@article{Anadon:232924,
      recid = {232924},
      author = {Anadon, Laura Diaz and Baker, Erin and Bosetti, Valentina  and Reis, Lara Aleluia},
      title = {Too Early to Pick Winners: Disagreement across Experts  Implies the Need to Diversify R&D Investment},
      address = {2016-03-18},
      number = {839-2016-55856},
      series = {MITP},
      pages = {28},
      month = {Mar},
      year = {2016},
      abstract = {Mitigating climate change will require innovation in  energy technologies. Policy makers are faced with the  question of how to promote this innovation, and whether to  focus on a few technologies or to spread their bets. We  present results on the extent to which public R&D might  shape the future cost of energy technologies by 2030. We  bring together three major expert elicitation efforts  carried out by researchers at UMass Amherst, Harvard, and  FEEM, covering nuclear, solar, Carbon Capture and Storage  (CCS), bioelectricity, and biofuels. The results show  experts believe that there will be decreasing returns to  R&D and report median cost reductions around 20% for most  of the technologies at the R&D budgets considered. Although  the returns to solar and CCS R&D show some promise, the  lack of consensus across studies, and the larger magnitude  of the R&D investment involved in these technologies, calls  for caution when defining what technologies would benefit  the most from additional public R&D. Indeed, the wide  divergence of opinions suggests that it is still too early  to pick winners
and that a broad portfolio of investments  may be the best option.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/232924},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.232924},
}