Doris Duke

MIT and Harvard University researchers have each landed more than $1 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to study the process of energy technology innovation in the United States.

Using a two-year, $1.9 million grant, researchers at the MIT Industrial Performance Center will study incentives, regulations, markets, and public and private institutions that lead to the development, demonstration, adoption and diffusion of new energy technologies.

Down Massachusetts Avenue at Harvard, a research group at the John F. Kennedy School of Government will use a three-year, $1.5 million grant to evaluate U.S. energy R&D practices. The group will also compare U.S. innovation practices with other countries.

The work at both schools is intended to lead to recommendations for improvements to federal and state R&D policies.

The grants are part of the New York-based DDCF’s $100 million Climate Change Initiative, launched last year. The MIT and Harvard awards are two of five new grants — totaling more than $6.6 million over three years — intended to accelerate the development of clean energy technologies. Carnegie Mellon University, Boston-based nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, and the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center received the other grants.

Last summer, MIT received a two-year, $500,000 grant from the DDCF. That grant, for MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research funded research and analysis intended to inform U.S. policy decisions on climate change.