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(highlights)
AMY LIU:
“Metropolitan areas are our economic engines, because the public and private sector leaders in them wake up every day leveraging the very assets that drive productivity and economic prosperity. Those assets are innovation, infrastructure, human capital, and building high-quality places to live and work.
This idea, then, to create energy discovery-innovation institutes embodies the real-time way that one of these assets, energy-innovation, will be deployed. The reality is that we will need a network of universities, of federal labs, industry, venture capitalists, work force developers, and others working together, albeit sometimes in little messy ways but working together to create and commercialize alternative sources of energy for the nation. So, if done right, this concept that we're going to talk about today will yield a three-pronged prosperity -- high productivity, energy and environmental sustainability, and an inclusive economy that engages and expands the skills and opportunities of our workers.”
KEITH W. COOLEY: “Now is the time for finding alternatives and making them work, not just as proofs of concept, not just as technologies in the lab, but in the broader landscape of the American energy industry, the transportation sector, our national infrastructure, our businesses, and our environmental values, and as a continuing driver of our economy as a whole.”
“So, what would happen if we in this room pledged as we left to take the best of what DoE and the other federal agencies have to offer, the best of what the universities do, the best of what industry does and bring them together with a real sense of urgency and a real focus? That's how we as a nation have to move forward. We don't have the time, the money, or the resources for business as usual.”
JAMES DUDERSTADT:“Large-scale deployment of sustainable energy technologies involves not only advanced scientific research and development of new technologies, but they also involve a very complex array of other issues -- social, economic, legal, political, behavioral, consumer, and market issues -- and they're all characterized by complex interrelationships at the regional, national, and international levels. Existing federal policy simply is not adequate to deal with these complexities. This involves both the magnitude of current U.S. energy research, as well as the character and format of the U.S. energy research itself.”
“The energy discovery-innovation institutes would combine the best qualities of a number of paradigms. Like agricultural experiment stations, they would be responsive to social priorities, with regional impact. Like academic medical centers, they would link research, education, and practice. And like corporate R&D labs, they would link discoveries with the applied research necessary to produce innovative products but would also educate the next generation of high-tech workers.”
“Where would the funding come from? It might come from the diversion of existing energy-related subsidies. Over the last 30 to 40 years, the nation has invested almost a half-trillion dollars in energy, some of that in R&D, much of it in other kinds of support. It might come from general revenue, or it might come from the appearance of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme, but in the end we believe that the need to reinvigorate America's economy and place it on a more sustainable footing compels the transformation of U.S. energy policy.”
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