Carbon Lock-In: Barriers to Deploying Climate Change Mitigation Technologies

Technical Report · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 UTC 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1424507· OSTI ID:1424507

Brown, Marilyn A. ^[1]; Chandler, Jess ^[2]; Lapsa, Melissa V. ^[3]; Sovacool, Benjamin K. ^[4]

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1. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States). School of Public Policy
2. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
3. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
4. National Univ. of Singapore (Singapore)

The United States shares with many other countries the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. Many believe that accelerating the pace of technology improvement and deployment could significantly reduce the cost of achieving this goal. The critical role of new technologies is underscored by the fact that most anthropogenic greenhouse gases emitted over the next century will come from equipment and infrastructure built in the future. As a result, new technologies and energy sources have the potential to transform the nation’s energy system while meeting climate change as well as energy security and other important goals. Given the need for large-scale GHG emission reductions, the challenge is to move toward actions that go beyond technology R&D to strategies that target the rapid and large-scale absorption of low-carbon technologies into the economy. Most technological innovations do not survive the transition from invention to marketplace success. While they may be technically feasible, various obstacles prevent them from gaining market share. In addition, best practices representing already proven cost-effective approaches to GHG mitigation are significantly underutilized. The longevity of much of the energy infrastructure – from power plants to the building stock – prolongs the operation of obsolete technologies, and other impediments cause suboptimal choices to be made when technologies do finally turn over. The result is large-scale “carbon lock-in.”

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; U.S. Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1424507
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM--2007/124
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES