RPI President Shirley Jackson Presents Council on Competitiveness “First Hundred Days” Energy Action Plan; Plan Calls for Tripling Energy Research Budget

Dr. Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and vice chair of the Council on Competitiveness, presented the Council’s “First Hundred Days”  Energy Action Plan at the event. “Energy security is the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity of our time,” she said. “A national call to action will unleash our national potential and enhance our economic and national security.”

The Council has worked for over a year in collaboration with more than 200 private sector leaders, including CEOs, university presidents, organized labor leaders, national laboratory directors and energy experts to develop these recommendations. The Council’s plan emphasizes supply-and-demand driven solutions and identifies six critical areas for immediate action by the new Administration and Congress:

Urge the president to issue an executive order mandating that the federal government purchase products and services to meet the highest energy technology and efficiency standards.

• Create a $200 billon national “clean energy” bank to provide debt financing and drive private investment in the development of sustainable energy solutions and support infrastructure.
• Knit the current patchwork of regulations and oversight into a seamlessly connected electrical power highway that is technologically capable of allowing both on and off ramps for all energy sources, thereby securing the national grid while strengthening consumer and worker protections.
• Develop and utilize all sources of energy in America in a sustainable way—including oil, gas, coal, nuclear, laser fission fusion, renewable and other advanced energy technologies—and create incentives to discover and deploy new sources of clean energy.
• Fill the workforce pipeline to win the clean energy race with a new generation of skilled talent, including science and technology researchers, front-line workers, and game-changing innovators.  Among the specific actions recommended by the Council is to require all federal agencies to commit 1 percent of their R&D budgets to competitive, portable undergraduate and graduate fellowships in energy-related disciplines for American students.
• Increase investment in research and development, and market commercialization to deliver secure and sustainable energy. Among the specific actions recommended by the Council is to triple the current federal investment in basic and applied energy R&D across all federal agencies and departments.

The Council’s “First Hundred Days” Plan represents the building blocks for a comprehensive energy action agenda, which we will release in June 2009 at a National Energy Summit.  The Council’s Energy Security, Innovation & Sustainability (ESIS) Initiative is led by Dr. Jackson and co-chairs Jim Owens, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc. and D. Michael Langford, national president of the Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a member of the Science Coalition.