Global Corporate Xpansion

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

RENEWABLE ENERGY EQUALS
MANUFACTURED ENERGY
Activities centered on renewable energy can
breathe new life into the manufacturing sector.

By George Sterzinger

Editor’s Note: The following article contains excerpts from the briefing paper, “Energizing Prosperity: Renewable Energy and Re-Industrialization,” by George Sterzinger. The briefing, published in March 2008 (revision), was part of the Economic Policy Institute’s initiative, Agenda for Shared Prosperity. To learn more, visit www.epi.org and www.sharedprosperity.org.

Today, the energy sector in the United States and the national energy policy that determines how it evolves leaves the country exposed to three major, interconnected threats: weakened national security, environmental calamity caused by climate change, and an ongoing but largely unaddressed de-industrialization of the domestic economy. National energy policy must address these three basic national goals simultaneously.

While public, corporate, and scientific opinion is coalescing around the need to “do something” about energy

security and climate change, the third challenge — addressing de-industrialization — has not really been a part of the national energy policy debate. The United States continues to import fossil fuels, allows the technology advantage it enjoyed in renewables in the 1980s to move overseas, and fails to commercialize new breakthroughs even when the basic research and development has been done domestically. As a result, dollars flow out, manufacturing moves overseas, and innovation is lost.

Unlike fossil energy, which is discovered, renewable energy is conceived as basic science, created in labs and universities, brought to commercial readiness by developers, and then manufactured as component parts assembled into finished products. In the end, renewable energy is manufactured energy and is driven forward by cycles of technology innovation. A national energy policy that provides energy security and stabilizes climate change will