ABSTRACT
Technological innovation is a key to accomplishing significant national energy goals. In recognition of this, government programs in industrialized nations have, for decades, attempted to stimulate energy production. Government incentives have been used to facilitate the process by which energy technologies are developed, tested, demonstrated, produced, and disseminated. Between 1950 and 1976, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States spent a total of nearly $300 billion on incentives for energy production: $477 per capita in France, $871 in Germany, $300 in Japan, and $870 in the U.S. (Cole et al., 1981). Such initiatives were expanded in both magnitude and scope after the Arab oil embargo in 1973–74 and the subsequent rapid increase in petroleum prices. Governments of many oil-importing, industrialized nations launched aggressive programs to reshape the entire pattern of national energy production and use. The central objective of these efforts was to reduce reliance on petroleum by speeding up innovation and diffusion of alternative energy options - coal, nuclear energy, renewables and conservation.
