Thanks for the feedback and interesting info! I agree I overstated the importance of 2004-12 R&D. I chose that time period because it felt most comparable to where alt proteins are at, but I should have clarified that earlier R&D was more important.
I based my assessment of the importance of govt R&D policies to reducing solar prices on this IEA analysis—mostly the graphs showing their assessment that govt R&D policies (both publicly-funding and market-stimulating policies) drove ~two thirds of solar cost-reductions from 1980-2012.
But you clearly know more about the broader literature here than I do. And the IEA’s analysis may be consistent with yours if their “R&D: market-stimulating policies” category includes deployment subsidies. Either way, thanks for the thoughtful reply!
There is indeed no contradiction—solar got cheap through massive public support, first mostly R&D and later deployment subsidies / market creation policies in the hundreds of billions.
So the lesson from solar is definitely that public innovation support massively matters, it is more that different forms of support are most critical at different times (that is something the Kavlak paper emphasizes, how at early TRL R&D dominates and then later induced demand becames the major source of cost reduction) and that the R&D money cited is a small contributor to the cost reductions observed then.
If APs were like solar, I think we should expect things to take a lot longer and require a lot more support and maybe the current plateau would be like the 1980s for solar. (But I think there are good reasons to be more optimistic).
Thanks for the feedback and interesting info! I agree I overstated the importance of 2004-12 R&D. I chose that time period because it felt most comparable to where alt proteins are at, but I should have clarified that earlier R&D was more important.
I based my assessment of the importance of govt R&D policies to reducing solar prices on this IEA analysis—mostly the graphs showing their assessment that govt R&D policies (both publicly-funding and market-stimulating policies) drove ~two thirds of solar cost-reductions from 1980-2012.
But you clearly know more about the broader literature here than I do. And the IEA’s analysis may be consistent with yours if their “R&D: market-stimulating policies” category includes deployment subsidies. Either way, thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Apologies for my delay here.
There is indeed no contradiction—solar got cheap through massive public support, first mostly R&D and later deployment subsidies / market creation policies in the hundreds of billions.
So the lesson from solar is definitely that public innovation support massively matters, it is more that different forms of support are most critical at different times (that is something the Kavlak paper emphasizes, how at early TRL R&D dominates and then later induced demand becames the major source of cost reduction) and that the R&D money cited is a small contributor to the cost reductions observed then.
If APs were like solar, I think we should expect things to take a lot longer and require a lot more support and maybe the current plateau would be like the 1980s for solar. (But I think there are good reasons to be more optimistic).