Mark Muro - Mentions and Appearances

The outcome of the election will have an influence on the pace of growth in [clean energy] industries. If the nation and states weaken the policy framework, the industry uptick and need for workers will stagnate.

Supported by subsidies but also by rapid technical advances, onshore wind and solar photovoltaic installations are way up, and the price of delivered renewable energy is way down ... Wind and solar need the help because the barriers for new technologies in the energy industry are tougher than those in any other industry in this country.

States really are more or less on their own if they want to pursue a large scale-up of low-carbon energy solutions. [Green banks are] a worthy experiment in trying to make limited state revenues go farther.

With Washington gridlocked and retrenching, the new state banking models offer a hopeful counterpoint to national dysfunction.

[The Ohio River Valley has] rejected the narrative of decline and the theory that we would be just fine if we designed our goods here, but produced them offshore. What’s turning out to be the case is that production can occur here. Our strongest industrial sectors are still based in that very region of the country.

Judged by the standards of short-term job creation, the [federal government’s] energy investments may not have performed brilliantly. However, over the medium and longer term, these programs will in time be viewed as critical investments in research and development, early-stage deployment and broader scale-up of important new technologies.

Governments of the U.S., Europe, and China have all spent hundreds of billions of dollars on clean-energy research and deployment. The price of solar and wind power have fallen precipitously.

So many places were utterly devastated by massive real estate bubbles that did huge damage to the country… Tulsa really hasn't had that extreme overhang to work through and now is enjoying some solid recovery via manufacturing and oil and gas.... There are some bright spots, especially if you look at the employment changes by industry—for the last four quarters, you can see that manufacturing has made a real contribution in this recovery. You [metro Tulsa] have a larger-than-average employment concentration in manufacturing ... than the national average.

The bottom line is that South Florida continues to struggle to obtain and maintain sufficient momentum to overcome the damage it sustained during the real estate and financial bust.

Amid a patchy and still anemic recovery nationwide, the Mountain West’s metropolitan areas performed somewhat better than the rest of the country in the first quarter of 2012. While there is definite variation, the region continued its steady recovery in the early months of the year.