Can We Progress from Solipsistic Science to Frugal Innovation?
Name
Nocera-2012-Can we progress from.pdf
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127.04 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Nocera, Daniel G.
Date Issued
July 2012
Journal
Daedalus
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Nocera, Daniel G. “Can We Progress from Solipsistic Science to Frugal Innovation?” Daedalus 141.3 (2012): 45–52. © 2012 The MIT Press
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Energy demand in the twenty-first century will be driven by the needs of three billion people in the emerging world and three billion new inhabitants to our planet. To provide them with a renewable and sustainable energy supply is perhaps the greatest challenge for science in the twenty-first century. The science practiced to meet the energy needs of the twentieth century responded to a society of wealth, and energy systems were designed to be large and centralized. However, the inability of the emerging world to incur large capital costs suggests that a new science must be undertaken, one that does not rely on economy of scale but rather sets as its target highly manufacturable and distributed energy systems that are affordable to the poor. Only in this way can science provide global society with its most direct solution for a sustainable and carbon-neutral energy future.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistry
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00160
