Advanced Energy Perspectives

Melanie Kenderdine, Director of the Office of Energy and Policy Analysis and Energy Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), joined advanced energy business leaders for a breakfast discussion hosted by AEE on March 19. Kenderdine shared insights around the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), a multi-year process that will offer a comprehensive outlook on both federal and state energy policy moving forward.

Early this year, President Barack Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum establishing the QER Task Force. “Affordable, clean, and secure energy and energy services are essential for improving U.S. economic productivity, enhancing our quality of life, protecting the environment, and ensuring our Nation’s security,” Obama noted in the memo. “Achieving these goals requires a comprehensive and integrated energy strategy resulting from interagency dialogue and active engagement of external stakeholders.” The task force is co-chaired by John Holdren, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dan Utech, Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Guest post by Amy Francetic, CEO of Clean Energy Trust, an AEE partner organization in Illinois.

Clean Energy Trust is a Chicago-based nonprofit that works to launch, fund and grow clean energy companies in the Midwest. In just three years, we have helped launch over 100 clean energy startups that have created more than 280 jobs, registered more than 41 patents and disclosures and turned $750,000 in initial investment into over $40 million in funds raised. We work every day with early stage clean energy entrepreneurs – providing funding, mentorship and commercialization assistance – so we know how important it is to foster a clean energy “ecosystem” that helps them thrive.

Key tax committees in the Senate and House of Representatives are expected to take up “tax extenders” in the coming weeks. Extension of tax credit provisions that expired at the end of 2013 remains critical to the stability and growth of the domestic advanced energy industry.

Baby, it’s cold outside – still. We don’t hear much about “polar vortex” these days, but when Washington, DC, gets 11 inches of snow in March (so far – it could snow again next week) and the high temperature in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day is 27 degrees, you know it’s been a tough winter. The bone-chilling weather so far this year also brings a reminder that energy waste is money out the window – and out of the local economy.

In 2013, AEE partnered with Colorado State University’s Center for the New Energy Economy, headed by former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, to develop an online state legislation tool called AEL Tracker. One benefit of looking at state policy across the country is the ability to identify trends, and the Center has just released its latest overview of state policy trends in the legislative session now under way.