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Over the past year, I worked on a series of events @CSISEnergy on energy innovation ( https://www.csis.org/programs/energy-security-and-climate-change-program/projects/energy-innovation-series). We covered energy storage, grid mod, CCUS, advanced nukes, and low-CO2 fuels. I wanted to share a few thoughts on what we learned in a 
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One of the things we wanted to highlight with this series was that innovation is not just basic science, but a whole spectrum of activities from research to commercialization and deployment. 2/x
The biggest theme we heard? We need to invest more in R&D. The U.S. energy R&D budget has been slowly increasing in recent years, mostly in clean energy tech, but decarbonizing by 2050 requires a significant scale-up. 3/x
Another theme was the importance of demonstration projects. More public funding for demonstration projects can prove the viability of technologies and help overcome reticence among investors to invest in unproven solutions. 4/x
Our speakers also appreciated that the Department of Energy was focusing on more parts of the innovation chain. There is hope that the commercialization work of @OTTatDOE (who helped us put together this series) will continue in future administrations. 5/x
But also: deployment is just as important as commercialization. It is one thing to make products available but policymakers can do a lot to create markets and demand for them. 6/x
There are plenty of bills floating around Congress, but the Senate's American Energy Innovation Act contains several innovation push and market pull policies across several key technologies. 7/x
This series was not intended to make recommendations to the next administration, but I hope the @Transition46 is looking closely at the technologies and policies that we discussed. 8/x
Of course, we're not the only ones looking at this topic. There are lots of brilliant people thinking about how to improve energy innovation, including @theNASEM's Enhancing Federal Clean Energy Innovation project and the star-studded Energizing America book from @vsiv et al. 9/x
Thanks to everyone who participated in our series. We’ll probably throw some of these thoughts together + some insights from @sladislaw in a more coherent commentary @CSISEnergy, so keep an eye out for that. 10/x
If you're interested in watching any of the events from our series, they're all archived on our website: https://www.csis.org/programs/energy-security-and-climate-change-program/projects/energy-innovation-series. 11/11
