Energy Technology Innovation: Learning from Historical Successes and Failures

Energy technology innovation – improving how we produce and use energy – is critical for a transition towards sustainability. This book presents a rich set of twenty historical case studies of energy technology innovation embedded within a unifying conceptual framework. It provides insights into why some innovation efforts have been more successful than others, and draws important policy conclusions. The case studies cover a wide range of energy technologies, ranging from energy supply to energy end use, from successes to failures and from industrialized, emerging and developing economies. The case studies are presented by an international group of eminent scholars under the auspices of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), whose main volume was published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press. Energy Technology Innovation presents new data, new concepts and novel analytical and policy perspectives. It will prove to be invaluable for researchers, policy makers, economists, industrial innovators and entrepreneurs in the field of energy technology.

Arnulf Grubler is a world leading scholar on the history of energy systems and on technological change and innovation policy. He is Acting Program Leader of the Transitions to New Technologies Program at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, and Professor in the field of Energy and Technology at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He has been serving as lead and contributing author and review editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1996. He has authored or edited several books, including Technology and Global Change (Cambridge, 1998) and Technological Change and the Environment (with N. Nakicenovic and W. D. Nordhaus, 2002). He is also a convening lead author of three chapters in the Global Energy Assessment (Cambridge, 2012).

Charlie Wilson is a researcher with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a lecturer in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. He is a scholar on innovation studies and on the history of technological change in energy systems. His current research focuses on both historical and future technology diffusion dynamics, and the adoption of energy-efficient and smart home technologies. Previously he has held positions with the London School of Economics and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. He is also a lead author of two chapters in the Global Energy Assessment (Cambridge, 2012).