Robin Gaster
Research Director
Center for Clean Energy Innovation
Robin Gaster is director of research at ITIF's Center for Clean Energy Innovation, president of Incumetrics Inc., and a visiting scholar at George Washington University.
Dr. Gaster’s primary interests lie in economic innovation metrics and assessment, small business and particularly startups, regional economic development, transformation in education, and the rise of the big technology companies. He is editor of the Great Disruption blog.
Between 2004 and 2017, Dr. Gaster was lead researcher on the National Academies multi-volume study of Small Business Innovation Research awards. He was responsible for drafting for 10 interrelated volumes of reports, as well for conducting the underlying primary research. He was also lead researcher theNational Academies study of the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, and built a data analysis engine for the National Institute of Standards and Technology for comparing the innovation capacity of states and regions.
Consulting clients include the European Commission, the Saudi government, Deloitte and Touche, the Economist Intelligence Unit, TEKES (the Finnish National Technology Agency), VINNOVA (the Swedish National Technology Agency), and the Electric Power Research Institute, as well as many corporate clients such as Philips, Olivetti, Mitsubishi Research, and Dataquest, and think tanks and publications such as the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, Education Week, and the Economic Strategy Institute. His work has been published in Foreign Policy and The Atlantic
Dr. Gaster has founded several companies, primarily focused on aggregating and deploying electronic information, targeting local and industry-specific information services. These have involved extended partnerships with Deloitte and Touche and with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
Dr. Gaster received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1985, an M.A. from the University of Kent (U.K.) in 1978, and a B.A. from Oxford University (U.K.) in 1976. His doctoral thesis won a national academic prize. He also won a congressional fellowship at the Office of Technology Assessment, and has been a fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute. A full biography is available on LinkedIn.
Research Areas
Recent Publications
Solar and Wind Won’t Replace Natural Gas for Decades: They Will Depend on It.
Solar and wind are rapidly replacing coal, and many expect it will simply replace natural gas as well. But that’s a mistake: In fact, solar and wind for decades to come will depend on gas to fill variability gaps when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.
Why Wind and Solar Need Natural Gas: A Realistic Approach to Variability
Wind and solar power will replace consistently dispatchable electricity from fossil fuels with variable and more unpredictable clean energy. Seasonal shifts and annual variations cannot be handled with batteries or other proposed storage solutions like hydrogen. Natural gas will have to bridge the gap for many decades.
Podcast: Embracing Innovation Is the Ultimate Key to Tackling Climate Change, With Robin Gaster
Climate change is a global problem, with two polarized viewpoints making it difficult to find a solution.
Let’s Be Realistic About Green Hydrogen
Like any new technology, green hydrogen must meet three related challenges: production, distribution and adoption. But it faces far higher-than-advertised hurdles at every stage.
The Blue Hydrogen Bubble Must Burst
In order for blue hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-reach sectors like aviation, heavy trucks, shipping, steel, and cement, blue hydrogen must slash costs and effectively capture and either store or use the carbon that’s generated.
A Realist Approach to Hydrogen
Clean hydrogen is expensive to produce, difficult to transport, and a second- or third-best clean energy solution in almost all proposed markets. To help drive the global green transition, a realist approach to hydrogen policy must address all these practical challenges.
What COP28 Missed: A Realist Climate Policy
Instead of magical thinking that starts with a conclusion and works backward, we need a strategic framework that encourages smart decisions on priorities and maximizes the return on scarce political capital—a strategy that connects the economics, technology, and politics of the green transition.
Price Over Performance: Why Green Energy Is Different From Previous Technology Revolutions
The drivers that accelerated every transformative innovation since the industrial revolution won’t work for green tech.
A Realist Pathway Through the Green Transition
The harsh reality is that until clean energy is as cheap and performs as well as dirty energy, the world will not adopt it at anything like the needed scale. So, governments must focus on developing clean energy sources at price and performance parity with dirty fuels — “P3.”
Beyond Force: A Realist Pathway Through the Green Transition
Trying to force adoption of clean energy with subsidies, regulations, and exhortations will fail. The only realistic way to spur the green transition is to develop clean technologies that can reach effective price and performance parity with dirty ones. Then markets will adopt them at scale.
The Hydrogen Hubs’ Success Relies on Proper Management
It is vital that the hydrogen hubs (H2Hubs) program prioritizes the delivery of commercially-viable low-carbon hydrogen and develops the market ready to buy it, which can be achieved through proper management of the program.
It’s Critical to Prioritize Commercial and Market Readiness for H2Hubs
Effectively managing the Energy Department’s hydrogen hubs program in the face of formidable challenges will be vital for the success of developing hydrogen-based economic ecosystems.
Recent Events and Presentations
How Can Decarbonization Boost U.S. Industrial Competitiveness?
Watch now for expert panel discussion exploring how the United States can take advantage of opportunities to develop cleaner industries that are more globally competitive.
A Realist Climate Policy: Driving Clean Tech to Price/Performance Parity
Watch now for the release event for the important new report and panel discussion on why P3 must be the new lens governments that governments must use to decide which clean energy technologies to support and how to support them.
