Application of experience curves and learning to other fields

The concept of experience curves is normally applied to analyze cost or price developments of technologies, but studies have shown that the concept can also be extended to other applications and fields. In this chapter, we show the application of experience curves to analyze energy use in industrial processes, energy demand of household appliances and discuss its application to describe and project developments in environmental impact of technologies. A second part of the chapter shows a case study of applying the concept of technological learning to the field of social behavior in what is called social learning (SL). This part of the chapter shows how the diffusion of electric vehicles is affected by different SL mechanisms.