Viewing the progress of clean tech in the U.S. through the
lens of national politics can get pretty depressing. Continual
gridlock on Capitol Hill, the federal budget sequester, key
leadership positions (like administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency) being held hostage by partisan politics – it
all makes fertile ground for breeding cynicism and despondency.
But beyond the Beltway, there’s a much brighter outlook. Many
states and metro areas in the U.S. are showing strong national
and even global leadership in clean-tech development and
deployment, and that leadership is on full display in Clean
Edge’s
2013 U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index released today.
The 2013 Index, which includes a free 52-page summary public
report for the first time, is comprised of our fourth annual
State Clean Tech Index (ranking all 50 states) and our second
annual Metro Clean Tech Index (ranking the 50 largest U.S. metro
areas). Calculated on nearly 100 different metrics across the
two indexes combined, the rankings serve as a significant annual
benchmark for use by policymakers, industry leaders, NGOs,
investors, and other groups leading the U.S. clean-tech sector
forward.
While federal policies like the production tax credit (PTC)
for wind and geothermal power are certainly critical to the U.S.
clean-tech industry, they are only a starting point. It’s at the
state and metro level where most deployment decisions are
actually made. “The federal PTC is hugely important, but it is
state policies that drive our markets,” said Susan Innis, senior
manager of public affairs for Vestas North America, at the
American Wind Energy Association’s annual Windpower convention
last month in Chicago. The Leadership Index’s unique lens of
metrics across technology, policy, and capital categories gives
a comprehensive picture of the nation’s clean-tech leaders and
laggards.
In both the State and Metro Indexes, California is the
hands-down winner. In 2012, among other highlights, the Golden
State launched the nation’s first auction of carbon credits and
became the first state to install more than one gigawatt of
solar PV generating capacity. California takes the top spot in
the State Index for the fourth consecutive year, leading by a
decent margin over Massachusetts, which swapped places with last
year’s No. 2 finisher Oregon, and No. 4 New York. California
finished first in the Index’s Technology category and second (to
Massachusetts) in both Policy and Capital. But beyond the four
highest-ranking states and No. 6 Washington, the State Index top
10 proves that U.S. clean-tech leadership is not just a
bi-coastal story. Top 10 finishers come from the Midwest
(Illinois and Minnesota), Mountain West (Colorado), Southwest
(New Mexico) and far far West (Hawaii). The South continues to
be the worst-performing region, with just one state, No. 24
North Carolina, in the top 25.
California’s state leadership carries over extensively to the
Metro Index as well, claiming no less than five of the nation’s
top seven clean-tech metro areas: No. 1 San Francisco, No. 2 San
Jose, No. 4 Los Angeles, No. 6 Sacramento, and No. 7 San Diego.
State and Metro leadership go hand in hand, as four other top 10
states place their largest metro area in the top 10 in the Metro
Index: Oregon (Portland at No. 3), Colorado (Denver No. 8),
Washington (Seattle No. 9), and Massachusetts (Boston No. 10).
The only outlier among the cities is America’s unique “city
without a state,” the Washington, D.C. metro area, which ranked
fifth.
In many ways, state and metro leadership in clean tech now
extends even beyond the borders of the U.S. Some U.S. states –
sometimes politically conservative ones – are now rivaling the
world’s leading clean-tech nations for preeminence in many
areas. Iowa and South Dakota, for example, each generated 24
percent of their utility-scale electricity from wind power in
2012 – trailing only the country of Denmark (at 30 percent) for
world leadership in this critical clean-tech metric. Iowa wind
farms actually generated more power overall than those in
Denmark.
An April 2013 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists,
“Ramping Up Renewables: Energy You Can Count On”, presented this
type of “if states were countries” analysis. North Dakota (with
15 percent of generation from wind) and Minnesota (14 percent)
would also make this global top 10, just below Portugal’s 17
percent and Spain’s 16 percent. Global clean-tech powerhouse
Germany generated 11 percent of its electricity from wind last
year, but so did Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
On the metro front, U.S. cities have long been out in front
of the federal government on climate action and CO2 reduction.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement,
created in 2005, has been signed by more than 1,000 mayors
nationwide pledging to meet or exceed Kyoto Protocol
emissions-reduction goals. More recently, 11 large U.S. cities,
including five of the top 10 metro areas in our 2013 Metro Index
(San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and
Seattle) have become members of the global C40 Cities Climate
Leadership Group. In C40, more than 60 large metro areas around
the world collaborate and share best practices in expanding
clean tech and advancing policies to reduce emissions and use
energy and other resources more efficiently. Such collaborations
show that cities (and states) can exhibit leadership beyond
national constraints and boundaries. “You don’t have to get Los
Angeles to agree with Montana,” says C40 executive director and
former L.A. deputy mayor Jay Carson.
In the U.S., we believe that quantitative, comprehensive
benchmarking of states and the largest metro areas delivers the
best snapshot of clean-tech progress each year. We hope that our
U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index rankings encourage healthy
competition, motivating laggards to catch up, and leaders to do
even better in 2014 and beyond.
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Wilder is Clean Edge's senior editor, co-author of The Clean
Tech Revolution, and a blogger about clean-tech issues for the
Green section of The Huffington Post. His new book, Clean Tech
Nation, co-authored with Ron Pernick, was published in September
by HarperCollins. E-mail him at wilder@cleanedge.com and
follow him on Twitter at @Clint_Wilder.
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