The future costs of nuclear power using multiple expert elicitations: effects of RD&D and elicitation design

Characterization of the anticipated performance of energy technologies to inform policy decisions increasingly relies on expert elicitation. Knowledge about how elicitation design factors impact the probabilistic estimates emerging from these studies is, however, scarce. We focus on nuclear power, a large-scale low-carbon power option, for which future cost estimates are important for the design of […]

Going Electric: Expert Survey on the Future of Battery Technologies for Electric Vehicles

The paper describes the results of a survey, carried out with leading EU experts, on the capacity of both fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to reach commercial success in the next twenty years. The success of electric transport is hampered by a combination of low range, scarce efficiency and high costs of batteries. Costs […]

Upcoming TEDx: Passport for the future

ICARUS, together with Ca’ Foscari University organizes a TEDx event in late June 2013: “Passaporto per il futuro“. TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.”  The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. At TEDx events, […]

Ambiguous Aggregation of Expert Opinions: The Case of Optimal R&D Investment

How should a decision-maker allocate R&D funds when a group of experts provides divergent estimates on a technology’s potential effectiveness? To address this question, we propose a simple decision-theoretic framework that takes into account ambiguity over the aggregation of expert opinion and a decision-maker’s attitude towards it. In line with the paper’s focus on R&D […]

Advanced Biofuels: Future Perspectives from an Expert Elicitation Survey

This paper illustrates the main results of an expert elicitation survey on advanced (second and third generation) biofuel technologies. The survey focuses on eliciting probabilistic information on the future costs of advanced biofuels and on the potential role of RD&D (Research, Development and Demonstration) efforts in reducing these costs and in supporting the deployment of […]

The Future Prospect of PV and CSP Solar Technologies: An Expert Elicitation Survey

In this paper we present and discuss the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar technologies. Sixteen leading European experts from the academic world, the private sector and international institutions took part in this expert elicitation survey on Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies. The survey collected probabilistic information on (1) how […]