Writing

Energy innovation offers us our best chance to solve the three urgent and interrelated problems of climate change, worldwide insecurity over energy supplies, and rapidly growing energy demand. But if we are to achieve a timely transition to reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy, the U.S. energy innovation system must be radically overhauled.

Unlocking Energy Innovation outlines an up-to-the-minute plan for remaking America’s energy innovation system by tapping the country’s entrepreneurial strengths and regional diversity in both the public and private spheres. The authors map three waves of energy innovation to show how we can speed up the introduction of new technologies and business models and accelerate their deployment on a massive scale.

“Business as usual” will not fill the energy innovation gap. Nor will wishful thinking–common enough today, with politicians and others talking up some technologies, talking down others, and claiming that if we price it, or if we mandate it, or if we simply say it often and inspiringly enough, the innovations will flow. Only the kind of systemic, transformative changes to our energy innovation system described in this provocative book will help us avert the most dire scenarios and achieve a sustainable and secure energy future.

Unlocking Energy Innovation is based on a three-year research project at MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Global Taiwan examines the impact of globalization on the industry and economy of Taiwan since the spectacular growth of the 1990s. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with firms in Taiwan, China, the United States, Japan, Europe, and other areas, the book analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Taiwanese firms at a time when they face new competition from powerful global leaders and new producers in China.

The contributors cover topics of enormous importance for Taiwan as well as the rest of the world, including transformations in the international economy, technological advances that enabled modularization and fragmentation of the production system, contract manufacturers, regionalization, and links with Chinese industry. The book addresses such questions as: Can Taiwanese companies be maintained and expanded with the same corporate strategies and public policies as in the past? Can these strategies still work for other countries? If changes are required, what resources can be mobilized in the public and private sectors? As massive relocation of manufacturing and services moves plants and jobs to low-wage countries like China and India, what will remain at home in societies like Taiwan?

This book presents fifteen cases of technology applications in the energy and environment sectors, including solar, wind, fuel cell, nuclear, coal combustion and emission control technologies. The case studies demonstrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach, integrating technical and non-technical aspects of the problem. They also introduce a toolbox of analytical techniques useful in the context of realistic technology application. These techniques include energy and mass balances, project financial analysis tools, treatment of external costs and benefits, probabilistic risk assessment, learning curves, regression analysis, and life cycle costing. Each case study presents a description of the relevant technology at a level accessible to anyone familiar with elementary concepts in basic science and engineering. The book is addressed to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in the natural sciences, engineering and the social sciences who are interested in learning about problems of technology application, as well as technology practitioners in industry and government.

Recently, significant new productivity gains have been reported in important industries, both old and new. What is it about such industries, and individual firms in those industries, that has enabled them to regain their productive edge? In this book, a leading authority on this crucial issue searches five recent success stories – in automobiles, steel, semiconductors, electric power generation, and cellular communication – for clues to shape a new national strategy for economic growth. Taken together, these reports from the front lines of American industry point to a new agenda for growth, tailored to the volatile, unpredictable conditions that will persist in the economy for the foreseeable future. At the heart of the agenda is a proposal for a “new economic citizenship” – a new view of the rights, responsibilities, and resources that should be accorded to those who will contribute their ideas and labor to the new century.

What went wrong and how can America become second to none in industrial productivity? This long awaited study by a team of top notch MIT scientists and economists – the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity – takes a hard look at the recurring weaknesses of American industry that are threatening the country’s standard of living and its position in the world economy. Made in America identifies what is best and worth replicating in American industrial practice and sets out five national priorities for regaining the productive edge.

Unlike other studies that prescribe macroeconomic cures, Made in America focuses on the reorganization and effective integration of human resources and new technologies within the firm as a principal driving force for long term growth in productivity.

Made in America examines the relationship between human resources and technological change in detail and singles out the most significant productivity weaknesses from the myriad causes that are typically cited. These include short-time horizons and a preoccupation with the bottom line, outdated strategies that focus excessively on the domestic market, lack of cooperation within and among U.S. firms, neglect of human resources, technological failures in translating discoveries to products, and a mismatch between governmental actions and the needs of industry.

Looking ahead Made in America asserts that industrial performance would improve substantially simply by building on what is best in U.S. industry. It describes representative systems of production that can serve as models of best industrial practice for niche producers, price competitive specialized producers, and flexible mass producers.

Among the goals singled out as national priorities are the creation of a new economic citizenship that involves well-educated workers as active partners in the production process, a new strategic focus on production, finding a better balance between cooperation and individualism, learning to live in an increasingly international economy, and making proper provision for the future both in terms of capital and human resources.

The findings and goals of Made in America are based on such measures of productivity performance as product quality, innovativeness, time to market, and service in eight manufacturing sectors – semiconductors, computers, and office equipment; automobiles; steel; consumer electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals; textiles; machine tools; and commercial aircraft. These measures revealed a large gap between the best and average U.S. practice.

This book is the result of a research project conducted under the auspices of the Energy Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Energy Lab) for the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA).

The purpose of this study is to assist in developing public policy and institutions which are necessary for the safe management of radioactive waste, currently and in the long term. Indeed, an underlying hope is that the book will accelerate such development by the U.S. government.

Although the report focuses on the U.S., important international dimensions are taken into account. Ineffective management of radioactive waste in one country may cause harmful effects in another. Moreover, low- level radioactive waste is being dumped into the ocean, and geologic disposal of HL waste beneath the ocean floor is being considered. Most of the oceans and the deep seabed are beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Finally, the reader of this report should bear in mind that it focuses on a narrow, though important, problem which arises in a much larger context. The specific risks posed by radioactive waste must also be compared with the risks associated with other potential environmental pollutants. While radio- active waste constitutes a potential radiological hazard for a very long period of time, other possible pollutants may be even more persistent or more dangerous, or both. The risks posed by radioactive waste must also be balanced against the benefits to be derived from activities which produce the waste and the consequences if those activities were stopped. The security of the United States and its allies appears to rest in part on the U.S. nuclear deterrent, and the well-being of every society depends on adequate energy. The world urgently needs practical alternatives to fossil energy, and nuclear fission has been demonstrated to be a practical way to generate electricity.

What steps should we take to strengthen the capacity of our governmental institutions to deal effectively with the radioactive waste problem? The report recommends consideration of the several institutional reforms in order to deal more effectively with post-fission wastes.