A healthy manufacturing sector is essential to America's economic prosperity in the 21st century. But you wouldn't know that reading last Sunday's New York Times, where former Obama Administration CEA Chair Christina Romer writes that there are no compelling reasons for U.S. manufacturing policy.

According to Romer,...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out his election-year vision for restoring America's global competitiveness. U.S. manufacturing figured prominently:

Think about the America within our reach...an America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs...we have a huge opportunity, at...

By Alex Trembath and Devon Swezey.

On Tuesday, the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC) -- composed of industry titans like Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Bank of America Chairman Chad Holliday and leading venture capitalist John Doerr -- released a follow-up to their 2010 report "A Business Plan for...

By Jesse Jenkins, Devon Swezey, and Alex Trembath

Wednesday's news that the California solar cell manufacturer and DOE loan guarantee recipient Solyndra will be declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy has government critics grumbling about clean tech boondoggles and failed government programs. But Solyndra's failure, while unfortunate, is hardly an...

The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity, the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable.

As both Republicans and Democrats in Congress appear willing to cut funding for key energy innovation programs, a bipartisan group of senators have spoken out in support of maintaining funding for an innovative energy technology agency that invests in game-changing research.

Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and...

With last night's State of the Union address, President Obama has shifted the debate from the partisan climate wars to an expansive energy innovation policy which has the potential to draw support from across the political spectrum.

"In embracing breakthrough innovation for solar and nuclear power alike -- for economic...

A slew of critical news articles about a clean energy stimulus program have suggested both that the program is a government boondoggle and that the Obama Administration has inflated the number of jobs supported by the program. Both contentions are misleading.

One article published by MSNBC, titled "Hot...

A stimulus program to boost the deployment of clean energy technology has come under criticism for contributing funds to projects that had started construction before the stimulus bill was passed. A long and in depth Greenwire story notes that 64 percent of the 50 highest dollar grants went to...

President Obama's recent proposal to increase and make permanent the research and development (R&D) tax credit is unlikely to substantially accelerate economic growth without greater efforts to manufacture and commercialize innovations in the United States.

The President recently unveiled the new $100 billion measure as a way to...

In another clear sign of the steadily unraveling pollution paradigm, Yvo de Boer, the former head of the UN climate negotiations, has acknowledged that the long debate over targets and timetables for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is irrelevant. Asked by Bloomberg about emissions reductions targets in...

Originally Published at the Breakthrough Institute

The United States Mountain West has long been a hotbed of experimentation and innovation, due in no small part to a decades-long partnership between government, universities, and private enterprise. Throughout the 20th century, the federal government invested in dams, transportation infrastructure, and...

Originally published at the Breakthrough Institute

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has funded breakthrough innovation and new growth industries that are driving down the cost of clean energy and building the foundation for competitive 21st century U.S. industries, according to a new White House report released...

The failure of the U.S. Senate to pass clean energy and climate legislation has caused investment giant Deutsche Bank to take its clean energy dollars elsewhere, according to Kevin Parker, Global Head of Asset Management for the firm.

"They're asleep at the wheel on climate change, asleep at...

If you want to understand why we haven't made any measurable progress on energy and climate change for the last 30 years, there's no better place to look than the visceral partisan reaction to Bill Gates' recent call for major federal investment in energy innovation.

Gates has been speaking...

By Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey

Accelerating U.S. clean technology innovation, manufacturing, and market creation has become not just an environmental necessity but an economic imperative. A recent Pew study showed that the global clean energy industry has experienced rapid investment growth over the last five years. New clean...

By Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey

The introduction of "Buy American" legislation in the Senate in response to a report that more than three quarters of funds from a clean energy stimulus program went to foreign companies is understandable and probably good politics. Unfortunately it will do nothing...

In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama issued what is now a familiar refrain: "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." If there were still doubts about which nation has the edge they were put to rest days...