The Center for American Progress (CAP) has released a paper titled ‘Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy,’ a policy roadmap for a national energy reform plan designed to reduce the cost of clean energy deployment, create jobs and enhance American economic competitiveness in 2011.
Co-written with the Coalition for Green Capital, this effort, known as Project 2011, recognizes the historic opportunity faced by the 112th Congress to make great strides in economic development and job creation through investment in clean energy deployment. To harness the power of both public-policy innovation and private-sector investment, the effort tees up a framework policy debate in the coming year.
The proposal focuses on policy incentives to reduce the cost of capital for clean energy projects, regulatory reform to increase demand for clean energy and create greater financial predictability, and new competitive regional infrastructure to ensure sustained economic development.
Specifically, Project 2011 proposes clean energy innovation policies that would do the following:
- Create a nonprofit lending institution, the Energy Independence Trust, that could borrow money from the U.S. Treasury, as well as the private sector, to address the access to capital challenges that face U.S. clean energy firms and hamper their international competitiveness;
- Propose tax policies and streamlined incentives to help bolster market demand; and
- Reform market regulations to remove barriers to entry in the clean energy sector, to create more certainty and predictability for clean energy investment.
SOURCE: Center For American Progress
