Experience Curves for Environmental Technology and Their Relationship to Government Actions

Abstract

Large-scale energy-economic models used to study global climate change and carbon management options often ignore the impacts of environmental technology innovation and diffusion, or they use simple representations such as exogenously-specified (often arbitrary) rates of change in cost or efficiency over time. The predicted impacts of proposed policy measures can depend critically upon these assumptions. Thus, better methods are needed to model technological change and its relationship to government policy. This is especially true for CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, an important new class of environmental technology with the potential to allow continued use of fossil fuels without significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Research efforts are underway worldwide to develop this technology and evaluate its effectiveness. Large-scale energy-economic and integrated assessment models also are being used to evaluate the potential of CCS in competition with other options for CO2 control. This chapter seeks to improve the ability of such models to represent and quantify the changes in CCS technology cost and performance over time as a function of pertinent variables, including the effects of alternative government actions or policies. The chapter also presents results of new research that examines past experience in controlling other major power plant emissions that might serve as a reasonable guide to future rates of technological progress in CO2 capture and sequestration systems.