Two students at the University of Wisconsin Madison have an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, “Focus on energy education,” making the case for a new focus on clean energy education policy at the state level:

Experts of all stripes have repeatedly stated that the nation that wins the clean-energy race will be the nation that leads the 21st century economy. Discovering and implementing cheap, clean and reliable energy technologies is our generation’s final frontier… President Obama has proposed doing so by increasing funding for energy education and training through a program called RE-ENERGYSE (short for REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge). More than 100 organizations, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, signed a letter last summer urging Congress to support the program, which would augment energy education in universities, training schools, community colleges and even K-12 teacher education…

Wisconsin must also invest in its current workforce. Along the lines of the proposals laid out by the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming, we propose that CEJA directly fund the training of Wisconsinites to create knowledge workers who can build Wisconsin’s clean energy economy over the coming years… Now or in the near future, Wisconsin and the U.S. need to increase energy education. Gaining a strong, competitive edge in clean energy requires more than opening markets with policies like a RPS, but taking advantage of those markets by creating talented researchers and a skilled workforce. As the saying goes, if you teach a man to fish, he will build a clean energy economy. If we fail to invest in today’s students, we will miss a critical opportunity and give other countries a head start in the global clean energy race. This is our chance to lead the generation of a low-carbon economy.

See the full column here.  One of the co-authors, Danny Spitzberg, is a Breakthrough Generation Fellow.