National Institutes of Energy Needed to Fill Energy R&D Gap

Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in R&D and new product development, spending $58.8 billion on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health.

In contrast, the U.S. energy sector invests well below $3 billion annually in R&D in an industry with well over a trillion dollars in annual revenue. The energy sector's R&D spending as a percent of revenues - call that figure the industry's innovation intensity - is just 0.23%. That compares to a national average innovation intensity across all industries of 2.6%, or ten-times greater than the energy-sector's innovation intensity. And it pales in comparison with the innovation intensity of leading technology and innovation-intensive sectors including biomedical technology (10-20%), information technology (10-15%), and semiconductors (16%).

This downright paltry private-sector energy innovation spending leaves a massive energy innovation gap that the U.S. government barely begins to fill, investing only about $5 billion annually in energy R&D. That's barely more than half the levels spent on public research to pursue clean and affordable energy alternatives during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scale and urgency of our national energy challenges have clearly grown since then, yet the national commitment to energy innovation has moved in the wrong direction. Public R&D spending on health care ($30 billion) and defense ($80 billion) signal the scale of true national innovation priorities and begs the question: when will the U.S. get serious about investments in clean energy innovation? When we do, a new National Institutes of Energy and a major increase in federal energy R&D investments are needed to fill the energy innovation gap and spur a clean energy revolution.

(click either image to enlarge)

For more on a National Institutes of Energy, see our archives here or the following selected content:

• Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy - policy report from Breakthrough Institute and Third Way (September 2009).


• "National Institutes of Health: A Model for Jumpstarting Energy R&D"


• "Senator Brown, Leading Energy Think Tanks Push for More Research Investment and New National Institutes of Energy"


• "Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution: A Gathering Global Consensus"

(All factoids and figures from either the BTI, Third Way report, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, or Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian's excellent book, Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution)

Originally at the Breakthrough Institute

Follow Jesse Jenkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JesseJenkins

Comments

[Helen Maynard]

Investing in research and development is the right place to start. We need to find better energy solutions. I think it is premature to subsidize the manufacture and installation of energy technologies that require more energy to produce than they generate.

I think solar cells are an example of a technology that has not yet achieved energy parity. Silicon solar cells consume a great deal of energy in the reduction of silicon dioxide to make the silicon and even more energy to heat and refine the silicon to the purity level required to make efficient devices.

Funding R&D: Great. Subsidizing Manufacture and Installation: Not so much.

http://www.affinefinancial.com/2009/10/17/sustainable-energy-solar-cell-skeptic/

[texfly]

A national energy institutes concept is a great one. If there is one single factor that dominates all of human endeavoe it is energy.

But right now, we are in a position to deploy and use renewable sources of energy to drive a productive economy. And INCLUDING the cost of building it (solar and wind), it can be generated right now, today, at a cost of < 5 ¢/kWh and delivered to you on a new grd for < 5 ¢/kWh. Once the grid is complete cost is cut in half. That price, 5 ¢/kWh, includes initial costs, replacement costs, maintenance, administraion, property rentals, labor, soup to nuts.

A nation that has the renewable resources and acts to utilize them will dominate the WORLD ECONOMY. The US has them, it has the technology. All we lack is the will to do it. If we stay the course that big oil and coal have plotted, we will be left holding the bag.

[texfly]

A NIE is a great idea. Energy is the single most important driver for reducing all innovations to commercial practice and a productive economy. Energy encompasses all human endeavors and deserves as much as any R&D sector..

But, the bottom line in today's energy climate is that we are READY and ABLE to move to a totally renewable energy portfolio ... WORLD WIDE. A nation, that has global-scale renewable resouces of it's own and takes the lead in renewable energy implementation WILL dominate the economies all other nations.

Big oil keeps us from "seeing the light" and "feeling the breeze" of change.

[Dredd]

Goo gle "tenets of ecocosmology" and you will find that we must have a new energy to power space craft capable of travelling to another habitable planet. Human survivability depends on it.

