The Breakout of Energy Innovation: Accelerating to a New Low Carbon Energy System

Innovation is at the core of the global energy sector. The choice of technologies is dependent on the cooperation of business, governments, and society. Global technologies become localized by research and innovation (R&I) through partnerships with social and business stakeholders. Demand and supply must occupy a new technological trajectory - a sustainable technological pathway before 2050 to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The two arguments in this chapter rest on the concept that the energy sector is strongly mediated by government regulations, public perceptions, and political decisions. This chapter first argues that technological lock-in of older technologies is perpetuated by state institutions within a broader regime of actors. Second, that a greater use and awareness of types of innovation provide the potential to eventually break this technological lock-in and disrupt and displace the current carbon-based energy regime. Three types of innovation propel forward new types of technologies: disruptive, discontinuous, and sequential innovation. Three brief case studies highlight how renewable energy technologies (RET), smart grids, and shale gas represent different types of innovation and pose challenges to current technologies and businesses. In the final section, these case studies inform how innovation and the diffusion of energy technologies occur at a global scale then become embedded in the local.