In Oregon, Student Governments Call for a Future Beyond Coal

This is the first installation in a two-part post series on the Beyond Coal movement in the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on youth engagement. This first in-depth post looks at the Oregon campaign to replace the Boardman Coal Plant with cleaner energy sources by 2014 at the latest. This summer Oregon’s Public Utility Commission has the chance to help propel the state toward a clean energy future by rejecting a plan to keep Boardman open for at least another ten years. Oregon youth have responded with a state-wide campaign to show students support transitioning away from Boardman by 2014 or sooner.

It began in January, when Portland General Electric (PGE) made a big announcement: the major Oregon utility, partial owner and sole operator of the Boardman Coal Plant, proposed a possible timeline for phasing out reliance on Boardman. That was the good news: after months of work on the part of climate activists, PGE had finally acknowledged the risks of associated with their coal-fired coal plant. The bad news? The soonest transition date proposed by PGE fell woefully short of what’s needed to protect Oregon’s environment, our economy, and ratepayers being subjected to the risks of coal dependency. Under PGE’s proposed “2020 Plan,” the Boardman Plant would remain open for a minimum of ten more years.

Media outlets in the Northwest were a-flurry with the news that PGE wanted to decommission its coal plant. Laudatory news articles and editorials poured in, the vast majority framing the issue as one of the PGE responding to public concerns by doing the right thing for the environment. Unfortunately, few stories in the mainstream media probed deeply into the validity of claims PGE made to justify their preferred timetable. Most news sources accepted PGE’s arguments at face value, never asking the essential question of whether a private utility that answers to Wall Street investors should be trusted to essentially regulate itself.

PGE’s analysis flawed, students take action

Yet while the media grew infatuated with PGE’s 2020 Plan, environmental groups and Oregon students decided to act. “This state is my home,” said Tyler Gerlach, a freshman at Linfield College, ”and I’m unwilling to stand by and watch the people that live here be trampled on by a utility company.” We knew the 2020 Plan wouldn’t accomplish what’s needed for both the environment and ratepayers. The 2020 Plan hinged on state and federal regulatory bodies both granting PGE a waiver for pollution prevention upgrades the utility is required to install in 2015. A point largely forgotten by the media was that under the 2020 Plan, if pollution waivers aren’t granted, the utility will go back to the original plan of burning coal at Boardman until 2040 or longer.

If PGE simply made the transition away from Boardman in 2014, it could avoid passing the cost of pollution controls on to ratepayers and eliminate a huge source of carbon on a timescale consistent with Oregon’s pollution reduction goals. Meanwhile, keeping the plant open until 2020 would commit Oregon to at least another decade of burning coal at Boardman, with the costs of burning coal only likely to get higher over time. “2020 is just way too long,” said Katie Taylor, an OSPIRG student organizer at Lane Community College, in an interview with the campus paper The Torch. “I think 2014 is a reasonable deadline.”

PGE’s own studies show 2014 is the transition date that’s best for ratepayers, except in scenarios assuming very high future natural gas prices. In the company’s Integrated Resource Plan, PGE assumes natural gas prices far out of line with projections of third-party bodies like the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. It’s one of several flawed assumptions in PGE’s 2020 Plan: the utility also fails to consider more than one means of replacing Boardman (building a new natural gas unit), and does not adequately account for the fact that federal action on global warming would increase the costs of burning coal. It wasn’t surprising PGE would try to tweak the numbers to give the result most convenient for Wall Street shareholders with an interest in keeping Boardman open. What was more disappointing was that the media seemed poised to let the utility’s assumptions go unquestioned.

Giving Oregon students a voice

Early in the year, youth activists from the Cascade Climate Network, Sierra Student Coalition, and OSPIRG met to forge our strategy for calling PGE out on its claims. Though students had provided critical input on decisions regarding coal in Oregon over the last several months, we knew what would be needed was an even more organized student voice that could unify campuses across the state in favor of transitioning away from Boardman by 2014. Our idea was this: by passing student government resolutions at different campuses, we could show that the bodies elected by students to represent their interests were ready to push for a speedy transition away from Boardman.

