The good thing about R&D is that it is relatively cheap. A hundred billion dollars could fund innovation across a broad spectrum of potential technologies. We should expect most of these ideas to fail. Many will see some progress, but not enough to become economically competitive. Air capture’s cost might fall to $70 per ton, say, but remain too expensive to be used everywhere across the planet. The cost of nuclear power might be driven down to 6¢ per kilowatt-hour, but still not be cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. The Swiss stacking experiment to store energy could, like any other
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