The New Republic

In a rare bipartisan compromise, the House last week approved the reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, ensuring that the bank will continue to provide critical financial assistance to U.S. firms that export their products. The Senate is also expected to act soon which will hopefully put an end to months of uncertainty over the fate of the bank, seen as a vital tool for job creation and economic growth. READ MORE >>

A more than 20-year old program, long underutilized, is slowly emerging as a potential lifeline for regional economic development for some metro areas and states at a time when traditional financing streams are running dry. READ MORE >>

Exports are an important growth engine in the United States. Not only do they support millions of jobs in the nation. They also are a vital source of sales for revitalizing the manufacturing sector. READ MORE >>

Notwithstanding the bleak outlook surrounding federal clean energy policy detailed in our recent report “Sizing the Clean Economy,” the FY 2012 omnibus spending compromise hammered out last week actually contains several reassuring affirmations of the value of recent institutional experiments. One winner is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, perhaps the Department of Energy’s most popular program. READ MORE >>

As we said this past summer in our “Sizing the Clean Economy” report, the U.S. energy system won’t be cleaned up without a combination of aggressive innovation to develop new technologies and widespread deployment of existing ones. The trouble is, bold action at the federal level appears imminent on neither of these issues.  READ MORE >>

Earlier this week we highlighted Colorado’s interesting “Colorado Blueprint” experiment in “bottom up” economic development planning. And last week we noted the initiative in our  economic agenda for the state of Nevada. Now it turns out there are intriguing new developments. READ MORE >>

With job creation and the renewal of the moribund housing sector increasingly now at crisis levels of urgency, there seems to be a renewed push in Washington to inject new life into the Property Assessed Clean Energy Program (PACE)--a program that some had given up for dead after the Federal Housing Finance Authority created a major implementation hurdle last year. READ MORE >>

This summer’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) report on government subsidies to oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables in 2010 is causing quite a stir in energy circles. The report finds that U.S. energy subsidies more than doubled from $17.9 billion in 2007 to $37.2 billion in 2010, with all sectors seeing an increase in government subsidy. READ MORE >>

As the debt deal makes starkly clear, the Washington paralysis that has prevented serious action on critical fronts like energy policy and climate change is about to engender a new era of programmatic gutting. Which means the country’s policy laboratories--the states, cities, and, importantly, its metro areas--are going to have to step up to the plate and build the next economy region by region. And in small but meaningful ways, they already are. READ MORE >>

To what extent can state governments play a role in accelerating cleantech innovation? The quick answer: Significantly, and in powerful ways. NYSERDA--the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency--provides one example showcasing the role state policy support can play in fostering a productive innovation system that enables new technologies to transition from the laboratory to the marketplace.  READ MORE >>