Technological development is a complex phenomenon that has drawn the interest of many scholars. Understanding the nature of the forces behind the process of scientific discovery, technological innovation and know-how dissemination is a challenge for which many theories have been formulated and are still under discussion. It is customary to distinguish between basic research, often supported by public funding, and applied research, whose outcome is protected by intellectual property rights under some legal scheme. It is probably impossible to forecast completely the nature and stage of development of the technologies that will be relevant for power generation in 2030. Indeed, at least for the time being, there are no large scale energy models, which even try to model technology progress endogenously.