Kammen: U.S. energy R&D investment lags

A University of California energy scientist has told the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that despite recent increases to R&D spending for energy there’s a great need to triple government investment.

“The urgency for energy R&D funding is high,” Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at University of California at Berkeley, told the Cleantech Group. “The R&D investment is still too low at $4 billion. We actually need $15 billion to $30 billion. And hitting the $15 billion per year budget objective is a natural and achievable interim target."

More than 30 years ago, the energy R&D budget was boosted by a factor of three in response to the OPEC oil embargo between 1975 and 1979, Kammen told the House committee. But this increase was not sustained.

“In fact, the increase and then decrease in the budget was particularly wasteful because a number of potentially important programs were initiated, then canceled, leaving talented individuals and innovative companies greatly disillusioned and distrustful of federal efforts in the energy area,” Kammen said.

In his testimony this morning, Kammen said investment in research and development is roughly 3 percent of the gross domestic product, and just one-tenth of the R&D budget goes to the energy sector (see Senators pledge to reinvent energy in America).

“The energy field is sorely lacking,” Kammen said, who serves as contributing researcher to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

By contrast, private industry R&D investments in the medical and biotechnology field are roughly 15 percent of sales, almost a staggering 40 times more than in the energy field, he said. Private sector spending on biotechnology R&D is over 11 times that of the federal government (see USDA, DOE to invest up to $18.4M in biomass research).

Private sector research in energy has never exceeded public sector spending by a significant amount.

Why does the R&D energy investment matter today?

“Innovation is the life-blood of economic growth and renewal,” Kammen said. “In fact, it has been known for decades that the bulk of new economic growth results from the re-invention and invention of new scientific and technological opportunities."

Kammen said one of the clearest findings from tracking actual investment histories is that there is a very strong correlation between investment in innovation and demonstrated changes in performance and cost of technologies available in the market.

In the case of solar photovoltaics, a 50 percent increase in PV efficiency occurred immediately after an unprecedented $1 billion global investment in PV R&D from 1978-85. From there, efficiency significantly improved, which accounts for 30 percent of the cost reductions in PV over the past two decades.

In terms of international energy research, Kammen said a number of nations have been far more consistent, bullish, in fact, on the value of clean energy research and deployment.

“Denmark, Norway, Germany, Spain, and Portugal and other nations have invested substantially in clean energy, and it has paid important dividends,” Kammen said (see OPEC putting up $750M for cleantech fund).

Kammen told the House committee today that the threat of climate change and today’s energy use are deeply intertwined with the U.S. economy. There’s a critical need for an integrated vision with public and private sector objectives, he added.

“It is not enough to design a few, or even many, well-structured programs,” Kammen said. “To confront climate change and to design a more sustainable energy system, a set of goals, public and private sector objectives, and organizing principles need to be developed, articulated, and applied fairly across the economy.”