Decision Making in the Real World

NCSE 6th Annual National Conference on

Science, Policy and the Environment

States in the Lead:

Clean Energy in the U.S.

Ronald Reagan Building and

International Trade Center,
Washington, DC
January 27, 2006
Lewis Milford
Clean Energy Group
Historic Transition in Clean
Energy Led by States
1997: A Blank Slate on Clean Energy
 No RPS
 No State Funds
 No Climate Negotiations
 Threats to EE Programs
 No Kyoto Protocol
 Little State Level Action
 Opposition to Restructuring Efforts

2006: State Level Revolution on

Energy
 Democratized Decision-Making
 Beyond price regulation
 Loosening of monopoly utility grip
 State Environmental, Economic Development
Policy
 National Stalemate
 Energy Independence
 Price volatility
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 2006 – A New World:
A New View of the States
Clean Energy Funds (15)

3
States with Fuel Cell/Hydrogen
Programs
(16 total)

4
States with Renewable
Portfolio Standards
(20 total)

5
States Developing Carbon
Trading
(13 Total)

6
Real Clean Energy Policy in the
US
Over 188 Million People in 26 States
(64% of the US Population)

26State Funds, Fuel Cells and Hydrogen, RPS ,

and Carbon Trading 7
 Historical Role of States
 Areas of competence:
federal (redistributive)
vs. state (developmental)
 Erie Canal to stem cells
 States: historical locus for
technology innovation
 Clean energy resurgence
consistent with American
historical trends
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Decentralized Technology
Innovation
 Beyond moon shot
approach
 Focus on innovation
barriers
 Bottoms up learning
 Experimental
 Nonpartisan
 Regional clusters
 Not merely DC models
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Future Implications?
 State and regional primacy
 Federal lack of consensus
 Long Progressive Energy Era
 Federal support not preemption
 Think through new strategic
implications:
– State / International cooperation
– Technology partnerships
– Federal devolution (tax, grants,
economic deficit)
– Distributed learning models
– Finance partnerships 10
 Robert F. Kennedy and
Local Diversity
 “Even as the drive towards bigness [and] concentration…has
reached heights never before dreamt of in the past, we have
come suddenly to realize how heavy a price we have paid…
in [the] growth of organizations, particularly government, so
large and powerful that individual effort and importance
seem lost; and in loss of the values of…community and local
diversity that found their nurture in the smaller towns and
rural areas of America…Bigness, loss of community,
organizations and society grown far past the human scale –
these are the besetting sins of the twentieth century, which
threaten to paralyze our capacity to act…Therefore the time
has come…when we must actively fight the bigness and
overconcentration, and seek instead to bring the engines of
government, of technology, of the economy, fully under the
control of our citizens.”
-Kennedy at Worthington, Minn., Sept 17, 1966,
in Guthman and Allen, RFK: Collected Speeches,
pp.211-212.
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Contact Information

Lewis Milford
Clean Energy Group
www.cleanegroup.org
LMilford@cleanegroup.org
(802) 223-2554

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