U.S. invests $14 billion in renewables since oil crisis
WASHINGTON, DC, US, 2004-11-17 Refocus Weekly
The United States has invested US$14 billion in renewable energy technology in the past 30 years, according to a former assistant secretary of energy.
“After 30 years of outstanding effort by our country’s best scientists
and engineers, it is time to declare an interim success in our nation’s
RD&D program for renewable energy,” says Dan Reicher, now with New Energy
Capital and co-chair of the advisory board of the American Council On Renewable
Energy. “We as a nation have invested $14 billion in renewable energy
technology and, the fact is, we have a lot to show for it.”
“We now have many technology options that can help address the nation’s
energy challenges,” he adds. “It is time to put these technologies to work
in the market place, while we continue their advancement in the laboratory.”
ACORE and the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucus of the U.S. Senate
and the U.S. House of Representatives will call for ‘phase two’ of renewable
energy in the U.S. at a conference early in December. The groups will call on
the renewable energy community to “rally around the proposition that a new set
of national goals and policy framework are needed now.”
“For many years, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, biomass and other renewable
options have understandably been pushed as individual technologies with a
promising future,” explains co-chair Hank Habicht, formerly deputy
administrator of Environmental Protection Agency under president George HW Bush.
“Now it is time to build the right context to reflect key national goals for
energy security, economic growth, and environmental protection.”
The conference will call for a new policy framework within which each of the
renewable energy technologies, and all of them together, can focus on
utilization, with continuing RD&D to support the utilization policy.
“It is time for a return to the taxpayers for their 30-year investment in
renewable energy technologies,” says Roger Ballentine, a director of ACORE,
previously head of the climate change task force under president Bill Clinton.
“The Phase II policy framework needs to encompass renewable fuels for national
security and renewable electricity for global warming and environmental
protection.”
ACORE and the Worldwatch Institute are producing a report on renewables in the
U.S. that will examine the movement by other countries such as Germany and
Japan, and the need for the U.S. to catch up.
This is the first major advancement from the research, development and
demonstration program that was started by then-President Jimmy Carter when he
created the U.S. Department of Energy in 1977. ACORE wants RD&D budgets to
increase by two to three times their current levels, to handle the needed
support for a national strategy for utilization of the technologies.
From 1973 to 2002, the U.S. has invested $99 billion in energy research,
including $49 billion for nuclear, $25 billion for fossil fuels, $11 billion for
energy efficiency and $14 billion for renewables, including solar, wind,
geothermal, hydropower and biomass.
“While there is much more technology to be developed, the goal of creating an
initial inventory of new technology options for the nation has been achieved,”
says the ACORE position. “We have developed and demonstrated a set of
technology options” and the call for a second phase will “put the
technologies to use across our society.”
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