Nations Cut Renewable Energy R&D in the Face of Energy Shortage and Global Warming

Read the full editorial by Martin Rees in last week's Science. (subscription required.)

"The urgent challenge is to meet global demand [scheduled to rise by more than 50% in the next 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)] while reducing the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change.

"A paper published last October concluded that public-sector R&D investment in energy in most industrialized countries has fallen sharply in real terms, from peak levels in the early 1980s, with some stabilization in the 1990s. That analysis demonstrated that the 11 IEA countries accounting for most of the world's energy R&D had all decreased expenditures as a proportion of gross domestic product between 1975 and 2003. Investments in major energy R&D program areas dropped by 53% between 1990 and 2003. Fossil fuels and nuclear power accounted for more than 90% of the aggregate decline, but there was also an overall drop of 5% for R&D on renewable technologies."