Abstract
A National Research Council (NRC) committee recently conducted a retrospective study of the benefits of some of the energy efficiency and fossil energy programs in the US Department of Energy (US DOE). A subsequent conference discussed ways of adapting and refining the NRC framework for possible use by US DOE offices to help plan and manage their R&D. A framework that emerged from the conference is depicted by a matrix that categorizes different types of benefits. The rows of the matrix reflect the goals of the department, and the columns reflect the time-frame and level of certainty. The conference suggested many approaches for estimating the benefits within each category and also noted many challenges in making these estimates.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 183-195 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Research Evaluation |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2003 |
Funding
This paper is based on ideas discussed at a conference on ‘Estimating the Benefits of Government-Sponsored Energy R&D,’ held 4–5 March 2002 in Crystal City, Virginia, USA. The conference was organized by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and sponsored by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, and Office of Science of the US Department of Energy (US DOE). Information about the conference is available on the conference website, <www.esd.ornl.gov/ benefits_conference>. This paper is based on the report summarizing the proceedings of the conference. The opinions expressed by those at the conference were their own, and therefore nothing in this discussion of the conference should be construed as US government policy. The views expressed also do not necessarily represent those of US DOE, ORNL, or UT-Battelle LLC which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.