public investment

Federal tax credits may handcuff clean energy development

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Clean energy advocates should cast aside their worries about increasing Republican scrutiny of energy subsidies.  The clean energy industry’s foolish reliance on tax incentives has already handcuffed its expansion. Unlike the leading nations in the clean […]

The push is on to discredit clean energy investment

When it rains it pours.There’s always been a tension in U.S. culture between two competing narratives. On one hand, Americans like to think of themselves as pioneers, innovators, forward thinkers — the country that invests blood, sweat, and treasure today to create a better future for the next generation. We tell ourselves stories about building […]

The Washington Post's boneheaded conventional wisdom on Solyndra

The Washington Post is spouting the Very Serious Conventional Wisdom: government is a "crappy" venture capitalist that shouldn't be picking winners.

In Solyndra's wake, polling finds support for clean energy remains strong

Tea Party conservatives have tried to use the Solyndra faux-scandal to tarnish the image of clean energy, but new polling finds that it isn't working.

Taxing carbon as part of responsible, progressive fiscal policy

Here's a progressive plan to cut the deficit while investing in the future (and taxing carbon). Can climate hawks and deficit hawks find common cause?

Are the politics of public investment really easier?

I'm somewhat dismayed to see the normally sharp Ezra Klein falling for the goofiest parts of the new Breakthrough/Brookings/AEI report. In fact he seems on the verge of drinking the Breakthrough kool-aid entirely. Consider this my attempt at an intervention. In particular, I want to take issue with the notion that investment is some sort of political skeleton key that can bypass the vicious partisan fighting that's characterized energy policy these last few decades.

There is no one correct climate policy

One of the most important lessons from the implosion of cap-and-trade is that monocrops are as dangerous in policy as they are in nature. It's time to get over the notion that climate/energy efforts need to "revolve around" any single policy strategy. More importantly, we need to leapfrog the noxious notion that different policy approaches are at war with one another. We need them all.

Barack Obama, cleantech venture capitalist?

Mike Dorning of Bloomberg Businessweek has a clever way of looking at the nation's most powerful cleantech investor.

American PRIDE Alternative to Lieberman-Kerry Climate bill -short executive summary

This is the executive summary(doc) of the American PRIDE (Promote Renewable Infrastructure & Develop Efficiency) proposal.  The PRIDE(doc) proposal is a two decade ~400 billion a year jobs bill that makes a profit, while creating two to five million new jobs per year, reducing U.S. oil use by a third within ten years, and reducing […]