[research]

That would be solar powered Ion engines.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:qS5O-9ZOHl4J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1+deep+space+probe+ion&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

[sethdayal]

The new nuclear fusion technologies like Polywell, Focus Fusion, and ITER holding so much promise receive almost no government or industry funding when billions should be sent their way.

The Liquid Flourine Thorium reactor which answers almost all the problems critics have with nuclear power is basically ready to build but can't get funding.

These technologies promise unlimited clean green nuclear at fractions of cent per kwh. You'd thunk they deserve a look.

It appears the US government has abandoned nuclear power research to India, China and Russia.

[research]

Fusion is 50 years away, even the most ardent supports say that.

All the existing real nuclear power technologies lead to proliferation, nuclear war, dirty bombs, and millions of years of waste. get over it. Nukes suck. They can't even get insurance with the Taxpayer cosigning.

Solar is cheaper, 3 cents, clean, safe, and forever.

BioFuel from WASTE can supply all the fuels the world will need, also cleaner, safe and forever, while reducing our waste streams. see my profile for proof.

[YCSTS]

Mr. Research seems to be on some self-induced trip into wonderland.
There are fusion projects such as Focus Fusion, IEC fusion and Tri-Alpha Energy's Colliding Beam fusion that even the dubious have accepted could be total game-changers, within A FEW YEARS - not your fantasy 50 yrs.
You don't know zip about Nuclear power. The average citiizens electricity needs from Nuclear Power will produce 1 cup of Nuclear Waste, whereas YOUR substitute Coal Power will produce 110 tonnes of solid radioactive waste & 580,000 cubic meters of CO2.
Solar for 3 cents? What for 1/30th a kwh? Solar Spain just got sticker shock when they found out it was costing them $26.4 billion for 450 MWe avg output or a staggering $58,670per kw. And Germany's is up to $82,000 per avg kw. Compare with Nuclear – ABWR’s built in Japan in the 90’s cost $1,400 per kw, Chinese recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s at $1,760 per kw.
BioFuel can't do ZIP. They are a crime against humanity. A RAPE-AND-PILLAGE OF THE LAND to fuel SUV's. A Rav4 BEV SUV would cover the same distance on 21 sq. meters of Solar Panels as a Jeep Cherokee Diesel on best Biofuel on 1 hectare of land, that is sufficient to feed 7 people = 24,000 km on the Jeep vs $14,000 worth of Solar PV.

[Richard2]

United States ethanol production hit a new monthly high of 22,577,000 barrels in July, 2009. This figure is 18.6% higher than the same month last year. Despite a lack of publicity, the supply of alternative fuel ethanol continues to increase.

[leduck]

Don't worry about PEAK OIL..., green energy will save the day

THIS IS THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF AQUARIUS
THE AGE OF AQUARIUS
AQUARIUS,
AQUARIUS

[Overtone]

Innovation comes from inventors, one at a time. A small fraction of the proposed budget for Innovation Centers, directed at support for promising inventions, would have far more rapid and comprehensive effect.

For an example of revolutionary breakthroughs that will completely change the energy picture, see the article, 5 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy on the website: http://www.aesopinstitute.org

Accelerating programs of this nature will get the job done in time to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Leading scientists suggest we have perhaps 8 years to dramatically reduce use of fossil fuels.

Ending the need for importing oil has support, among those who do not accept Global Warming.

Embracing the love affair with automotive vehicles to popularize what can be done can produce the necessary changes fast enough to matter.

Cars can soon be prototyped that will need no recharge or fossil fuels.

The technologies have been born. They need to be encouraged to flourish.

Rowan University has published experiments indicate one barrel of water replaces 200 barrels of oil.

They should be rapidly replicated.

This will validate the potential of Energy from Collapsing Hydrogen Orbits - ECHO(tm).

Scientists will not believe this is possible until such replications conclusively demonstrate the reality of this new source of energy.

But, it is one of several that will prove that radical innovation does not come from committees or institutions, but only from dedicated individuals who are sufficiently persistent to outlast their critics.