LEARNING ADOPTION AND SCALE UP

PROF. GREGORY NEMET

October 2021

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This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European

Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 951542)

THE GENIE PROJECT‣ 6-year $10m ERC

SYNERGY grant

‣ Comprehensive assessment of CDR and SRM

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U. Aarhus

MCC-Berlin U. Wisconsin

IIASA

https://genie-erc.github.io

2021-2027

THE GENIE PROJECT: CDR AND SRM

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1. Costs potentials

2. Bottlenecks

3. Social acceptance

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4. Learning, adoption

5. Risks

6. Policy support

7. Synthesis 8. Outreach

8 WORK PACKAGES

WORK PACKAGE 4: LEARNING, ADOPTION, AND SCALE UP

Motivation

1. GTs by 2050s

2. scale up lengthy

3. focus is on R&D

4. urgency for post-R&D innovation activities

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Objectives

1. Inform scale up

2. Specify enablers

3. Identify barriers

4. Timing and pace

5. Insights for policy

‣ Innovation systems, transitions

‣ Energy technology innovation system

‣ Economics of innovation

‣ National innovation systems

GENIE, SCALING: THEORETICAL BASIS 6

CDR INNOVATION GAP 7

Need effort on demand side

Literature not aligned with an imminent scale-up

‣ Accelerated = factor of 4 faster

‣ Operation Warp Speed was 4x faster

NEED ACCELERATED SCALE UP MODELS 8

‣ In some cases 2x is faster enough

HAVE ACCELERATED SCALE UP MODELS

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MULTIPLE MODELS NEEDED 10

DAC solid sorbent

DAC liquid sorbent

POLICY ACCELERATORS FOR TYPE-1 11

‣ Type-1 = High tech, small, iterative

SCALABILITY 12

SMALL TECHNOLOGIES

MAY TURN OUT TO BE

MORE SCALABLE

THAN LARGE ONES

SMALL TECHNOLOGIES IMPROVE MORE QUICKLY 13

Sweerts et al. 2020

SMALL TECHNOLOGIES ADOPTED MORE QUICKLY 14

Wilson et al. 2020

SMALL TECH MEANS MORE ITERATIONS 15

Nemet 2020

MODULARITY WITHIN LARGE UNITS 16

Many contactors

A few calciners

FOCUS EFFORT ON:

‣ DYNAMIC TECHNOLOGIES

‣ SMALL UNIT SIZE

‣ MODULARITY IN LARGE UNITS

‣ ITERATIVE IMPROVEMENT

‣ LOCAL SYSTEM INTEGRATION

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DYNAMIC INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

1. urgency and acceleration as goals

2. multiple policies, strategic sequence

3. govt engages deeply in innovation

4. tech+ inclusivity, social acceptance

5. local learning and system integration

6. adaptive, learn from experiments

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IMPLEMENTATION RISKS 19

‣ Rent seeking

‣ Selection, picking winners

‣ Information access

‣ Crowding out

‣ Risk aversion

APPENDIX20