Accelerating Commercialization of Energy Innovations

In this chapter, we see that a major gap exists in how we (at least in the US) translate deep-domain discoveries and disruptive innovations to market to drive impact at scale. We believe also that unless we can drastically shorten the time and reduce the cost of this translation, many key technologies that can address the many challenges we are facing will not see the light of day. Nowhere is this more important than in the fields of energy and its impact on climate change. These hidden technology gems possibly hold the key to a prosperous and sustainable society, particularly if we can achieve this over the next 10–20 years. We saw that just a few disruptive scientific advances, starting from around the 1950s, semiconductors, new materials, processing of materials at the nanometer scale, and digitalization have radically changed our world. We suspect that these technologies may only represent the tip of the iceberg, and that there are likely thousands of other promising technologies that are stuck in an “innovation logjam” in our research labs and centers. We explore new mechanisms to accelerate the transition from “science to impact at scale” for new solutions that can address the dual issues of economic growth and climate change, and which can have impact at scale in a timely manner. This may have seemed to be impossible in the past, but the last 20 years has taught us that new technologies can emerge from nowhere and disrupt large mature industry sectors.