Clean Energy Group (CEG)
Clean Energy Group, a national U.S. nonprofit organization,
promotes effective clean energy policies, develops low carbon technology
innovation strategies and works on new financial tools to stabilize greenhouse
gas emissions. CEG concentrates on climate and clean energy issues at
the state, national and international levels, as it works with diverse
stakeholders from governments as well as the private and nonprofit sectors.
CEG assists states to create and implement innovative practices and public
funding programs to advance clean energy markets and project deployment;
creates networks of U.S. and international policy makers to address climate
stabilization; advances effective, 21st century distributed innovation
theories for climate technology; develops new finance and commercialization
tools; and works to attract new investors to move clean energy technologies
to the market more quickly. CEG’s work is designed to greatly accelerate
the commercialization of breakthrough low carbon technologies and to
massively scale up existing clean energy technologies as rapidly as possible
to strengthen the economy and stabilize climate change emissions. CEG
is supported by major foundations, state governments and federal agencies.
Founded in 1998, CEG is headquartered in Montpelier, Vermont, with other staff based in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. In 2002, CEG created and now manages a separate, national nonprofit alliance of 20 state-based, U.S. public clean energy funds and programs – Clean Energy States Alliance or CESA.
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New CEG Reports and Press
Accelerating Climate Technologies: Innovative Market Strategies to Overcome Barriers to Scale-Up
by Jessica Morey, Lewis Milford, Lindsay Madeira, Clean Energy Group. July 2010. This new report issued by Clean Energy Group (CEG) shows that successful climate technology innovation may come from where we least expect it – not from the private sector alone or from developed countries - but from emerging markets in developing economies. The paper describes how new innovations models coming from some of the least developed countries are achieving success. These new public-private “innovation system” approaches to accelerate climate technologies in developing countries could be used by the developed world to overcome similar market barriers for clean energy.
by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. June 21, 2010. Clean Energy Group (CEG) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) together evaluated current gaps in financing for emerging clean energy technologies – and potential ways to bridge those gaps – in the new white paper, “Crossing the Valley of Death: Solutions to the next generation clean energy project financing gap.” Clean Energy Group and BNEF conducted interviews with over 60 technologists, entrepreneurs, project developers, venture capitalists, institutional investors, bankers, and policymakers from ten countries worldwide in order to critically evaluate the pressing problem of the so-called Valley of Death – the financing required to bring emerging clean energy technologies to commercial scale. The report offers three high-priority strategies for next-step analysis: Emerging Technology Reverse Auction Mechanisms; Efficacy Insurance; and a Government-Backed Commercialization Finance Investment Entity. The report was created with support from The Annenberg Foundation and is also available here and at http://bnef.com/free-publications/white-papers.
by Lewis Milford, President, Clean Energy Group. June 1, 2010, The Huffington Post.
by Lewis Milford, Mark Sinclair, Ken Locklin and Charles Kubert, Clean Energy Group. April 2010. In the next few years, the United States likely will enact federal climate and energy legislation. To be most effective, this legislation should create a fundamentally new partnership with the states on clean energy deployment. In this new report, Clean Energy Group recommends that Congress establish a new “Clean Energy Federalism” to expand the historic role of states to fund and deploy clean energy projects, create jobs, and grow the clean energy sector. The report makes several recommendations in three legislative areas that the legislation probably will cover: 1) the use of allowance and other funding for the states, 2) more robust finance mechanisms to scale up technologies, and 3) use of modern technology innovation strategies.
by Lewis Milford and Jessica Morey, Clean Energy Group. December 2009.
This brief 8-page document addresses the “why” of international technology collaboration and cooperation -- the basic reasons why global technology policies for product development, beyond cap and trade, are needed for stabilization. The paper reviews the major reasons why the world needs coordinated and collaborative climate technology innovation and product development – in addition to emissions cap and trading. To simplify core principles, this paper explains why technology innovation is needed and why countries should pursue complementary technology innovation policies on a coordinated, global basis. The paper supports the arguments with experts’ quotations and then provides a comprehensive list of citations and key reports for further reading on each point in the Appendix.
by Clean Energy Group, Meridian Institute, and Center for European Policy Studies, December 2009. This paper recommends “how” an international technology collaboration could be structured. It proposes using “virtual” and low cost “distributed innovation” Internet-based tools to accelerated technology cooperation and change – in the same way most major corporations today create collaborative products with partners outside their companies. It argues that climate policy makers should use these corporate strategies in climate, and accelerate global product development in low carbon technologies at a scale and in the time frames needed for stabilization – and to do so using new structures outside the existing institutions. This is a joint paper with the Meridian Institute and the Center for European Policy Studies.
A New Distributed Strategy to Reform the U.S. Energy Innovation System
(7 MB)
by Clean Energy Group and Meridian Institute, November 2009. This report from Clean Energy Group and the Meridian Institute recommends that the Obama Administration should use corporate “open and distributed innovation” strategies to accelerate research and development for clean energy and climate change technologies. Governments should use the “distributed innovation” business strategies of companies like Eli Lilly and IBM that solve problems using ideas from outside their companies; these corporations tap the best global minds to create a virtual Internet bazaar of experts to move technology ideas from lab to market. Doing research in house or funding only one center or one researcher to solve a problem is not the way modern corporations conduct research and make products anymore. This decentralized, distributed, and bottom-up approach would bring financial and intellectual property experts into the government research process earlier, accelerating commercial product development. It also could be used in the international climate negotiations to give developing countries a way to build their own clean energy technology sectors.· · · ·
A sample of CEG Projects:
- CEG has been chosen by the DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Program State Solar Technical Outreach project as one of three groups to provide solar technology information and policy best practices to key decision makers such as state legislators, public utility commissioners and clean energy fund administrators. See the project website at www.statesadvancingsolar.org
- CEG manages the Clean
Energy States Alliance (CESA), a project to coordinate the public
clean energy funds of 13 states. Through CESA, CEG serves as a strategic
broker
to increase the quantity and quality of clean energy deals for state
investment.
- The Sustainable
Energy Finance Initiative (SEFI) Public
Finance Forum is a collaboration among UNEP SEFI, Basel Agency
for Sustainable Energy (BASE) and CEG to foster support for public
sustainable energy finance
practitioners
and to improve public support for clean energy and catalyze private
investment
in the sector.
- International
Initiative on Climate Technology Policy facilitates
exchange of best practices and innovative financing mechanisms between
state clean
energy
fund
managers
and their
international
counterparts. Building upon the successful collaborative model developed
for the US state funds under the Clean Energy States Alliance, IICTP
project was initiated in 2002 to develop an international infrastructure
for ongoing dialogue on market-based clean energy activities
that can be
used by advocates in Europe and North America.
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