Unwilling to settle for only those schools already well-connected to Oregon’s Beyond Coal movement, our team of organizers set out to contact as diverse a list of campuses as possible – from large public universities, to small private schools, to community colleges. To our knowledge, nothing like this had been attempted on this scale in Oregon before: by asking student governments from a large sampling of schools to act in unison on a single issue, our campaign was breaking new ground.

Yet the majority of campuses seemed eager to give students a new voice on this issue. The first batch of resolutions sailed in within weeks. “Boardman threatens our climate, air quality and health,” said Zachary Kitamura, a freshman at Pacific University, which was one of the first schools to pass the resolution. “Ten more years of coal is too long.”

The momentum continues

Our list continued to grow, and soon we picked up our first high school. The student government at McMinnville High School passed its Beyond Coal resolution after students there decided to launch their own resolution campaign, complete with petition drives and a visit to lobby the principal’s office. At the campaign’s conclusion, this public high school in semi-rural, conservative-leaning Yamhill County had joined colleges and universities in declaring its student body’s support for moving beyond coal by 2014. “Boardman is going to close eventually anyway,” said Lindsy Gjesvold of McMinnville High School, explaining her support for the 2014 plan. “Let’s do it on a timescale that makes sense.”

The McMinnville High victory came just in time for an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) public hearing on pollution permits for the Boardman Plant. By the time of that event, our list of student government resolutions had grown to six. It was enough to lend new weight to the student voice at the hearing. Around thirty youth activists turned out in person to that hearing, where citizens concerned about Boardman’s pollution packed two rooms with a total of around 100 bodies. DEQ staff were visibly impressed, and our presence at the hearing apparently made an impact. Just a couple weeks later, the DEQ announced it wouldn’t rubber-stamp PGE’s request for a pollution waiver.

Meanwhile, at Linfield College a fight was brewing. Students from the campus environmental group had brought up the Beyond Coal resolution, only to meet with unexpectedly strong opposition from a faction that convinced the senate to vote down the resolution on the first attempt to get it passed. Long story short, a web search by a student at Linfield revealed the senator heading up the opposition was the son of the Vice President of Transmission and Distribution Services at PGE. The discovery set the stage for a campus-wide campaign to get the Linfield senate to re-consider the Beyond Coal resolution, and this time do the right thing for their student constituents.

What followed at Linfield was one of the most impressive campus-wide advocacy campaigns I have witnessed at a small private college, made more impressive by the fact that students pulled it off during the busiest time of the year. The environmental group at Linfield set out to educate the student body about the risks of coal to our environment and economy, collecting over 150 student signatures asking the senate to pass the Beyond Coal resolution. Linfield students researched PGE’s assumptions in-depth, and pointed out flaws to the senate. In the week before the final vote, senators received a barrage of emails from constituents asking them to pass the resolution. The Beyond Coal buzz spread so far that one student studying abroad emailed the senate from an Internet cafe in Mexico City. Within four weeks, grassroots organizing at Linfield had done its job: at the last senate meeting of the term, the Linfield student government voted near-unanimously to ask PGE to transition from Boardman by 2014.

During the second half of May, the campaign continued accumulating victories that included passage of Beyond Coal resolutions by two of Oregon’s largest colleges – Portland State University and Oregon State University. Our list now includes student governments at ten schools, among them major public universities, community colleges, several private universities and colleges, and a high school. Passing student government resolutions may not sound as flashy as banner-drops and lock-downs, but the result has been to give Oregon students a more organized voice in regional energy decisions than perhaps we’ve ever had before. With the backing of campus governments representing thousands of Oregon students, we’ll go to decision makers with more credibility than could be achieved in any other way. It’s just in time too, because one state commission is poised to decide whether PGE’s 2020 Plan gets the go-ahead.

Oregon Public Utility Commission is a key player

This summer, the Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC) will review PGE’s 2020 Plan and decide whether it’s a good deal for ratepayers. This state-level body is charged with looking at utilities’ plans to check that they make sense for customers, deciding whether ratepayer money is best spent the way each utility has proposed. OPUC can put the brakes on PGE’s plan to keep Boardman open another decade; to do its job right, the commission needs to look carefully at PGE’s assumptions and decide if the its questionable assumptions are reasonable. If PGE has biased its analysis to make replacing Boardman look more expensive than it is, then approving the 2020 Plan is a bad deal for ratepayers.

