Kelly Sims Gallagher

Tufts University | Tufts · The Fletcher School

Governments in industrialized as well as emerging economies are racing to implement policies to accelerate clean energy innovation and capture the economic benefits of decarbonization. This paper explores which combination of technology-push and demand-pull policies best situates a country to lead in clean energy innovation, as new or dominant desi...

This paper examines the drivers of Chinese overseas financing in renewable energy and the political economy factors in recipient countries that steer this finance towards climate-friendly projects. We examine utility-scale renewable energy projects in Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Pakistan, and Romania. Through in-d...

In its next phase, Mission Innovation plans to further develop multinational collaborations that include a variety of entities. This may require new governance structures to shield the new collaborations from increasingly protectionist domestic politics while incorporating renewed concerns about climate change and energy security.

Pakistan has sought to meet its increasing energy needs using coal-based energy generation. In this paper, we explore how the Pakistani government sought and obtained financing for coal-fired power plants from China. We analyze Pakistan’s partnership with China to develop energy projects via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Based on interviews...

Carbon pricing is a key policy instrument used to steer markets towards the adoption of low-carbon technologies. In the last two decades, several carbon pricing policies have been implemented or debated at the state and federal levels in the US. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the California cap-and-trade policy are the two regional poli...

A review of global and national energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments between 2000 and 2018 reveals that global public energy RD&D and cleaner energy RD&D investments dramatically increased, but then plateaued after 2009. In absolute values, nuclear energy has held steady, fossil energy contracted, and clean energy RD&D...

President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. In total capital, China is now the largest investor in least‐developed countries and in developing Asia, and the fifth‐largest investor in Africa. Motivated by concerns about the climate change consequences of China’s overseas investments, this paper identifies and evaluates...

This paper empirically evaluates how policy to mobilize climate finance works in practice. It examines the performance of nine types of climate finance policies, namely target lending, green bond policy, loan guarantee programmes, weather indexed insurance, feed-in-tariffs, tax credits, national development banks, disclosure policies and national c...

This paper investigates why new coal-fired power plants are being financed and built in South and Southeast Asia given that new coal plants without carbon capture and storage are incompatible with a 1.5 °C temperature goal. The paper particularly focuses on developing countries where these coal-fired power plants are being built that are recipients...

The Paris Agreement’s Mission Innovation initiative to accelerate government spending on clean energy research is currently succeeding in its quest to support carbon mitigation. It should be renewed for an additional five years, with increased ambition, and changed to better integrate the private sector.

China committed to peak its carbon emissions around 2030, with best efforts to peak early, and also to achieve 20% non-fossil energy as a proportion of primary energy supply by 2030. These commitments were included in China’s nationally-determined contribution to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. We develop and apply a mixed-method method...

How the planet's two largest greenhouse gas emitters navigate climate policy. The United States and China together account for a disproportionate 45 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. In 2014, then-President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced complementary efforts to limit emissions, paving the way for the Paris Agreement. An...

Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETSs) to limit emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are increasingly common. At the end of 2015, 17 GHG ETSs were operational in 55 jurisdictions, and 18 jurisdictions collected at least one carbon tax. This paper assesses the performance of carbon taxes and ETSs with respect to environmental effectivenes...

This article analyses the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETSs) in eight jurisdictions: the EU, Switzerland, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and California in the US, Québec in Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and pilot schemes in China. The article clarifies what is working, what isn’t and why, when it comes to...

President Trump has proposed severe cuts to US government spending on energy research, development and demonstration, but Congress has the ‘power of the purse’ and can rescue US energy innovation. If serious cuts are enacted, the pace of innovation will slow, harming the economy, energy security and global environmental quality.

China's success as a rapid innovation follower in the infant Photovoltaic (PV) industry surprised many observers. This paper explores how China inserted itself into global clean energy innovation systems by examining the case of the solar PV industry. The paper decomposes the global PV industrial value chain, and determines the main factors shaping...

The plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) holds much promise— from reducing dependence on imported petroleum to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions to improving urban air quality. However, there are many barriers to its mainstream adoption regardless of incentives and enticing promises to solve difficult problems. Such vehicles have some limitations owing...

Producing energy resources requires significant quantities of fresh water. As an energy sector changes or expands, the mix of technologies deployed to produce fuels and electricity determines the associated burden on regional water resources. Many reports have identified the water consumption of various energy production technologies. This paper sy...

Discussion of the environmental implications of worldwide energy demand is currently dominated by the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on global climate. At the regional scale, however, water resource challenges associated with energy systems are a growing concern. This paper, based on an inventory of national energy portfolios, posits an...

