Taking an Ambidextrous Approach to Energy Innovation

In late 2022, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced a breakthrough in nuclear energy: a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to ignite. Scientists are now able to recreate the sun’s power source (at least at a small scale, in a laboratory). But how can the global scientific enterprise nurture laboratory successes toward the promise of inexpensive, nearly limitless clean energy?

With so much innovation happening across nuclear energy technologies, weighing the relative readiness, uncertainties, and economics of each approach can be difficult. Florian Metzler and Jonah Messinger argue that “a dynamic portfolio strategy that adjusts research and investment priorities periodically will be necessary.”

Borrowing a term from management studies, Metzler and Messinger suggest that policymakers should be ambidextrous: able to “simultaneously focus on their existing portfolio while keeping an eye on new developments with disruptive potential.” Decisionmakers can then adapt and advance promising new technologies to more quickly meet the world’s energy needs.

Read more about how an ambidextrous approach could help decisionmakers pursue new forms of nuclear energy that can be deployed at scale.