“It is in the best interest of Oregonians to close the Boardman Plant by 2014,” said Tyler Gerlach of Linfield, ”and OPUC is supposed to look out for our best interest, not that of a private corporation.”

On college campuses across Oregon, student governments looked at many of the same issues OPUC will consider with regards to PGE’s 2020 Plan. At Linfield College for example, the personal connection to PGE of one senator meant the senate was fed all PGE’s talking points – which later were discredited by in-depth research by Linfield students. In the end, the Linfield senate and student governments around the state decided to trust third-party energy analysts above the claims of a utility with an inherent interest in keeping its own coal plant open as long as possible. One after another student governments have rejected PGE’s assumptions and called for a transition away from Boardman by 2014, not just because of environmental concerns but in the interest of PGE’s ratepayers. Wall Street investors will benefit if PGE can postpone the closure date of their coal plant as long as possible – but with coal only likely to grow more expensive, ratepayers stand to lose out.

Ten elected student governments are standing with the long list of environmental, consumer, health advocacy, and faith groups calling for a timely move away from Boardman Coal. By 2014, Oregon’s only in-state coal plant must be replaced by cleaner sources of energy. The state can then move on to ending ties to coal plants located outside state boundaries. To meet the charge of protecting Oregon ratepayers, commissions like the OPUC must reject PGE’s 2020 Plan. By doing so, they can follow in the footsteps of student governments across Oregon that have already spoken up.

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House Passes Competitiveness Bill After Near-Collapse

By Teryn Norris
Cross-posted from Americans for Energy Leadership

Today, the House of Representatives passed the flagship U.S. competitiveness and innovation legislation, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (full text and summary), by a vote of 262 to 150. The House Science & Technology (S&T) Committee press release is here and a full breakdown of the vote is here, including 245 Democrats and 17 Republicans in favor, 0 Democrats and 150 Republicans opposed.

The passage comes after the proposal was blocked twice within the past two weeks on the House floor, triggering significant alarm among the science and technology community. The first incident on May 13th involved a "Motion to Recommit" attached to an anti-pornography amendment, introduced by S&T Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX), which forced many members to vote to send the bill back to committee. The second incident on May 19th occurred when the bill failed to reach the two-thirds majority required under procedures that were used, despite the inclusion of the anti-pornography amendment and a cut in the authorization level by nearly 50 percent.

Today, House S&T Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) used a rare procedure called a division of the question, which allowed separate votes on various parts of the amendment included in the May 13th Motion to Recommit. This effectively allowed the House to pass the bill with a standard majority vote, and the original bill was passed with a few amendments, including total authorization at five years and approximately $86 billion. This authorizes the continued doubling of budgets for the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and includes new authorization levels for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, Energy Innovation Hubs, the higher education component of the RE-ENERGYSE proposal, and more.

"I am disappointed that my Democratic colleagues resorted to using a procedural tactic to defeat Republican changes that would have saved over $40 billion and restored the original COMPETES priority of basic research," said Representative Hall in a statement. "While I am glad we were finally able to reauthorize many of the important research and education programs in this bill, the bill that passed today spends too much money, authorizes duplicative programs, and shifts focus away from the bill's original intent."

The revival of America COMPETES constitutes a victory for science and technology advocates, however, Senator authorization and eventual appropriations will be significant challenges. Regardless, the rare procedural tactics necessary to overcome such partisanship and over-dramatized budget concerns -- even with such high-profile competitiveness legislation that will drive significant technology innovation, high-tech job creation, and long-term economic growth -- represents a clear and alarming example of how U.S. technological leadership could be increasingly threatened in the years ahead, as I noted in a recent article. Building the economic and political case for a strong national innovation system backed by major federal investment, and directly challenging the anti-government and neoliberal orthodoxy that continues to limit effective innovation policy, must gain renewed urgency if we are to build upon today's outcome.

