Innovation in Finance, Technology & Policy

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

 

Accelerated Climate Technology Innovation Initiative (ACT II):
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.

 

 


 Smart Solar Marketing Strategies: Clean Energy State Program Guide
(3 MB)

by Lyn Rosoff, SmartPower and Mark Sinclair, Clean Energy Group, August 2009. The report, based on recent research, informs states on how they can act more like retail marketers to establish the financial and energy value of solar technology for the consumer. According to the new solar marketing report, use of effective marketing strategies is the key to attracting new customers to solar and bringing this smart technology into the mainstream.

Link to article on the Huffington Post by Mark Sinclair, Vice President, Clean Energy Group, on "Smart Solar Marketing," Sept. 22, 2009.

Link to article in Renewable Energy Focus US Solar Supplement by Mark Sinclair on "Creating Demand - How to Market Solar," October 2009.

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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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