Center for Social Innovation

On April 22, 2009, four months after he took office, President Barack Obama proclaimed that green technologies would be the linchpin of economic advancement. “We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors,” he said at a wind energy manufacturing plant in Newton, Iowa, “or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

Private sector investors in the United States have been similarly enthusiastic, investing a total of $8.9 billion in clean energy companies in 2009.¹ This is a sizable sum, but it does not guarantee that green technologies will provide a sufficient return on investment. Both the public and private sectors ... Read more