La Follette School Professor Greg Nemet will discuss how solar energy became inexpensive and how that path can serve as a model for other low-carbon technologies. However, other technologies would have to progress much faster than solar energy to be helpful for climate change.

As a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Nemet studied solar energy’s path to widespread adoption, drawing on new data sets, analyses, and interviews with more than 60 people in more than a dozen countries. He found that flows of knowledge from one country to another—often embodied in equipment and as tacit knowledge in the heads of internationally mobile individuals—have been central to solar energy’s success.