It is the deployment - Stupid!

Bill Clinton had in his first campaign for presidency a mantra that his staff put before him every time he went on stage and to remind him to keep focus on essentials: "It is the economy - Stupid". We may have to develop a similar catch-phrase to remember what factor in society that really drives technology development. So how about: "It is the deployment - Stupid"? R&D is a natural component and the easy one. Politicians do not have to be reminded that they should put efforts in R&D but it is less natural for them that deployment of technolgies on the markets is necessary to the process. Far too often R&D and market development is looked upon as a linear process and it is assumed that good resercah brings technologies that sell themselves more or less. But in the learning process there is a mutual dependence between R&D and deployment, like walking on two legs. When technology is deployed and the experience is systematically gathered and fed back we are, step by step, walking towards better and cheaper technologies! These processes were discussed and highlighted in a conference in Oxford recently and especially in the papers from Clas-Otto Wene and Michael Grubb. And the importance and impact by the market deployment activities are shown in the learning curves. Look for instance on the example from professor Wene as regards PV-technology (Learning Rate 20% means that the cost is reduced by 20% for every doubling of the cumulated installations, in a double logarithmic curve this comes out as a straight line).

If you then combine this with picture that Michael Grubb shows concerning India (below) we get an idea of what could be accomplished if we activly work on the deployment and ensures that the learning process works smoothly. But then we may have to rethink the attitude that all our own energy measures have to be short-term cost-efficient. Because if we do we may have put ourselves on the side-line of sustainable development which in the long run could harm our technological and economical development. So let us apply the Clinton-method before it is too late!