The power of policy for the growth of fusion – Insights from The Fusion Industry Association’s Commercializing Fusion Energy Paper
The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) released their paper Commercializing Fusion Energy at the end of June 2024. The paper highlights the policy initiatives which will accelerate the commercial fusion energy industry. The paper focuses on three effective policies for the future growth of the fusion industry:
· Harness public-private partnerships
· Establish predictable regulatory regimes
· Level the playing field
In this Insights Article, we cover 3 key insights from the FIA paper Commercializing Fusion Energy.
As the FIA notes, policy tools are essential to stimulating (or ceasing) growth and action within an economic industry: “with good policy, governments can accelerate the timeline that the unrivalled promise of fusion — energy that is clean, abundant, efficient, and secure — is brought to their marketplace.”
The front cover from the ‘Commercializing Fusion Energy’ paper. ©Fusion Industry Association
1. Establishing Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for fusion is not enough – effort is required to ensure they are well-structured to unlock the benefits they bring.
The importance of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for fusion is undisputed and the FIA in this paper describes them as “among the most powerful tools in modern society.” However, the Commercializing Fusion Energy paper stresses the need to structure PPPs in a way that maximises their impact.
Public Private Partnerships must be flexible and therefore be able to be “custom-built to meet the needs of fusion” says the FIA paper.
Different examples of PPPs for fusion which are proving successful are the German fusion funded programme, Japan’s Moonshot R&D programme and in the UK Industrial Fusion Solutions for STEP. What these examples of PPPs do at the most fundamental level is to amalgamate the fusion expertise learned in different types of organisation to allow learning from all. “Well-structured public-private partnerships that harness the collective expertise of government and private entities, while protecting intellectual property, will stimulate innovation, reduce costs, and foster rapid advancement in advanced technologies” says the FIA.
2. Stability in fusion regulation is essential for business planning
The FIA paper calls for fusion to be regulated as a different energy source to nuclear fission. Establishing the regulatory position for fusion now is very important to allow future business planning for fusion companies. The FIA paper notes that an ambiguous or a continuously evolving regulatory regime is harmful to business confidence and means that companies cannot plan their capital spending and roll-out in fear of wasted investments.
The FIA paper says: “As companies race to commercialize fusion energy, only countries that have appropriate, fusion-specific regulatory frameworks in place will be true contenders as companies site locations for their first demonstration and power plants.”
3. Clean or green energy includes fusion
The omission of fusion from clean energy/green technologies/zero emission technologies must be resolved argues the FIA, and any policy approaches which are designed to support clean energy, such as tax incentives for solar and wind technologies, should also be extended to cover fusion energy. Thus, the FIA argues for the playing field of clean energy as a category to be levelled to also include fusion energy.
Fusion as an energy source has enormous potential benefits and there is a need to accelerate the commercialisation of the energy source to meet global greenhouse gas emissions targets, just like there is a similar need for electric vehicles, for solar panels, for onshore and offshore wind turbines. Approaching fusion as a different type of clean energy or treating it similarly to nuclear fission will mean that its benefits will be, at worst, unrealised or, at the least, much delayed in their completion.
Download the FIA Commercializing Fusion Energy paper.