Obama gets an earful on what’s wrong with U.S. energy policy

The U.S. needs a government-wide energy policy, updated regularly, to guarantee the country's economic competitiveness, environmental stewardship and national security, according to a just-released report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Some of the PCAST recommendations are pretty strong stuff: a major overhaul of the federal role in transforming energy policy and a tripling of federal investments in energy R&D and deployment. Here are some of the key recommendations:

·         Increase federal investment in energy R&D, demonstration and deployment from the current level of $5 to $16 billion annually, and identify an additional $10 billion from other sources to support more efficient energy technologies

·         Review policy every four years to set national goals and coordinate action across all federal agencies

·         Coordinate and strengthen ways to speed up adoption and commercialization of proven new technologies in the private sector

·         Overhaul DOE organization and processes to accelerate energy innovations and establish a new traineeship program to address critical skills areas for its energy and science technology mission

·         Review existing energy subsidies and incentives to better align them with evolving priorities as identified in the four-year reviews

The report concluded that progress toward a more sustainable U.S. energy system has been bogged down by a profusion of federal policies and a lack of coordination among the departments and agencies responsible for them. The PCAST report also made recommendations on workforce development, social science research on innovation and international cooperation to help deal with the country's energy challenges.

Quick Take: This is a fairly bare bones look at the PCAST report. For more detail, click on this link for the Executive Summary.

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