Is the U.S. missing the boat on green tech?
The United States risks missing the business opportunity posed by moving to low-carbon energy, two prominent business leaders argued in an editorial aimed at policy makers.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, published an editorial in The Washington Post Monday to warn that the U.S. is lagging China is developing clean-energy technologies.
John Doerr, investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)"We are clearly not in the lead today. That position is held by China, which understands the importance of controlling its energy future. China's commitment to developing clean energy technologies and markets is breathtaking," they wrote.
A giant conglomerate, GE is deeply involved in the energy industry and is one of the top global suppliers of wind turbines. One of Silicon Valley's top venture capital companies, Kleiner Perkins has been aggressively pursuing green technology, having invested $680 million in 48 upstarts.
But Doerr and Immelt run through a number of statistics to demonstrate that the U.S. is so far a bit player in the global marketplace for solar, wind, advanced batteries, and fuel efficiency.
The U.S. continues to produce innovative companies in the Internet but they argue that policies in energy, a highly regulated field, stifle innovation and U.S. competitiveness: "Our government's energy and climate policies are our principal obstacle to success," they said.
Both Immelt and Doerr are economic advisers to President Obama and executives from both companies regularly have testified on energy and climate policies for Congressional committees.
At a high level, the position of these companies--and many others--is that developing low-carbon products and services will serve both economic and environmental goals: low-carbon technologies, such as efficient lighting or solar, can revitalize American industry and curb greenhouse gases.
In the editorial, Doerr and Immelt said U.S. policies should indicate that the U.S. values "low-carbon energy."
They offered five policy prescriptions: put a price on carbon and cap emissions; regulate utilities with incentives for efficiency and renewable energy; strengthen efficiency standards for cars, buildings, and appliances; establish more federal funding for research, development, and deployment of energy technologies; and create new trade agreements to promote the export of U.S. products.
Crux of the issue
Doerr and Immelt's piece strikes at the heart of the energy and environment policy debate in the U.S. There are a number of technologies that can displace fossil fuel use right now and new technologies, such as plug-in electric vehicles, hold more promise.
But proposals to encourage deployment of these technologies at scale has met resistance from entrenched interests and some lawmakers. Among the concerns are that climate and clean-energy policies will significantly raise energy prices for consumers and hurt U.S. industry compete globally.
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)Still, work continues on energy and climate policy in Washington even though much of the media attention is on the health care debate.
The House narrowly passed an energy and climate bill that would mandate more renewable energy from utilities and establish a cap-and-trade system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters. The Senate is devising its version of the bill and could vote on it in the fall.
Some environmental groups, notably Greenpeace, have criticized the House's climate and energy bill for giving big businesses such as utilities too much leeway in meeting the cap on carbon emissions, which will be phased in on over the next decade.
People in green technology business, in general, favor the bill because it establishes a system for pricing carbon emissions and has other policies to invest in energy-related infrastructure, such the electricity grid technologies and battery manufacturing.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Deregulations and tax-cuts are not the solutions to every problem.
As to nuclear.... that is pretty much THE answer to our energy problems. There are many ways to keep on reusing nuclear 'waste' from reactor to reactor, until the stuff is so depleted you could BATHE in the stuff liquefied and not get a lethal dose of radiation.
Did you miss the fact that a bunch of machine politicians from Crook County IL have just established "Chicago on the Potomac"?
These guys have never had a better chance of getting government to artificially force the price of everything sky high to make their economically infeasible projects profitable. They win, the Anointed Ones get another massive layer of control over anyone who actually works for a living, and we peons just have to BOHICA.
Exactly. GE has dumped tons of money into technology that isn't economically viable in the free market so they want the government to lean on the scales for them. Dumping a 20%-30% increase in energy costs on the country with the economy the way it is would be suicide.
Smart idea to work close with the Chinese. Together tthey will grab the lead within three years. The first step is Repower America and at the same time start saving energy http://tinyurl.com/d6xrkp
We also have to realize that with MORE AND MORE PEOPLE on the world every single damned day, energy usage is only going to keep going UP, and that the only solution is NUCLEAR POWER!
have been alot more proactive on new technology concepts which has elevated their financial markets.
The US companies these days are more interested in making easy money playing the stock market and shifting their money around from bank account to bank account collecting interest.
Many inventors are talking with China, Korea, India, and Japan and are not even wasting time
with American VC and the like as they like NASA have lost their way since the '80's explosion.
I know of one inventor who can change the hydrocarbon green house effect while offering
a new energy source.
I asked him has he contacted any American companies and said," Why
waste my time with masturbation, when I can get a deal overseas ?"
I blame the failure of manufacturing and innovative creation of new technologies squarely on
the shoulders of American funding sources.
It's still a good financial model, compared to ours!
They will spend a tons of money (literally) to save 1 or 2 cents per kWh. In the long term they 'loose' money, especially after looking at the time value of money.
In America, we will issue tax credits so people can buy Chinese goods, thus we are the ones paying for the Chinese 'green' tech to be built. We get cheap imported crap and high energy prices, they get low energy prices.
Same cost, but they have a better end result.
The biggest problem is that utilities are so highly regulated that they have little incentive to improve their systems to make them smart, and the barriers to entry are so high for would-be competitors!
More government is the problem, not the solution! Cap and trade is a disaster waiting to happen! uggh!
- by JimmyBobbly August 4, 2009 7:05 PM PDT
- http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html
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(17 Comments)Improving the world doesn't get you as much money as keeping the current systems going. Why fix the world if you can make more cash from something else. Why cure an illness when you can make it go away for a short while - over (buy more pills) and over (buy more pills) and over (buy more pills) again.
The people in charge don't want to fix anything.