At the very beginning of this year, news that heavy pollution containing black carbon from Asia was drifting all the way to the Pacific coast of the United States made headlines in the news media. The pollution cloud was attributed to Chinese manufacturing. Old-fashioned air pollution, acid rain, and extreme weather events from climate change are j...

Technology alone will not be able to solve adaptation challenges, but it is likely to play an important role. As a result of the role of technology in adaptation and the importance of international collaboration for climate change, technology transfer for adaptation is a critical but understudied issue. Through an analysis of Global Environment Fac...

An examination of barriers that impede and incentives that motivate the global development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies, with case studies from China. The development and deployment of cleaner energy technologies have become globalized phenomena. Yet despite the fact that energy-related goods account for more than ten percent of in...

Many countries have adopted comprehensive policy frameworks to support renewable energy, but the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy. This essay explores why some nations (Germany, China, and Denmark) and certain U.S. states (Colorado, Texas, and Ohio) have dev...

Mitigating climate change requires directed innovation efforts to develop and deploy energy technologies. Innovation activities are directed towards the outcome of climate protection by public institutions, policies and resources that in turn shape market behaviour. We analyse diverse indicators of activity throughout the innovation system to asses...

This article reviews the concept of an energy technology innovation system (ETIS). The ETIS is a systemic perspective on innovation comprising all aspects of energy transformations (supply and demand); all stages of the technology development cycle; and all the major innovation processes, feedbacks, actors, institutions, and networks. We use it as...

As the United States struggles to responsibly address massive energy-related challenges, including climate change, energy poverty, energy security, and imperatives for economic growth, it will be necessary to balance intellectual and financial investment in the physical and natural sciences and engineering with a commitment to the social sciences....

The development and introduction of heat pumps provides an interesting illustration of policy influence and effectiveness in relation to energy technology innovation. Heat pumps have been supported by several countries since the 1970s as a strategy to improve energy efficiency, support energy security, reduce environmental degradation, and combat c...

An integrated carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) system requires safe and cost-efficient solutions for transportation of the CO2 from the capturing facility to the location of storage. While growing efforts in China are underway to understand CO2 capture and storage, comparatively less attention has been paid to CO2 transportation issue...

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate th...

Authors’ Summary. This case study provides an overview of energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments in six major emerging economies: Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, Mexico, China, and South Africa (referred to as "BRIMCS" countries). RD&D expenditures are differentiated by technology category (fossil fuel, nuclear, e...

Author’s Summary. Many governments are interested in promoting hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and other alternatives to conventional internal combustion engines because of concerns about energy security, oil dependence, air pollution, and global climate change. HEVs achieve greater fuel efficiency than conventional vehicles, although the extent of...

Authors’ Summary. This case study provides a quantitative overview of the financial resources mobilised globally as fundamental inputs into the energy technology innovation system. Available data from a diverse range of sources are compiled and summarised throughout the innovation life cycle from research and development (R$D) through market format...

Even as the US debates an economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade policy the transportation sector remains a significant oil security and climate change concern. Transportation alone consumes the majority of the US's imported oil and produces a third of total US Greenhouse-Gas (GHG) emissions. This study examines different sector-specific policy scenarios f...

China now faces the three hard truths of thirsting for more oil, relying heavily on coal, and ranking first in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Given these truths, two key questions must be addressed to develop a low-carbon economy: how to use coal in a carbon-constrained future? How to increase domestic oil supply to enhance energy security?...

Ibero-America, just as the rest of the world, faces an increasing urgency to transform existing energy systems. In the past, incentives to develop energy systems were induced mainly by changes in demand (derived from industrialization and urbanization) and by price shocks in fuels. Diversification of energy sources followed a growing need of use of...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between fuel prices and consumer preferences for passenger motor vehicles in the U.S. automobile market. The paper examines the stated preferences of new vehicle owners from December 2001 to January 2008 to explore possible indications of changes in consumer preferences. Annual survey data we...

China issued its first Fuel Economy Standards (FES) for light-duty passenger vehicles (LDPV) in September 2004, and the first and second phases of the FES took effective in July 2005 and January 2008, respectively. The stringency of the Chinese FES ranks third globally, following the Japanese and European standards. In this paper, we first review t...

China’s economy has been on a solid fast growth track since 1978. The economy expanded by an average annual rate of about 10% during the last thirty years. That is more than triple the average growth rate of the world economy during the same period. The rapid economic development has been associated with growing energy consumption and carbon dioxid...

The report offers preliminary recommendations for near-term actions to strengthen the U.S. effort to develop and deploy advanced energy technologies. The report comes as the Obama Administration and the 111th U.S. Congress face enormous challenges and opportunities in tackling the pressing security, economic, and environmental problems posed by the...

