As President Obama noted, there has never been a more important time to take a cold, hard look at the realities of existing clean energy technologies and the global climate challenge. Unfortunately, clean energy policy is at a crossroads. Thanks to public investments during the last five years by the United States, Europe, and China, among others, zero-carbon technologies like solar, wind, and electric vehicles have improved significantly and become cheaper, but still not as cheap as fossil fuels.

During his Secretary of State confirmation hearing, Senator John Kerry expounded on the need for and importance of smart energy policy

The imperative to accelerate the development and deployment of these technologies is quickly growing. In other words, not only must we increase public investment in deployment, we must also ensure complementary reforms to the policies themselves to emphasize support for emerging technologies in the context of improving our innovation ecosystem. This is a taller task for sure, but one that is desperately needed if we are to meet our climate goals.

As the President weighs his options in the coming months, he’s offered by picking and choosing from two columns of policy choices: (1) the modest steps most talked about in advocacy circles are politically contentious and offer limited climate benefits. (2) An energy innovation strategy offers less political barriers and substantially more climate benefits in the long-run.

"Technologies that Energize Us" Panel: A Conversation with Teryn Norris, Special Assistant, US Department of Energy and Matthew Stepp, Senior Policy Analyst, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation along with Lynn Trahey Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory on January 20, 2013 at 10: 00 AM. Register now. 

The fifth Energy Innovation Hub to date will focus on a vital issue area.