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The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy?

The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy
By Teryn Norris
May 26, 2010
Published by The Huffington Post

Last week, the flagship federal legislation for U.S. competitiveness containing broad support for science, technology, and advanced education - called the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 - collapsed in Congress after it was blocked from passage through the House, despite already being significantly weakened.

Enter the age of American polarization, where bread-and-butter competitiveness and innovation policy is subject to hyper-partisan politics and obstructionism, even in the face of rapidly rising global competition. America COMPETES, which was originally passed with strong bipartisan support under President Bush, may be yet one more casualty of today's extreme political polarization, which according to one major study is at the highest level in over a century.

But beyond the issue of partisanship, this is an alarming wake-up call to how anti-government sentiment and neoliberal economic ideology - which seeks to discredit the role of federal investment in promoting technology innovation and growth - could combine forces and seriously damage our national innovation system in the years ahead.

The United States was a driving force behind the global expansion of prosperity and security in the 20^th century, due in large part to our technological leadership. The collapse of America COMPETES is one of the clearest and most alarming examples in recent history of how this leadership is being threatened - not by some foreign entity, but from within our own country. How did we get to this point, and what lessons might this incident hold?

The Rise and Fall of COMPETES

The America COMPETES Act was originally passed in 2007 with major bipartisan support in response to the National Academy of Sciences report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. It is widely recognized as the most authoritative assessment of U.S. competitiveness in the past decade, commissioned by Congress and developed by a committee of the country's leading experts in science, technology, and business.

"Having reviewed trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned that the scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength," they concluded. "This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security."

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Entrepreneurs Wanted: Must be willing to think big to transform energy for the poor

A guest post by Hugh Whalan

When Apple transformed the music industry with the iPod and iTunes, and when Google revolutionized internet search capabilities, it was a win for everyone – consumers got better products and the companies providing them became rich.

There are billions of energy-poor consumers in desperate need of exactly this kind of industry transformation. The sheer size and growth potential of the market has the potential to create the next generation of huge energy companies – as large as BP, Shell and Exxon – which are focused on providing small scale energy solutions to the billions for whom this is the best solution.

The opportunity for the entrepreneurs who will build the next generation of energy mega-companies can be summed up with three simple points:

1. Those at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP), people earning $1-$6 dollars a day, already spend a lot on energy. More than $US433 billion each year according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). WRI estimates energy is the second largest market in the BOP markets –bigger than the transport, health, ICT and water sectors combined.
   
   
2. Studies show that the average BOP consumer would use more energy if they could afford to. This means that as the poor come out of poverty and as the price of each unit of energy drops, the market will continue to grow.
   
   
3. The energy resources currently meeting BOP consumer demand are overwhelmingly archaic and inefficient (e.g. kerosene, dung, firewood, and charcoal).

In summary, the BOP energy market is huge, will continue to grow quickly and has underserved customers. It’s the kind of market that screams for innovation, and the stuff of dreams for entrepreneurs. Some entrepreneurs are already well on their way to addressing this market failure by providing cheaper, greener, and safer options for BOP consumers. Some examples include Barefoot Power’s efforts with solar, Husk Power’s mini power-plants, and E+CO’s investments in green energy technology companies.

I hope they all become billionaires because the more entrepreneurs who see the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, the better. More entrepreneurial attention will result in more innovation and competition, which leads to better service and products for paying consumers. For the billions relying on kerosene, firewood, and charcoal, I guarantee you, this cannot come too quickly.

Hugh Whalan is the CEO and co-founder of Energy in Common, a non-profit allowing individuals to make micro-loans to fund green energy entrepreneurs in developing countries.

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John Stewart on Oil Disaster: You've got the be kidding me!

As usual, the DailyShow's John Stewart brings his wicked wit to the dark news of the day: this time, it's the month-old oil disaster still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Here you go. Happy Friday. Sigh...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
There Will Be Blame
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

On a more serious note, this large infographic has pretty much everything you'd want to know about the unfolding Deepwater Horizon-BP oil disaster in the gulf (h/t to Alisha Fowler for this one). Crude awakening indeed.

