Innovation to Infrastructure: Clean Energy without Cap and Trade

This report recommends several novel energy strategies to advance emerging clean energy technologies that do not require major new federal legislation or more federal funding. These innovative proposals, which have not been part of past proposed federal energy legislation, call for reprogramming about $1 billion in existing funds and committing federal and state agencies to procure $1 billion in power from clean energy. These strategies call for clean energy pragmatism—to overcome specific bottlenecks in technology innovation and finance—and for the federal government to work with the states in a new “clean energy federalism” partnership. They are practical and bottom-up clean energy solutions consisting of short-term measures to increase new technology investment in the long term.