Expert elicitations are a promising method for determining how R&D investments are likely to have an impact on technological advance in climate change energy technologies. But, expert elicitations are time-consuming and resource intensive. Thus, we investigate the value of the information gained in expert elicitations. More specifically, given baseline elicitations from one study (Baker, Chon, & Keisler 2008, 2009ab), we estimate the Expected Value of Better Information (EVBI) that could be gained from revisiting these assessments.
We find that the EVBI ranges from $100 million to $11 billion for individual technology categories. This is many orders of magnitude larger than the cost of accruing such information. This indicates that it may be worthwhile to move forward with large scale, carefully managed elicitations on climate change energy technology.
We find EVBI is higher on technologies with larger budgets, such as Nuclear Power; and on technologies with net values that are not too high or too low, such as Nuclear Feeder Reactors and Purely Organic Solar Cells. Finally, we find that the EVBI is impacted by uncertainty in climate change damages. In particular, we find that the EVBI for CCS technologies increases as the risk of catastrophe increases.
- Erin Baker, Yiming Peng (2012). The Value of Better Information on Technology R&D Programs in Response to Climate Change. Environmental Modeling & Assessment, 17(1-2):107-121. Supersedes Umass Working Paper
References
- Erin Baker, Haewon Chon, and Jeffrey Keisler (2008). NuclearPower: Combining expert elicitations with economic analysis to inform climate policy.
- Erin Baker, Haewon Chon, and Jeffrey Keisler (2009a). Advanced solar R&D: Combining economic analysis with expert elicitations to inform climate policy. Energy Economics, 31:S37 — S49.
- Erin Baker, Haewon Chon, and Jeffrey Keisler (2009b). Carbon capture and storage: Combining expert\ elicitations with economic analysis to inform climate policy. Climatic Change, 96(3):379.
