The Role of Technology Roadmaps and Roundtables

Some skeptics try to discredit climate change mitigation efforts by saying that it is an anti-technological innovation agenda that is trying to impose limits to growth and development. In fact, achieving deep decarbonization is a formidable technological challenge and one that will require years of sustained directed and accelerated technological change to find solutions on a tight timeline. The necessary policy support, public and private partners are essential to achieve deep decarbonization. There is a great deal to be learned from previous successful attempts to drive technological innovation. These attempts shared clear goals and timelines, public and private actors were organized around the development of long-term technology road maps, the industry competed, but also cooperated to demonstrate technologies, grants were issued on a competitive basis, and intellectual property was frequently shared and open-sourced. Technology road maps can play a key role in driving oriented technological innovation, and it is important that these be adaptive. It’s not an exercise to pick the winning technologies for deep decarbonization because eventually the market will reveal with are the lowest cost options. This video is part of the module The Key Technological Challenges of Deep Decarbonization.

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