Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy

This Idea Brief proposes to expand federal clean energy R&D through the creation of a National Institutes of Energy and a federal investment of $15 billion per year.

Modeled on the National Institutes of Health, a new National Institutes of Energy (NIE) would effectively apply R&D funding to the goal of developing new, low-cost commercial clean energy technologies. The NIE would function as a nationwide network of regionally based, commercially focused, and coordinated innovation institutes. The NIE proposal also calls for a sustained increase of $15 billion in annual federal clean energy R&D funding, as proposed by President Barack Obama, for a total of $20 billion per year.

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