ATP-Funded Green Process Technologies - NIST Advanced ...

The likely alternative situation, sometimes referred to as the “counterfactual
scenario,” is the basis for gauging the additionality of ATP investments and
documenting that ATP has been and continues to be a good steward of taxpayer
dollars and is effective in generating substantial and measurable economic benefits
that contribute to U.S. industrial competitiveness.
Public and Private Benefits
To evaluate the performance of ATP-funded technology projects, innovation benefits
are documented for two classes of beneficiaries.
• Economic benefits enjoyed by the innovating firms are considered private benefits.
The innovating firm’s expectation of private benefits or profit contribution from
new technologies is a necessary precondition for the firm’s continued efforts to
complete remaining technical development tasks (after the successful completion of
the ATP-funded project phase) and for undertaking subsequent commercialization
and marketing efforts. Without commercialization, the economic and social
benefits from ATP-funded technology projects could not be realized.
• In contrast to private benefits, economic and social benefits arising from the ATPfunded
technologies and enjoyed by downstream industrial firms and end users of
industrial products are considered public benefits. In microeconomic terms, public
benefits represent “spillover” phenomena, where the degree of spillover represents
that portion of total benefits that the innovating firm is unable to capture for itself
(Jaffe, 1996). As suggested by both the theoretical and empirical economics
literature, total benefits from ATP investments can be expected to substantially
exceed the magnitude of private benefits (Mansfield et al., 1977).
Public benefits may “trickle down” from industrial customers of the innovating firm
to end-use customers. Other public benefits have a public-goods quality that society
at large can enjoy directly. Examples of public-goods-type benefits from green process
technologies include the following:
• Reduced harmful environmental emissions
• Conservation of scarce energy resources
• Knowledge diffusion about new technologies
Attribution of Benefits to ATP
The central objective of conducting detailed case studies and several mini-studies is to
gauge the programmatic impact of rigorously screened and well-timed ATP
investments.
At the same time, it is important to identify funding contributions from other public
sources and to provide a fair and objective assessment of the portion of public
10 ATP-FUNDED GREEN PROCESS TECHNOLOGIES