The United States needs to invest in the full innovation lifecycle of energy technologies to address the challenges of climate change and global economic competitiveness, the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC) said in its recently released annual report.
“The United States is in a global clean energy technology race and needs a galvanizing clean energy innovation agenda with a strong long-term signal,” AEIC said in a press release. “Encouraging only early-stage R&D will not be enough, serving only to support the invention of technologies that will die an early death in the lab, or be fully developed abroad and sold back to us. Rather, well-targeted public investments and well-designed public policies for the full innovation lifecycle are needed to scale the next generation of advanced energy technologies.”
AEIC noted that global public and private spending on energy research and development (R&D) increased in 2017 and 2018. Between 2015 and 2017, AEIC said, the United States fell from 13th to 14th place for public energy R&D spending relative to national GDP, noting that the United States contributes a smaller portion of its research budget to energy and other industrial technologies than most other developed nations.
AEIC said that the United States should triple its investment in the full investment cycle and offered several specific recommendations.
The report recommended that Congress expand federal funding for DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to $1 billion per year, authorize and appropriate $20 million per year for DOE’s LabEmbedded Entrepreneurship Program and authorize and appropriate $16 million per year for DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT). AEIC also recommended that OTT be given its own authorization and that the head of OTT report to the Secretary of Energy.
AEIC also recommended, among other proposals, that Congress strengthen DOE’s Loan Programs Office, consider additional institutional mechanisms to support early-stage commercial projects, and consider energy tax provisions that support early commercial deployment of new technologies.
AEIC is a project of the Bipartisan Policy Center that aims to “foster strong economic growth, create jobs in new industries, and reestablish America’s energy technology leadership through robust, public and private investments in the development of world-changing energy technologies.”
Principals of the group include Bill Gates; founder of Microsoft and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Thomas A. Fanning, chairman, president and CEO of Southern Company; Thomas F. Farrell, II, chairman, president and CEO of Dominion Energy; and Ben Fowke, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy.
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