renewable energy

Yesterday, from the White House, Vice President Biden released a new report, “The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy through Innovation,” which outlines how the administration’s $100 billion investment in innovation has been, for the most part, money well spent. In his remarks, Biden highlighted four key areas where stimulus money was working:

•Modernizing transportation

•Jumpstarting the renewable energy sector

•Investing in groundbreaking medical research

•Building a platform that will enhance the private sector’s

Last week, the Senate unfortunately failed to act on Senate Bill 3663 – a comprehensive energy reform bill before the August recess. In light of this disappointing delay, it is now more necessary than ever to focus our efforts to develop, and successfully implement, clean energy legislation at the state level.

While some question the value of investments in a green-collar industry, many law makers, as well as individuals and companies, are pushing for stronger development of this sector.

The world’s #1 energy consumer, should really be the world’s #1 carbon emitter. I think it is less important to determine who consumes the most energy because the real focus should be around ways to conserve and harvest renewable energy.

China and the U.S. are currently the world’s two largest energy consumers and CO2 emitters in the world. However, we have seen a rapid increase in energy consumption trends from developing countries like India, Brazil and Vietnam, with the next surge in demand expected to come from South America and Africa.

The clean energy movement has an unfortunate history of sacrificing the “good” in search of the “perfect” solution. Here’s an example: Kevin Costner (yes, the actor) reacted to the Exxon Valdez oil spill by investing over $24 million in a company that makes high speed centrifuge machines that can separate oil from water at the source of an oil spill. So, rather than having to skim the oil off the water or collect and transport massive mixtures of oil and water, the machines sends clean water back into the ocean on site and collect oil on the tanker. That way, the oil never reaches land, which greatly reduces the impact on wetlands, birds and sea life.

Sounds great, right? Not so fast.

At the White House this morning, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke made a compelling case for America’s next great industry – the renewable energy industry. Speaking at the Clean Energy Economy Forum, Secretary Locke told an audience of top administration and business leaders that clean energy is key to creating “the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” We couldn’t agree more.