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House Fails Again to Pass America COMPETES

Originally published at LeadEnergy.org

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives failed in its second attempt to pass the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, a flagship bill for U.S. competitiveness containing broad support for science and technology innovation, including funding authorization for energy innovation and education programs.

The bill, which was re-introduced on the floor again today after getting derailed last week, was blocked by a minority of House Republican members despite the uncontroversial and bipartisan nature of the legislation. It was brought forward for a vote under the House’s suspension process, which forbids further amendments but requires a two-thirds majority, which the bill failed to meet on a vote of 261-148 (full breakdown available here).

The second failure comes despite major cuts to the authorization level to alleviate budget concerns – down from a five-year, $85.6 billion authorization to three-years and $48 billion – and inclusion of the anti-pornography amendment that derailed the effort last week. “I understand the concern of many of my colleagues about the overall size of a five year authorization, and this reduction is my sincere attempt at compromising on an issue that is very important to me," stated Representative Bart Gordon (D-TN). "The bill before us today includes an overall funding reduction of almost 50 percent from H.R. 5116, as introduced.”

The America COMPETES Act was originally passed with strong bipartisan support in 2007 to authorize recommendations from the comprehensive National Academies competitiveness study, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The COMPETES Act was part of President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative, and in 2007 it passed with unanimous consent in the House in less than an hour. It requires re-authorization this year to continue and faced relatively insignificant hurdles in passing the House Science & Technology Committee in late April (29-8 vote), with over 750 organizations offering their endorsement.

Advocates point out that the majority of U.S. economic growth in the 20^th century resulted from technology innovation, and past federal investments in science and innovation led to the creation of the Internet, microchips, the aerospace and biotechnology industry, and more. “The path is simple,” stated Chairman Gordon, "research leads to innovation; innovation leads to economic development and good paying jobs. Creating good jobs is the goal of this bill, and it is what our country needs right now.”

Nevertheless, according to The Hill, “Republican House members remained unsatisfied with Democrats' research bill. The GOP issued a statement of policy just before the vote that slammed Gordon's effort for failing to incorporate all six of their revisions, especially those that some members believe would reduce or eliminate "numerous new and unnecessary" programs.”

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Australian Progressives to Rudd: Time for a Clean Energy Investment Strategy

By Devon Swezey, originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

Fed up with the Australian government's failure to enact strong clean energy policy, a broad coalition of Australian academics, environmental organizations, and clean energy advocates have written an open letter calling on Austraila Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to include major federal investments in clean energy technology in the new federal budget.

The letter, organized by Beyond Zero Emissions, comes as a response to the failure of the much-compromised Emissions Trading Scheme, which was pilloried as a giveaway to fossil fuel industries and ineffective for driving clean energy deployment. Instead, the letter calls for a new approach to climate and energy policy in Australia.

"The time has come for the Rudd government to take an ambitious nation-building approach to climate policy. Labor should commit to a renewable energy project with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century," says Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director Matthew Wright, referring to the massive hydroelectric system that was the largest engineering project ever to take place in Australia.

Wright says that the federal government should be spending at least as much on clean energy as it is in it's new national broadband plan, which is expected to invest $42 billion over the next 8 years.

Former Breakthrough Generation Fellow Leigh Ewbank has helped spearhead this initiative over the last year. Last month, he wrote an op-ed calling for such a project in Australia's national broadcaster, ABC, and has also helped organize the effort as Director of Public Policy for Beyond Zero Emissions.

With climate policy in disarray here in the United States as well, leading environmental organizations and progressives would do well to look to our friends in Australia for a new model to move away from compromised and politically unsustainable emissions trading and toward major public investments in clean energy innovation and infrastructure to create a prosperous clean energy economy.

Here is the full press release of the letter:

Frustrated by Rudd's ETS Backflip, Thousands Call for Massive Federal Budget Investment in Renewable Energy.

MELBOURNE - Frustrated by the Rudd Government's inaction on climate change, a broad coalition of prominent Australians and organisations representing hundreds of thousands of people have signed an open letter calling for the government to massively increase renewable energy investment in tomorrow's federal budget.