How China could and might balance its voracious desire for energy services with the urgent need to protect the environment and public health, both of which are fundamental to human well-being, are two of the central questions regarding the rise of China in the twentieth century. In China, as is often the case elsewhere, human well-being rests on a...

This chapter describes how oil security and global climate change are two looming transportation policy challenges. While remarkable advances have been made in reducing emissions of tailpipe pollutants, which are known to cause adverse public health effects, much less progress has been made on reducing overall oil consumption and emissions of green...

The goal of this study is to evaluate the technical, environmental, and economic dimensions of deploying advanced coal-fired power technologies in China. In particular, we estimate the differences in capital cost and overall cost of electricity (COE) for a variety of advanced coal-power technologies based on the technological and economic levels in...

Federal, state, and local governments use a variety of incentives to induce consumer adoption of hybrid-electric vehicles. We study the relative efficacy of state sales tax waivers, income tax credits, and non-tax incentives and find that the type of tax incentive offered is as important as the generosity of the incentive. Conditional on value, sal...

Energy-technology innovation (ETI) is the set of processes leading to new or improved energy technologies that can augment energy resources; enhance the quality of energy services; and reduce the economic, environmental, or political costs associated with energy supply and use. Advances achieved through ETI have made large contributions to the impr...

Federal, state and local governments use a variety of incentives to induce consumer adoption of hybrid-electric vehicles. We study the relative efficacy of state sales tax waivers, income tax credits and non-tax incentives and find that the type of tax incentive offered is as important as the value of the tax incentive. Conditional on value, we fin...

As a developing country, China still lacks many of the institutions, policies, and enforcement mechanisms that are needed to foster technology transfer and environmental protection.

Advanced-coal technologies will increasingly play a significant role in addressing China's multiple energy challenges. This paper introduces the current status of energy in China, evaluates the research, development, and demonstration policies for advanced-coal technologies during the Tenth Five-Year Plan, and gives policy prospects for advanced-co...

The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future. By EconomyElizabeth C.. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. 337 pp. $17.95 (paper). - Volume 65 Issue 2 - Kelly Sims Gallagher

Limits to leapfrogging in energy technologies? One of the most attractive notions in the field of sustainable energy development is the concept of energy-technology “leapfrogging”. Leapfrogging through international technology transfer can be especially problematic because often developing countries do not have the technological capabilities to pro...

Chinese production of automobiles rose from 42,000 cars per year in 1990 to 2.3 million in 2004; the number of passenger vehicles on the road doubled every two and a half years through the 1990s and continues to grow. In China Shifts Gears, Kelly Sims Gallagher identifies an unprecedented opportunity for China to "shift gears" and avoid the usual p...

Energy technology demonstration and deployment are complementary to energy research and development (ER&D) activities – all together these activities constitute energy innovation, which is the process by which energy technologies are improved or developed and ultimately brought into widespread use. Successful energy innovation requires a productive...

China's economic boom in the last three decades has spurred increasing demand for transportation services and personal mobility. Consequently, vehicle population has grown rapidly since the early 1990s, especially in megacities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Tianjin. As a result, mobile sources have become more conspicuous contributors to urban ai...

The combination of the FY 2010 budget request for the Department of Energy (DOE) and the portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funds likely to be available in 2010 would (assuming that they would be split evenly between FY 2010 and FY 2011) result in a doubling in funding available for energy research, development, an...

With both China and the United States relying heavily on coal for electricity, senior government officials from both countries have urged immediate action to push forward technology that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants. They discussed possible actions at a high-level workshop in April 2009 at the Harvard Kennedy School...

This book clarifies the urgent priorities for U.S. energy policy at the dawn of the Obama administration and recommends specific steps that the U.S. gov- ernment should take to address the numerous energy-related challenges fac- ing the United States. Government must play a prominent role to ensure that adequate supplies of various forms of energy...

The management of energy-technology-innovation programs at the Department of Energy has a mixed record. There are several prominent "failures" such as the Synfuels and Clinch Breeder Reactor programs, and also a number of famous and notable successes. On balance, however, the National Research Council concluded in 2001 that, in the case of the foss...

1.0 Introduction U.S. citizens have important interests at stake not only in energy developments and choices in this country but in those occurring around the world: • World investments in energy-supply technology are in the range of $400 billion per year and rising, and most of those purchases are made outside the United States --an increasing fra...

Federal, state and local governments use a variety of incentive to speed consumer adoption of hybrid-electric vehicles by consumers. This paper estimates the extent to which consumer adoption of hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) in the United States from 2000-2006 can be attributed to government incentives, changing gasoline prices, ideological prefer...