This past weekend, I attended the Aspen Institute's Clean Energy Roundtable, an annual gathering of business, political, and policy leaders working in clean energy. Inspired by the many insights and ideas presented, here are my thoughts on the state of clean energy today and what lies ahead. First, the good news. Prices of key clean energy technologies are plummeting, bringing many technologies, such as distributed solar and energy storage, closer and closer to mass deployment. The cost of solar panels today is about 20 percent below that of a year ago. And it should continue dropping for the forseeable future. …

On Friday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released new monthly statistics for renewable energy output as well as output of traditional forms of power.  The good news is that renewable energy in May, the latest month for which statistics have been compiled, is at its all-time highest level, accounting for 13% of total power.  The bad news, however, is that the vast majority of this, about 9.4%, comes from traditional hydropower.  The other renewables -- wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal -- accounted for just 3.6%.   Wind accounts for 1.8%, biomass 1.3%, geothermal 0.4%, and solar 0.3% of the total.  All …

This past weekend, while traveling in India, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received the message, courteous but firm, that India has no intention of capping carbon.  The rationale provided is that India has low per capita emissions.  This is, to be sure, India's best argument.  Her overall emissions are soaring as her population spirals upward--India, only two thirds as populous as China a decade ago, will pass China to become the world's most populous country, with almost 1.5 billion people in 2030.  India's per capita emissions are rising too from industrialization.  But they remain below those in developed countries.  China, …

Last week the Department of Energy released part of the $25 billion in loans provided for through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, included in Section 136 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The delay in releasing these funds had been one of the longest running scandals in clean tech policy. Upon taking office, the Obama Administration vowed to expedite their release and Secretary Steven Chu had made finalizing rules needed to administer the program a key priority. In the first installment of the loans, Tesla, the VC-backed California maker of an all-electric sports car, founded …

Business Week has a provocative article this week by Michael Mandel on innovation -- or the collapse of it -- in America. According to Mandel, many of our current woes stem from a failure to innovate over the last decade since the glory years of the late 1990s. While most Americans still take pride in our innovation, Mandel provides some sobering statistics: the wages of young college graduates -- precisely the group that should be succeeding in the information economy -- declined 24% between 1998 and 2007. The U.S. trade balance in high tech goods flipped from a $30 billion surplus in 1998 …

The decision of the Obama Administration to embrace stronger fuel economy standards by 2016 is drawing praise from environmentalists but fire from auto analysts who say it will add to Detroit's woes.  The decision to accelerate fuel economy comes on top of a variety of policy proposals to address climate change, the auto industry and transportation including the cap and market bill that was the subject of House hearings yesterday, the deliberations of the Auto Task Force over GM's fate, replenishing the Highway Trust Fund and a proposal to offer clash for clunkers also in legislation working its way through …

New York City -- Later today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to release the Chairman's Mark of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also known as the energy and cap and trade bill, for markup next week. The new text will reflect a deal made Tuesday on the key issue of giving out versus auctioning of allowances for greenhouse gas emissions. With those agreements -- which give out 35% of the credits to local utilities and 15% to trade-intensive industries -- the bill clears a major hurdle and is now more likely to pass …

Cross posted at the NDN blog. Forty years have passed since John McConnell, a peace activist and plastics pioneer, proposed the first Earth Day at a Unesco conference in San Francisco as a way to focus attention on our role as stewards of the planet. In that period, environmentalism has grown into a worldwide passion so ingrained that we routinely recycle bottles, paper and plastics and on Earth Day, at least in my small New York town, walk instead of drive children to school. In that sense Earth Day and environmentalism have been astonishingly successful. At the same time, however, …

This past Friday, Princeton University's PRIOR Center and New York University's Rudin Center convened a conference on what's next in transportation. The speakers, who included Mort Downey, former Deputy Secretary of Transportation and leader of the Obama transition team for transportation; Tony Shorris, former head of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority; current PA chairman Anthony Coscia; and others, agreed that we are at a crossroads in transportation policy. On the one hand, there has never been more enthusiasm for new modes of transportation such as high-speed rail and new approaches such as vehicle mileage tolling and congestion …

Cross-posted at the NDN Blog. ----- As the economic recovery and investment package backed by the administration works its way through Congress, and more evidence about the nature of this recession surfaces, an interesting exercise is to think about how we want to emerge once it is over. In the midst of current economic turmoil, it may seem difficult to imagine the post-recovery world, let alone accurately predict it. Nonetheless, starting with an outcome and working backwards to a policy prescription is far preferable to policy based purely on the passions of the moment. Following are my thoughts on the …