A Clean Energy Roadmap: Forging the Path Ahead

In 2010, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation co-convened three cross-sector summits to develop recommendations for growing energy innovation in the United States. The first summit was held in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2010, in partnership with the White House. Gallup and the city of Omaha, Nebraska, hosted the second summit on June 16, 2010, and the last was held with Arizona State University and ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 18, 2010. Attendees included representatives from White House offices, federal departments and agencies, and state and local officials. Also in attendance were clean-energy entrepreneurs, representatives from academia, private-sector leaders, nonprofit leaders, and scientists. The summits' main purpose was to explore how a diverse pipeline of actors might better work together to catalyze energy innovation and scale new energy firms. The sharing of ideas regarding current barriers and opportunities with such a varied group of participants generated a number of solutions. Among many topics of discussion were ways to better leverage federal dollars and foster collaboration between entities, while identifying areas for regulatory and statutory improvements. The summits represented part of the larger, national effort to drive clean energy innovation and propel economic development and job creation within the United States. This paper offers a summary of those ideas, along with additional thoughts gleaned from an intensive literature review of more than twenty scientific articles and interviews with fifteen of the top entrepreneurs in the clean energy industry. Ultimately, they discovered five major policy strategies to accelerate the scaling of clean energy businesses in the United States. Each of these recommendations is outlined in more detail in this report: (1) Foster interstate cooperation. Aligning policies and regulations between states. Developing interstate transmission lines and generation sites; (2) Reduce market uncertainty. Developing consistent energy policies with clear implications for utility companies. Remodeling existing funding and financing structures; (3) Democratize access to the power grid. Allowing customers to generate and store their own energy; (4) Encourage inter-agency and cross-sector collaboration. Building upon regional clusters that transmit ideas and resources; and (5) Support human capital development. Focusing university research to support technology innovation, implementation of energy commercialization education, and development of policy supportive of commercialization. Strengthening the pipeline of entrepreneurship and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) through higher education. Identifying areas of improvement is only the first step. If individuals are to strengthen the United States economy, create the jobs they need, and become the world leader in clean technologies, they must generate solutions. (Contains 22 footnotes.)