This article is part of an exclusive article IEEE Journal Watch Series In partnership with IEEE Xplore.
The climate crisis is partly a technology problem. So how have big technology problems been solved in the past?
According to Fred Phillips, director of the TANDO Institute, an independent nonprofit think tank from the University of Texas at Austin, a type of problem researched by technology historians and scholars called “technology coercion” is currently This could potentially provide lessons for future crises.
According to Phillips, technology enforcement refers to when a government or other authority sets cost or performance goals that significantly exceed those of current technologies or products. Only products that meet the new standards can be sold by a set deadline.
As a classic example of technology coercion, Phillips describes his mentor George Kozmetsky's experience winning defense contracts that included critical components for $1 each.
“He told his engineers not to come out of the basement until he could make $1 parts for 5 cents,” Phillips said, adding that Kozmetsky's team was successful and ultimately won the bid. He added that he did.
Applying this to climate change technology, he says that in 2007, the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act set lumen-per-watt standards for light bulbs, effectively banning incandescent light bulbs. This standard was expected to result in a shift to compact fluorescent lamps instead.
But he also says the act effectively forced technology to produce better light bulbs.
“The new LED lights far exceeded the new standards and far outperformed fluorescent lights,” Phillips says, adding, “People just didn't want to work under harsh fluorescent lights. ” he added.
Phillips and co-author Pham Thi Thuy Dung, a researcher at Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics and Finance, point to the Clean Air Act of 1970 as another example. This was another effective tactic to force technology, Phillips said. It has had a major impact in promoting both social and technological change.
Phillips said non-mandatory examples of technology enforcement events include Norway's aggressive standard that 100 percent of vehicles sold must be electric by 2025.
Norway offers tax exemptions, reduced tolls and free public parking to electric car drivers, as well as investing in extensive charging infrastructure. As a result, approximately two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in Norway in 2021 were fully electric.
Singapore's push to decarbonize port operations, California's executive order on zero-emission vehicles, and Germany's nuclear phase-out mandate are further examples of regulations that Phillips and Dung say encourage technology enforcement.
While the above is generally a success story, there are pitfalls as well. Phillips points out that banning certain technologies can result in technologies that are just as bad, or worse, entering the market. That is, a ban may include exemptions, which may be prudent in some cases, but it is also possible for lobbyists to win unwise exemptions.
On the other hand, technology enforcement, at its best, mandates that everyone must meet new standards by a deadline and that products that do not meet the requirements are kept out of circulation.
Of course, technology enforcement can fail if standards and deadlines are too difficult to meet, or if standards result in products that are unacceptable to consumers. “We're still learning, for example, under what conditions consumers find fully electric cars worthwhile,” Phillips said.
The authors published their research last month in the journal IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
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