ABSTRACT
This book argues that the most important contribution of solar to climate change is in the wrong but useful model it provides for other low-carbon technologies we will need. The solar model is wrong in that it doesn’t apply to all low-carbon technologies and also because there will always be technological idiosyncrasies that require adaptation of the model to guide the efforts deployed to catalyze innovation in them. Solar’s model is useful in that, as described in Chapter 1, the technology has been successful; its evolution can be accurately traced, as shown in Chapters 2–8; and general findings can be ascertained (Chapter 9) and applied to other analogous technologies (Chapter 10). I conclude with the three main implications of this book: 1) we can accelerate innovation, 2) we need to fit the appropriate innovation model to a technologies type, and 3) we need to fit innovation models with the extant national innovation system in that location. These implications are followed by eight reasons to be optimistic about addressing the challenges of climate change.
