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The climate crisis is partly a technology problem. So how have big technology problems been solved in the past?
Fred Phillips, director of the TANDO Institute, a nonprofit think tank independent from the University of Texas at Austin, said one of the studies that historians of technology and scholars are studying, an issue called “technological coercion,” is currently This could potentially provide lessons for future crises.
According to Phillips, technology enforcement refers to when a government or other authority sets cost or performance goals that significantly exceed those of current technologies or products. Only products that meet the new standards can be sold by a set deadline.
As a classic example of technology coercion, Phillips describes his mentor George Kozmetsky’s experience winning defense contracts that included critical components that cost $1 each.
“He told his engineers not to come out of the basement until he could make $1 parts for 5 cents,” Phillips said, adding that Kozmetsky’s team was successful and ultimately won the bid. He added that he did.
Applying this to climate change technology, he says that in 2007, the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act set standards for lumens per watt for light bulbs, effectively banning incandescent light bulbs. This standard was expected to result in a shift to compact fluorescent lamps instead.
But the act also effectively forced engineers to make better light bulbs, he says.
“The new LED lights far outperformed the new standards and far outperformed the fluorescent lights,” Phillips says, “and people just didn’t want to work under harsh fluorescent lights.” added.
Phillips and co-author Pham Thi Thuy Dung, a researcher at Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics and Finance, point to the Clean Air Act of 1970 as another example. This was another effective tactic to force technology, Phillips said. It has had a huge impact in promoting both social and technological change.
Phillips said non-mandatory examples of technology enforcement events include Norway’s aggressive standard that 100 percent of vehicles sold must be electric by 2025.
Norway offers tax exemptions, reduced tolls and free public parking to electric car drivers, as well as investing in extensive charging infrastructure. As a result, approximately two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in Norway in 2021 were fully electric.
Singapore’s push to decarbonize port operations, California’s executive order on zero-emission vehicles, and Germany’s nuclear phase-out mandate are further examples of regulations that Phillips and Dung say encourage technology enforcement.
While the above is generally a success story, there are pitfalls as well. Phillips points out that banning certain technologies can result in technologies that are just as bad or worse than the banned ones entering the market. That is, some prohibitions include exemptions, which may be prudent in some cases, but may also allow lobbyists to win unwise exemptions.
On the other hand, technology enforcement, at its best, mandates that everyone must meet new standards by a deadline and that products that do not meet the requirements are taken out of circulation.
Of course, technology enforcement can fail if standards and deadlines are too difficult to meet, or if standards result in products that consumers find unacceptable. “We’re still learning, for example, under what conditions consumers find all-electric vehicles worthwhile,” Phillips points out.
The authors published their research last month in the journal IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
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