sectoral economic costs and benefits of ghg mitigation - IPCC

Patrick Criqui, Nikos Kouvaritakis and Leo Schrattenholzer
Cumulative PERD provides insights on the current dynamics of technologies and on their
potential developments in the forthcoming years. As a final step a synthetic analysis is provided,
showing that technologies with a large accumulated stock of PERD are not necessarily those
presenting the largest potential for technology improvement and market penetration today and in
the near future.
This leads to the conclusion that PERD programs maybe a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for obtaining significant technology improvements. As will be examined in the next
sub-section (1.3.), experience effects obtained on early market developments for instance in
“niche-markets” are also essential for the development of fully competitive new energy
technologies.
The energy PERD portfolio, structure and trends by main technology
The following analysis have been produced on the basis of the IEA energy R&D statistics which
present the PERD for each member state and about forty technologies or budget categories. The
analysis deals with the G7 countries, and initially identifies the total budget split into six
categories: conservation, renewable, fossil energy, power generation, nuclear, other. Then, two
groups of technologies for which public R&D has been particularly important are analysed
separately: the nuclear and the renewable technologies.
Yearly PERD of the G7 countries increased significantly in the seventies, from less than 6
billions dollars ($90) in 1974 to more than 12 billions in 1980 as shown in Figure 6. Of that total,
the nuclear technologies (LWR, breeder, fusion etc.) represent almost two thirds. Since 1980,
PERD expenditure has experienced a continuous decline, with three periods of particularly
marked reductions: from 1980 to 1984 for renewable and fossil, from 1986 to 1988 for nuclear
and from 1990 to 1993 for almost all categories, except energy conservation and renewables.
This led to a total spending of no more than 7 billions $90 in 1995, with nuclear technologies
representing half of the total.
In the nuclear research programs, budgets for fusion have been the most stable during the whole
period, with a peak of 1.2 billions $90 in 1982 and a level of approximately 0.8 billion since
1991. Budgets for LWRs may appear surprisingly low with a peak at 0.7 billion in 1982 and a
level of 0.3 since the beginning of the nineties. Two factors explain this phenomenon: First,
being the most commercially advanced technology, LWR reactors have deserved more research
from industry and less from government. Second, public research designated as “nuclear fuel
cycle” or “nuclear support” may to some extent correspond to activities linked to conventional
LWR reactors. When grouped with strictly LWR research, these categories of PERD amount to 2
billions $90 by year in the nineties.
In fact, a large part of the strong variations in nuclear R&D expenses can be explained by the
evolution in breeder programs. These programs had been large since the very beginning of the
period and peaked at 2.5 billions $90 in 1982. But since then, they have been regularly reduced
to only 0.27 billion in 1995.
Renewable energy technologies also followed a variable profile with a marked peak to about 1
billion $90 in 1980 and 1981, a rapid decline in the first part of the eighties and a slow but
regular increase since 1990, with a second wave of renewable research amounting to about 0.5
billion $90 in 1995, as shown in Figure 7. Solar research has represented an important part of the
total, especially in the late seventies, when solar thermodynamic power plants were considered as
a potentially important option. Since then, solar thermal power plants perspectives have been
revised downwards as has the R&D spending. On the contrary, solar photovoltaic research has
constantly remained a relatively high priority, with spending of about 0.2 billion $90 in the
nineties, i.e. more than wind and biomass research altogether.
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