Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Toward a Continuing Assessment:
Developing the Capacities for National
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Informing
Decisions about Energy Supply and
Use Issues
A. Toward a Partnership Approach
Energy supply and use is a sector distinctively characterized by collaboration in knowl-
edge development and use, despite widespread impressions that diferent agendas
interfere with expert communication. Unlike, say, the United Kingdom, where govern-
ment oicials rarely interact with private sector leaders as peers, in the United States
experts from the Department of Energy, EPA, NOAA, and the Department of the Inte-
rior can come together in conferences and symposia with experts from the oil and gas
and electric utility industries and with experts from non-governmental institutions and
academia and exchange knowledge and views remarkably freely.
For example, the annual Energy Modeling Forum in Snowmass, CO, includes rep-
resentatives of all of these groups, many of whom develop strong personal contact net-
works that are used actively. EPRI and industry associations hold meetings that bring
together all kinds of experts, as do university research centers. Commitees and panels
of the National Academies of Science/National Research Council included representa-
tives of all of the categories of expertise who work together on consensus statements on
important issues. Individuals move back and forth across boundaries between govern-
ment and non-government.
For energy supply and use, therefore, any self-sustaining long-term structure for con-
tinuing climate change consequence assessments will necessarily involve partnerships,
not just between knowledge suppliers and users but among all parties as both suppli-
ers and users. What is important is to involve the entire multi-institutional community
in clarifying what each kind of institution does best, what kinds of beneits each kind
would get from a long-term structure, and how to collaborate in ways that respect as-
pects of the knowledge base that are proprietary without leting that protection become
a barrier to widely useful generic knowledge.
In developing this kind of partnership, which already exists in some respects in an ad
hoc but active manner, there are both science issues (i.e., what knowledge the commu-
nity needs) and institutional issues (i.e., how best to develop and share that knowledge).
