Cleantech titans deliver Obama wish list

So, it's all over. Barack Obama is now officially president-elect of the US.

But of course, the real work has only just begun. Having sailed into office on a sea of euphoria, he now has to live up to his expectations. With a ballooning national debt and two ongoing wars, will he really have the resources to pull off the "Apollo project for energy" that he has promised the US public? Can his green jobs revolution really lead the economy out of recession? And can he find the $150bn (£95bn) of investment he has promised for the cleantech sector when the Federal budget is running on fumes?

BusinessGreen.com tracked down several of the leading players in the US cleantech and environmental movement to find out what they want to see from an Obama administration and what they expect to get.

From signing Kyoto to awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom for clean tech heroes, here are their responses:

R. Paul Herman is chief executive and founder of HIP Investor, a San Francisco-based financial firm with a number of green funds and indices

"We need an integrated economic-environmental-social strategy across all three sectors (business, NGOs and government) that tracks results with an overall performance scorecard. By measuring the quantifiable improvements in environmental, social and human effects – and how they drive economic vitality – an Obama administration could better design the tax code, regulatory framework, and cross-sector incentives to stimulate an improved society.

If the government could shift its focus to managing outcomes (such as reduced cost per mile driven for vehicles) instead of picking and choosing products (avoiding ethanol subsidies), then we could unleash the full innovation of entrepreneurs everywhere to solve problems with a wide diversity of breakthrough solutions.

Cleantech is the perfect testing ground for this approach, since increased eco-impacts naturally correlate also with high ROIs for customers and increased profits for clean tech businesses.

His immediate challenges are to restore US credibility and leadership by signing Kyoto and securing immediate Senate approval by 31 January – to send the signal that the US is onboard globally, as Australia did with its new prime minister.

He must stop the backslide by intercepting – and reversing – the Bush and Cheney relaxations of industry regulation and reduced reporting.

He must accelerate eco-efficiency by kickstarting the auction process for a greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) trading system – even if it's baby steps like the European version. We need the bidders' money in the Treasury starting in 2009, and to begin rewarding the early movers (including the US CAP participants).

He should create eco-benefits by designing tax incentives for corporates who clean or restore the land, air and water. If clean tech products can pump cleaner water out than it was going in, why can't we start applying these upstream in rivers and downstream in wastewater facilities?

Finally, he should reward the highest-performers in environment, social impact, job creation and economic vitality with Presidential Medals of Freedom. It's appropriate for our cleantech heroes, and speeds the race to the top."

Susan Preston is general partner at the CalCEF Clean Energy Angel fund, an investment fund committed to backing cleantech start ups

"There is a vast need not just for the use of renewable resources, but also for energy efficiency. We are a highly inefficient country, and there is a lot we could do to allow for efficient operation within our buildings. We should be looking at where we could have the greatest impact on lowering the consumption of lighting and HVAC.

We have to ask questions including: How do we make an intelligent grid? How do we use the power that we have so we don't have to build as many power plants? And then how do we convert ourselves from traditional fossil fuel generation to other kinds? We will not get rid of the coal-fired power plants, so how do we capture and sequester that carbon?

Tax incentives are always good to get people to implement the technology, but they are good for commercialisation, and we need more incentives at the front-end. In order to have the right answers we need to be creative. We are specifically focused on the seed funding part of the food chain because of the lack of funding in this area.

A lot of really great ideas aren't getting funded because there are not enough dollars to go around. I think we really could jump-start a lot of the technology. This is an opportunity to hand pick peer-reviewed technology for further development. Each time you allow a technology to be developed, it benefits the entire economy.

Charles Komanoff is co-director of the Carbon Tax Center, a lobby group pushing for a US carbon tax

"An Obama administration should be good for cleantech on many levels. There is a greater likelihood of a carbon price – and a stiff (high) one rather than a soft (low) one.

That is crucial in eliciting large-scale and rapid transformation of the US energy economy from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency. We will be more likely to see long-term renewal of the PTC [production tax credit] for wind and solar, along with more strategic support of energy conservation and efficiency.

We would like to see a revenue-neutral carbon tax with dividend. Tax is a far more straightforward, reliable, and immediately implementable means of administering a carbon price than cap-and-trade. One hundred per cent return of all tax revenues should go to Americans, and the dividend model is more transparent, equitable and politically salable than tax-shift."

Erik Blachford is chief executive of carbon offset specialist TerraPass

"The more we have leadership on issues relating to renewable energy, carbon abatement, and other clean technologies, the more we’ll see stability in investment and customer commitments.

We would like to see a sincere effort to join any successor to the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions, starting with a roadmap for legislative efforts to put in place a federal cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions in the US.
Climate change outstrips all other challenges, and gives rise to the twin challenges of federal cap-and-trade legislation and a nationwide renewable portfolio standard."

Kassie Siegel is a director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a non-profit committed to promoting wildlife protection

"I would ask President Obama to turn his attention to addressing the climate crisis. Scientists tell us that we have already passed the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we must immediately turn our energy economy around and put our nation and the world on the path to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to 350 part per million or less.

I would ask him not to wait for Congress to act, but instead to immediately begin implementing environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act with existing regulatory structures that are well suited to addressing greenhouse emissions and that have a proven track record of success.

The US has some of the strongest domestic environmental laws in the world, and if we simply begin to implement them we can make substantial progress now, before it is too late for the Arctic, for polar bears, and for hundreds of millions of people in this country and around the world as well."

Bill Vogel is chief executive of smart grid specialist Trilliant

"Trilliant believes that the energy utilities should be given incentives to upgrade infrastructure with carbon-friendly smart grid technology. While the depreciation language for new investments is positive, the remaining book value of old investments are still an obstacle.

Since installing these technologies will improve reliability, help the environment, control inflation and reduce dependence on foreign oil, we believe additional tax credits should be considered.

We also believe that the alternative minimum tax laws on options should be revised to not punitively impact employees who wish to exercise options.

Like the environment itself, energy use is a complex system. We already know that energy consumption in one area impacts energy production in another, but the levels of complexity with respect to the regulatory environment, energy production, carbon emissions, poverty levels, and so many other factors are all part of the problem. The biggest challenge is the complexity of the environmental problem and the politically unpopular implications of some decisions."