Transforming Energy: Solving Climate Change with Technology Policy

Climate change will be an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe unless we move quickly to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Policy experts advise us that we need to make major changes to our lifestyles, and our governments need to agree to globally binding treaties and implement market instruments like carbon taxes. This advice is a mistake: it treats technological innovation as being at the periphery of the climate policy challenge, whereas it needs to be at its core; we will phase out emissions when and only when the technologies to replace fossil fuels are good enough, and policies need – quickly – to support these new technologies directly. Anyone with an interest in climate change and energy policy will find this book forward-thinking and invaluable. Professional policy-makers, climate and energy policy researchers, and students of energy and public policy, economics, political science, environmental studies, and geography will find this book especially stimulating.

Anthony Patt is Professor of Human-Environment Systems at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He had been a practicing environmental lawyer in the United States when his concern about climate change led him to Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where he earned a PhD for research on the relationship between science, engineering and climate change governance. Since moving to Europe in 2006, he has turned his attention to the policy challenges associated with scaling up low-carbon technologies. In 2012 he received the prestigious European Research Council award to support his team's research on the environmental, social and institutional challenges of solar energy development. From 2011–14 he participated in numerous capacities in the preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, including as Lead Author on the role of risk and uncertainty in climate policy, and as a member of the writing team of the Summary for Policymakers for the IPCC's Mitigation of Climate Change report.