Notable signatories include:

• Progressive online campaign organisation Get Up!, boasting over 350,000 supporters
• Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
• Leading climate scientist Professor David Karoly
• Guy Pearse, Research Fellow at the Global Change Institute and author of High and Dry
• Major national environmental organisations Friends of the Earth, Environment Victoria and Greenpeace Australia
• The Australian Youth Climate Coalition, with a membership of over 50,000
• Renewable energy advocate the Alternative Technology Association
• Renewable energy industry group the Australian Solar Energy Society
• The independent think tank The Australian Institute
• The Electrical Trades Union Victoria
• Over 30 community-based climate groups from around Australia.

"The time has come for the Rudd government to take an ambitious nation-building approach to climate policy. Labor should commit to a renewable energy project with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century," says Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director Matthew Wright.

"There is a critical need for public investment in large-scale renewable energy projects and climate-friendly infrastructure. These projects are the best way to reduce Australia's emissions and protect the nation from dangerous climate change," says Matthew Wright.

"Most Australians would be shocked that the Rudd government is investing up to 28 times more money in the broadband rollout than in renewable energy and climate-friendly infrastructure. With a funding differential like this, it's reasonable to presume that our Prime Minister considers slow internet a greater moral challenge than climate change."

Wright says, "Public investment in sustainable infrastructure should match the investment in the National Broadband Network at a bare minimum."

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Clearing the Clean Energy Innovation Threshold

Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

The latest from the Brookings Institution's Mark Muro is a perfectly succinct summary of how one should judge the coming Kerry-(Graham?)-Lieberman Senate climate and energy bill, reportedly scheduled for release this Wednesday:

What is clear, though, is this: To get to a good bill senators need to deal properly with the revenue--whether from offshore oil drilling or pollution allowance auctions or whatever else is in the bill. And to do that they need to make sure a huge chunk of it gets applied to clean-energy research and development. Get that right and much else needn't be perfect. Blow that, and the bill is likely not worth it.

... The bottom line is this: Putting a price on carbon, or regulating emissions, ... while absolutely necessary, will not be sufficient to address the nation's climate problem and will, importantly, not put the U.S. in the position to seize the extraordinary opportunities that will come with rebuilding to global energy economy. Also necessary, as we keep saying, will be a major drive to promote large-scale technology breakthroughs. No matter how you measure it, U.S. government investment in clean energy R&D remains grossly inadequate. Right now clean energy R&D accounts for only around $3 billion a year. But if we're going to see real progress in de-carbonizing the present economy and creating the next one this number should be closer to $15 billion and probably as much as $25 billion per year.

So that's the target: $15 to $25 billion a year is "the number"--the critical investment threshold for federal clean energy investment that must become a core benchmark for evaluating any and all federal climate, energy, or indeed appropriations deal making.

Mark notes the rumors and reports of the still-not-yet-public drafts of the K-G-L bill do not bode well for the bill's ability to clear this critical clean energy innovation threshold...

Mark also notes that if Congress still insists on moving forward with more offshore drilling -- a key pillar of the political dealmaking behind the Senate climate bill push -- the new revenues from oil and gas production should be directed towards clean energy innovation investments as well. Here's Muro:

The price of drilling's inclusion should clearly be not just strict new drilling safeguards, but a hard link of drilling to clean technology innovation as well. That is, Senate dealmakers should in effect embrace the outline of a recent GOP plan to put hundreds of billions of new oil and gas royalties into a fund to accelerate clean energy innovation that would help make clean energy cheap and truly help wean America from its carbon dependency.

While the political inevitability of new offshore drilling sure looks to have vanished since Breakthrough's Yael Borofsky and I outlined the same concept about a month ago, the larger point still stands: IF we drill, the money had better be put to good use, and that means investing in our clean energy future.

Read Muro's full post at the New Republic here.

See also:

The Innovation Consensus: $15 Billion for Clean Energy R&D

After "Drill, Baby, Drill," Obama Should Embrace Another GOP Energy Plan

"Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy" - Breakthrough Institute featured policy report

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