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Research funding: Patience is a virtue

Nature Energy volume 1, Article number: 16038 (2016) Cite this article

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Public investment in science and technology is critical for meeting future energy needs, although understanding its impact has remained unclear. Now, an analysis of publications resulting from government funding sheds light on its outcomes and the timescales required to see them.

Addressing both the challenge of climate change and the growing energy needs of the world will only be possible if we can achieve a breakthrough in clean technologies so as to deliver safe, clean and sustainable energy to future generations. Such a large-scale technological transition will require massive investments in the research and development (R&D) of clean energy, with public expenditures providing an important avenue to stimulate scientific advances. Understanding the effectiveness of government energy R&D and the timescale for it to deliver scientific research outcomes will thus be important for guiding funding policy. Writing in Nature Energy, David Popp at Syracuse University, New York, provides some analysis for exploring this issue1. He quantifies the relationship between government funding and scientific publications by analysing data on publications on and government R&D support for alternative technologies. More importantly, he shows that the timescale for publication output to be delivered and to become technologically relevant may be longer than a decade.

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Figure 1: Total public energy R&D budget, in 2014 US dollars and purchasing power parity, for International Energy Agency member countries.

References

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  1. Joëlle Noailly is at the Centre for International Environmental Studies, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Maison de la Paix, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2, Petal 1, 8th floor, Case Postale 136, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland.,

    Joëlle Noailly

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  1. Joëlle Noailly
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Correspondence to Joëlle Noailly.

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Noailly, J. Research funding: Patience is a virtue. Nat Energy 1, 16038 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.38

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