One of the main elements of the UK government's new Energy Security Bill is a focus on decarbonising heat, including "supporting industry to step up investment in growing the consumer market for heat pumps." Article here
What are some of the different things a government can do to increase investment in a specific technology or industry (ie. tax breaks etc)? Examples related to the heat pump query above would be particularly useful.
One of the quickest ways is investing in large scale projects that require the use of new technology. The space race and goal to reach the moon is a very good example. So much of the technology they used at the time was not affordable by many and the money they pumped into it to make it ready for space helped advance the industry in a very massive way.
Relevant examples include medical imaging techniques, durable healthcare equipment, artificial limbs, water filtration systems, solar panels, firefighting equipment, shock absorbers, air purifiers, home insulation, weather resistant airplanes, infrared thermometers, and countless other vital inventions
When you think of the Apollo missions, you think first of brave astronauts, facing the unknown and exploring territory humans had never seen before. But without the heroes down on Earth creating the software necessary to blast off, humans would have never seen outer space. The space race coincided with a boom in digital technology that boosted the human race into the stratosphere and beyond.
Computers in the 1960s were nothing like the handheld supercomputers we have today. Back then, computers took up entire rooms, and their output was always printed out. A minicomputer would cost more than $100,000 and weighed more than 1,500 pounds. Coding was done entirely with punch cards, a method that has completely disappeared today.
Switzerland has a well developed startup culture. These startups are usually founded by PhD graduates that got a successful topic, something that can be converted into commercial product. They often add fresh graduates with just master degree from they surroundings. Even foreigners can easily do this.
For the first couple of years such startups are allowed to use rooms, equipment, library and other infrastructure of the academic institution, founders may even work there part time to support they existence. University professors provide the necessary backing for they initial reputation. They usually have shares from these startups, are members of they management boards, so stay friendly.
Compare this with expected experience when you need to support you and your idea from the own saved money, pay government for some "patent" in advance and nobody talks to you because all think you are just a fraud - that you may expect in some other countries. Surely makes lots of difference.
There are separate buildings hosting these startups for a few more years. This does not last for very long but provides an easy start, and then hopefully investors come. Most of the startups still do not survive to make into normal companies, but new and new are founded again.
I do not fully understand how the misuse of such a support is avoided, I would expect lots of fake startups masking some other activity. But nope, somehow this is avoided. Supporting multiple startups working in the needed direction could be a strategy.
X-Prizes (which is both a somewhat generic term and a trademark to one company), which are basically one-off large-ish payments ($1M and up) to the winner of a particular contest or the first company to achieve a particular goal. They don't necessarily grow the mass manufacturing stage but they can kickstart the early prototyping/tinkering stage, provided this is an interesting problem which has not seen enough early research.
$1-10M is a drop in the bucket for any kind of government-led industrial initiative and the nice thing is that they can be extremely targeted to a particular subject of interest.
Not the first, but perhaps the first to really impact a contemporary industry (autonomous driving) and catch the public attention was the 2004 DARPA challenge
No team entry successfully completed the designated DARPA Grand Challenge route from Barstow, CA, to Primm, NV, on March 13, 2004. The event offered a $1 million prize to the winner from among 15 finalists that emerged from a qualifying round at the California Speedway, but the prize went unclaimed as no vehicles were able to complete the difficult desert route.
A year later, on October 8, 2005, another round of the Grand Challenge was held in the desert Southwest near the California/Nevada state line. The Stanford Racing Team won the $2 million prize with the winning time of 6 hours, 53 minutes. A total of five teams completed the Grand Challenge course which was 132 miles over desert terrain.
Yes, the above is DARPA's own verbiage, but it does reflect the excitement many felt at the improvements between the 2004 and 2005 runs (I believe no one made it past 5km in 04).
In the beginning of aviation there were, IIRC, a number of prizes available to doing things like crossing the Channel (Daily Mail £1000, 1911) and they were also instrumental in growing the field quickly.
I don't have one for heat pumps, but there is a climate related one for CO2 scrubbing and sequestration: $100M, run by Elon Musk.
