Showing 1 - 10 of 135
Forecasting technological progress is of great interest to engineers, policy makers, and private investors. Several models have been proposed for predicting technological improvement, but how well do these models perform? An early hypothesis made by Theodore Wright in 1936 is that cost decreases...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010600108
We study the costs of coal-fired electricity in the United States between 1882 and 2006 by decomposing it in terms of the price of coal, transportation costs, energy density, thermal efficiency, plant construction cost, interest rate, and capacity factor. The dominant determinants of costs at...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014199792
We study a simple model for the evolution of the cost (or more generally the performance) of a technology or production process. The technology can be decomposed into n components, each of which interacts with a cluster of d-1 other, dependent components. Innovation occurs through a series of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013152370
Biofuels have been evaluated based on their greenhouse gas emissions, costs, and potential scale of production. Here we propose that feedstock supply risks should be added to the list of key metrics for evaluating the performance and scalability potential of transportation biofuels. Biofuels...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013031398
If global photovoltaics (PV) deployment grows rapidly, the required input materials need to be supplied at an increasing rate. In this paper, we quantify the effect of PV deployment levels on the scale of metals production. For example, we find that if cadmium telluride {copper indium gallium...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013031437
Energy technologies emitting differing proportions of methane and carbon dioxide vary in their relative climate impacts over time, due to the different atmospheric lifetimes of the two gases. Standard technology comparisons using the global warming potential (GWP) emissions equivalency metric do...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013040074
Photovoltaic (PV) module costs have declined rapidly over forty years but the reasons remain elusive. Here we advance a conceptual framework and quantitative method for quantifying the causes of cost changes in a technology, and apply it to PV modules. Our method begins with a cost model that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012934997
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003000756
This paper develops an agent-based model of the UK housing market to study the impact of macroprudential policies on key housing market indicators. This approach enables us to tackle the heterogeneity in this market by modelling the individual behaviour and interactions of first-time buyers,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012981590
Understanding the differences between rich and poor places is complicated by the fact that places differ from each other in numerous ways. In this paper, we show how a dimension reduction algorithm can unveil hidden patterns in US census data and consistently yield useful insights into the type...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012912692