanthropy

Chapter 7. From Mess to Mesh

Open Innovation

Opening Borders

The Bottom Line

…The Plan B Prescription

Notes

About the Author

Dr. Lewis J. Perelman has had extensive experience as a consultant, policy analyst, and strategist. He has helped public and private organizations to innovate, improve performance, manage risks, and reduce costs. In the past he worked on federal solar and renewable energy programs at two U.S. national laboratories. He also has been a fellow of the Hudson Institute, the Homeland Security Institute, and the Homeland Security Policy Institute. Dr. Perelman’s previous books include the best-seller School’s Out as well as The Learning Enterprise and The Global Mind. He also edited Energy Transitions: Long-Term Perspectives and contributed chapters to that book as well as to Energy, Economics, and the Environment (G.A. Daneke, ed.) and Market Liberalism: A Paradigm for the 21st Century (D. Boaz and E.H. Crane, eds.).

Contact the Author

Email: [e-mail]

Twitter: @LewisJPerelman

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for helpful conversations, feedback, and encouraging comments from Alfredo Barriga, Robert Bryce, Peter Denning, Chris Green, Matt Hourihan, Jesse Jenkins, David Kreutzer, Tom Kuehn, Suresh Kumar, Ern Lewis, Nate Lewis, Bob Metcalfe, Egils Milbergs, Bill Miller, David Schmaltz, Michael Shellenberger, Brett Steele, Matt Stepp, and Barry Stevens, as well as to Russ Keller for his contribution of the foreword to the book.

My development of the ideas in this book also benefited greatly from a number of conferences, seminars, workshops, and online discussions over the past few years hosted by several organizations, including: The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, The Brookings Institution, The Hudson Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, The Public Entity Risk Institute, The National Research Council, OurEnergyPolicy.org, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Rethinking National Security seminars), and The Energy Conversation (a colloquium hosted by multiple federal agencies).

Chapter 4 is adapted from part of my report, The Near-Term Potential of Climate-Friendly Technologies, sponsored by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (in AICGS Policy Report 37, Short-Term Solutions to the Climate and Energy Challenge, 2008).

In the age of social networking, I realize I have acquired valuable ideas and information from too many other sources to list, or even sometimes to recall. I am grateful for what I learned from all who took the time to share their knowledge.

Isabella Owen Perelman generously applied her professional copy editing skills to clean up my drafts. I also am grateful for editorial and publishing tips I got from David Kyle, Phyllis Gapen, and Britton Manasco, as well as Debbi Mack, Herta Feely, and other members of the FBB group of editorial professionals.

Foreword

by Russ Keller

Few issues confronting the United States today have activated as many different constituencies as the desire to expedite the transition to a new national energy paradigm centered on alternative