The clean energy R&D hole

Posted on July 21, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |

I’ve been writing a bit lately about how America’s place in the race to become a leader in clean energy, so a piece on Huffington Post by Congressman Ed Markey (as in the Waxman Markey climate bill) caught my eye.

Markey points to some sobering statistics–we get just 1% of our energy from renewable sources, compared to 10-20% for some European countries. And only 6 of the top 30 clean energy companies are American. Markey calls the climate bill just passed by the House as a “giant legislative leap” forward, but says research and development is really where it’s at:

Federal R&D is less than half what it was in the late 1970’s. In 1980, 10 percent of federal research dollars went to energy; today, it is just 2 percent.

Meanwhile, private investment from U.S. energy companies has dwindled to less than one quarter of one percent of revenues in R&D. Talk about chopped liver — that is lower than the dog food industry spends — and is out of step with any industry remotely associated with innovation.

The climate bill, Markey says, gives R&D this much needed boost by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into energy efficiency and clean energy development. He argues that recent clean energy legislation has set the stage for explosive growth in the U.S. akin to the tech boom of the 90s. The difference is one of magnitude: the energy industry is several times bigger telecom.

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