Our mission

The mission of the American Energy Innovation Council is to foster strong economic growth, create jobs in new industries, and reestablish America’s energy technology leadership through robust, public investment in the development of clean energy technologies.

About the Bipartisan Policy Center

In 2007, former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell formed the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) to develop and promote solutions that can attract the public support and political momentum to achieve real progress. Currently, the BPC focuses on issues including health care, energy, national and homeland security, transportation, science and economic policy. For more information, please visit www.bipartisanpolicy.org.

About the ClimateWorks Foundation

The ClimateWorks Foundation supports public policies that prevent dangerous climate change and catalyze sustainable global prosperity. The ClimateWorks network includes partner organizations across the world, aligned to support smart policies in the regions and sectors that have the greatest potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, please visit www.climateworks.org.

Acknowledgements

The American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC) gratefully acknowledges the important contributions and guidance provided by the following members of its Technical Review Committee:

Chair – Maxine Savitz, former general manager of technology partnerships at Honeywell; member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; Vice President, National Academy of Engineering

• Ken Caldeira – Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington
• David Garman – Former Under Secretary of Energy and Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy
• Rebecca Henderson – Senator John Heinz professor of environmental management, Harvard Business School
• David Keith – Professor and director of ISEEE Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the University of Calgary
• Richard Lester – Director of the Industrial Performance Center and professor and head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at MIT
• Nate Lewis – George L. Argyros professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology
• Ernie Moniz – Cecil and Ida Green professor of physics and engineering systems and director of the MIT Lab for Energy and Environment and of the MIT Energy Initiative, MIT; member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
• Franklin Orr – professor of petroleum engineering, Stanford University
• Allen Pfeffer – Vice President of technology, Alstom Power
• Dan Sarewitz – Director, Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Arizona State University
• Chuck Shank – Former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In addition, the AEIC would like to thank Tom Bechtel, Jabe Blumenthal, Joe Chaisson, Joseph Danko, Karen Fries, Daniel Goldman, Scott Elrod, Kelly Gallagher, Mark Little, Brian Mormino, Sherm Mullin, John Pinette, Sophie Vandebroek and John Wall for their expert contributions to this report.

Video provided by:

A123 Batteries
Bright Automotive
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
DuPont
General Electric
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
OriginOil (algae conversion)

Photographs provided by:

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Prelude

It may seem surprising that a group of business leaders who are not primarily in the energy field would make a strong statement on energy innovation and the need for a more vigorous public commitment. We have two reasons for speaking out on this issue:

First, the energy challenge is much worse than most people realize. The problem is already imposing a heavy burden on our nation—a burden that will become even more costly. The economic, national security, environmental and climate costs of our current energy system will condemn our children to a seriously constrained future unless America makes significant changes to current policies and trends.

Second, there is vast, but neglected, potential to produce and spread innovation in the energy sector. Most of the technologies that underlie the current energy system were invented decades ago, and are increasingly costly, brittle, and incompatible with a clean future. In almost every realm of energy, we can develop and deploy new technologies that are more efficient, secure, and clean. Technology can be a game changer.

The scale of these threats—and the wealth of opportunities to do better—make the message clear: It is time we invent our future.

In developing a plan for how to do that, we called upon our experience managing large innovation programs in our companies. Our staff read dozens of reports from the field and interviewed another hundred experts. And we took a hard look at what has worked to promote innovation in defense, medicine, information technology and other fields.

We are convinced that America has a great deal to gain from smart, ambitious investments in clean energy innovation. As business leaders, we know how the private sector can be mobilized to attack these problems, but we also know the government must step up to protect the public interest. We set forth here the necessary actions that the public sector must take to unlock the ingenuity and capital of the American marketplace in pursuit of the nation’s clean energy goals.

We hope that the President, Congress, and American public pay heed to the findings we present in this report.