DOE SEEDS Program
Forecasting and influencing technological progress in solar energy: A new theory looks at an entire technological ecosystem, and understands a given technology in the context of its position within the entire technological ecosystem. Research has shown a major source of improvements in photovoltaics in recent years was improvements in its component technologies. Our research demonstrates that inputs are the primary driver of progress, and not just for solar, improvements in any given component technology is passed through to all the technologies for which that component is an input, and this process is iterated indefinitely. Such iterative processes enable us to classify technologies into trophic levels, analogous to food webs in ecology, based on their distance from natural resources. This theory predicts that technologies higher up in the technology food chain make progress faster than those below, due to the fact that they benefit from all the improvements in the all component technologies below them, technologies such as computers or photovoltaics. This at least partially explains why some technologies make more rapid progress than others.