Renewable Energy Policy Moment

Writing at Renewable Energy World, Scott Sklar offers a helpful summary of the market forces currently battering renewables - declining energy demand, postponed investments in response, and more subtly, the declining impact of tax credits as the recession reduces companies' existing tax obligations.

Mr. Sklar's main solution is greatly improved procurement policies. Given the fragmented, labyrinthian nature of the federal government's programs, plus of course those of the 50 states, he writes the following:

To reorient existing federal capital (loan, guarantee and bond programs) and existing procurement programs would requite a totally new approach by the Obama Administration. New procurement tools would need to be fashioned not only to accelerate procurements but aggregate procurements and leverage them regionally in concert with other state and local government procurement programs.

This would require White House coordination with mandatory participation by OMB, GSA, DOE's Federal Energy Management Program, and even DOD to insure these procurement and coordination tools could be realized

Nice understatement. Effective procurement requires a kind of revolution in the federal bureaucracy. It would be interesting to know if the upside of the Obama appointments' bias toward the thinking of the 1990s would be some capaciaty for massive consolidation and coordination - the Manhattan Project that energy needs.

There are some good ideas coming out of the transition team. For example, read the transition team co-chair John Podesta's piece on Green Recovery.

Obama Energy Policy

Here's Obama the candidate offering a good short summary of his energy and innovation policies. It will be interesting to see how the program holds up.

Renewable Energy World's morning-after summary is pretty sensible.

• Hope 1: "“President-elect Obama is the first national presidential candidate who has explicitly campaigned for renewable technologies and green jobs."
• Hope 2: "Some renewable energy experts and analysts say that Obama may use the job-creating opportunity that the renewable energy industry holds as a way to usher in a stronger economy while bringing more solar and wind power into the energy mix."

On the latter point, the strongest, clearest advocate is Van Jones, whose organization and new book should be injected without dilution into the Obama administration.

Obama's Tech Team

At least one technology member of Obama's transition team has been tentatively identified by the Washington Post: Julius Genachowski, a former counsel to the Democrat side of the FCC, a managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, and a friend of Obama's from law school. He seems connected, and draws comments like this:

"Julius is a true believer in the power of technology to change lives and I think that bodes well for the Obama administration that someone like him is part of the transition team," said Rick Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel.

But the web material on him is paper-thin - I'll try to find something more concrete.