create a huge demand for both more renewable energy and
cycles of technology innovation. With the right set of policies and incentives, these priorities can be used to revitalize
the manufacturing sector and create and train the workforce
required by that expanded sector. The logic of this argument
can be turned around: once the fostering of renewable
energy is seen as the core of a broad program of re-industrialization and economic development, there will be strong
public support for renewable energy and the broader goals
of energy security and climate stabilization.
Given this enormous potential, it is important first to
understand why this is not happening and to use that
understanding to adopt the policies that will allow it to
happen. Over the past decade, energy policy concentrated
almost entirely on supporting the development of fossil
fuel resources. What support there was for renewable
energy consisted of a patchwork of state-level require-
ments to install renewable energy projects combined
with sporadic federal incentives primarily in the form of
production and investment tax credits. Absolutely no
attention was paid to supporting the development of a
renewable industry to provide the projects. Federal energy
policy almost completely neglected a critical step in the
cycle of technology innovation — commercialization of
new technology. These misaligned
efforts produced bursts of develop-
ment followed by periods of no
development at all. 1 This start-and-
stop process neglected important
technology commercialization and
precluded the development of
a strong domestic industry. As a
result, too much of the equipment
required for new projects comes
from offshore. Not a single federal
energy policy initiative has seriously
addressed how to develop a domes-
tic renewable industry to revitalize
domestic manufacturing. 2 Support
for the commercialization of new
renewable technologies has been
abandoned in all but name.
Building A Renewable
Energy Industry
Looking forward, as we begin to
take energy security and climate
change concerns seriously, there is a
growing recognition that achieving
these goals will require a massive
development of renewable projects.
This new consensus has not translated into an urgent demand for the
creation of a domestic renewable
energy industry. Part of the responsibility for this neglect can be attributed to the lack of a strong national
coalition calling for the creation of
this new industry. It is only recently
that renewable energy technologies
have been viewed as an assembly of
component parts and analyzed in
terms of where the firms are located
that could manufacture those parts.
As a result, there has not been a
strong demand for supports to
develop the domestic industry, even
from the people who would benefit
from it and desperately need it. On
a positive note, over the past four
years many states have expanded
their interest in renewable energy
