Workshop on Identifying and Avoiding Potential Dead Ends and Missed Opportunities in Climate Policy

February 4th and 5th, AAAS Building, Washington DC

The Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making (CEDM) organized a Theory and Methods workshop on “Identifying and Avoiding Potential Dead Ends and Missed Opportunities in Climate Policy” on Feb 4-5 in Washington, DC. The workshop drew 31 participants from government, academia, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and industry. Participants grappled with short term policy and technological decisions that would make it much harder to achieve virtually complete decarbonization in the long term.

A number of questions were debated: Would renewables and natural gas help or hinder deep decarbonization? What could be done to stimulate new nuclear reactor designs that are cheaper and safer than the current light water paradigm? What is the historical experience with re-purposing major infrastructure as technology and society’s needs evolve? The workshop laid the groundwork for the “visioning exercises” that CEDM will undertake to construct possible game plans of how the energy system could be transformed when the policy window for such a transformation opens.

Download the Workshop Summary

TandMW