In Time Magazine’s Special History Cover Issue, “The Electrifying Edison,” Bryan Walsh wrote:

“Even when America’s scientific preeminence was threatened by the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch in 1957, the U.S. only came back stronger. “The federal response to Sputnik was an overwhelming investment in science and engineering education,” says Teryn Norris, director of Americans for Energy Leadership. “That had spillover benefits across the board.”

At the National Journal, in “Bill Will Slight Technology Innovation,” Mark Muro from Brookings Institution wrote:

“As we and many others have been saying for years, the nation badly needs to sign up for a new push for energy system innovation that seeks countless efficiencies but also triples to quintuples today’s anemic baseline level of federal energy innovation R&D. (For some great discussion of this need see recent posts by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a group of 34 Nobel Laureates, NYT Dot Earth blogger Andy Revkin, and Teryn Norris of Americans for Energy Leadership).”

At New York Times Dot Earth, in “Quantum Dots, Obama and the Energy Quest,” Andrew Revkin wrote:

“I asked Dan Kammen, along with Teryn Norris, an energy policy blogger affiliated with the Breakthrough Institute… to assess the energy innovation report. Their views are appended below.  Interestingly, there’s a decent amount of agreement between Norris and Sean Pool, the author of the Center for American Progress report. Here’s Norris’s take on the innovation analysis, followed by Kammen’s:”

At New York Times Dot Earth, in “A 2-Cent Solution to Help Fuel an Energy Quest,” Andrew Revkin wrote:

“But for [Obama] to really dive in will require jettisoning the status-quo approach to the energy and climate challenge, which still frames global warming mainly as a conventional 20th-century-type pollution problem to be solved with the old tool kit of litigation, legislation and regulation.  Teryn Norris, someone who is clearly part of what I call Generation E, reacted to Obama’s speech with ideas for ways to stimulate the energy innovation pipeline at Huffington Post.”

At The New Republic blog, in “America (Begins to) COMPETE,” Mark Muro and Sarah Rahman wrote:

“On Friday, though, S&T Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) used a rare procedure called a division of the question, which allowed separate votes on various parts of the amendment included in the May 13th Motion to Recommit.  This, as Teryn Norris of the Breakthrough Institute explains, effectively allowed the House to pass the bill with a standard majority vote, so that the original bill could be passed with only a few amendments, including a total authorization for five years and approximately $86 billion.”

For first-time visitors to Americans for Energy Leadership, we’re a new project led by young people to foster the next generation of energy innovators and advance U.S. leadership in the global clean energy sector.   Founded at Stanford University in 2009, we’re now headquartered in Washington, DC, working to advance a large-scale federal program for clean energy science and engineering education, with RE-ENERGYSE as a first step.   More broadly, we’re empowering young leaders through our Policy Fellowship Program to develop and advance a new national energy innovation agenda capable of bridging the partisan divide and generating broad public support.

We post regular coverage on our blog (also see RSS feed) related to clean energy competitiveness and innovation policy, which we’ll be expanding throughout summer 2010 and beyond.  If you’re interested in our work, please contact us, and we’re always open to new ideas and partnerships.

Here are highlights from the post at Dot Earth, including our video on RE-ENERGYSE:

While the political fight over the now-vivid environmental threat attending offshore oil drilling plays out, it remains clear that the country’s lawmakers are not remotely engaged in the multi-pronged energy quest that would be required to move the world toward a non-polluting, yet prosperous future.

One vital prong is education… Last year, Congress largely rebuffed Obama’s request for $115 million for the program, called Regaining our Energy Science and Engineering Edge. He’s trying again, this time seeking $74 million in the 2011 budget. Last week, as cameras focused on Gulf coasts girding for an oil assault, 107 presidents of university and college student governments distribued a letter calling on lawmakers to get serious about energy education. Here, an organizer of the effort, Teryn Norris, explains why students are upset:

The letter, initiated by Americans for Energy Leadership and Associated Students of Stanford University, noted that the country’s energy-engineering workforce is rapidly graying, while “only 106 of the country’s over 6,500 post-secondary institutions offer focused courses in renewable energy technology and efficiency.”

The letter concluded: “American students are ready and willing to rise to this national challenge, and we need the federal government to support our education and training.”

Generation E is ready and waiting. Is Congress willing to chip in?

(However, as previously noted by this blog, the Senate bill in its current form has far less federal investment in clean energy technology development and deployment than what many experts, and the White House, have called for.)

Some of the reasons Congressional action cannot wait? In addition to concerns about climate change (which only continue to mount in severity), the editorial cites issues of national competitiveness at stake:

• China is “moving aggressively to create jobs in the clean-energy industry. Beijing not only plans to generate 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, but hopes to become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy technologies. Five years ago, it had no presence at all in the wind manufacturing industry; today it has 70 manufacturers. It is rapidly becoming a world leader in solar power, with one-third of the world’s manufacturing capacity.”
• The U.S. faces a “question of credibility.” At COP15, the US pledged to “meet at least the House’s 17 percent target. Success in the Senate is essential to delivering on that pledge. Failure would undo many of the good things [Obama] achieved in Copenhagen, and it would give reluctant powers like China an excuse to duck their pledges.” [Not sure about this last sentence with regard to China, which agreed to a voluntary carbon intensity reduction unilaterally ... and they probably mean to keep it.]
• Finally, the editorial notes, “the ‘jobs argument’ should impress the Senate … The climate change bills pending in the Senate would not begin to bite for several years, when the recession should be over. The cost to households, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would be small. A good program would create more jobs than it cost.”

Unfortunately, things look a bit hazy, despite Harry Reid’s earlier announcement that the climate bill was on the agenda for March. The editorial worries that “many Democrats as well as Republicans seem willing to settle for what would be the third energy bill in five years—loans for nuclear power, mandates for renewable energy, new standards for energy efficiency. These are all useful steps. But the only sure way to unlock the  investments required to transform the way the country produces and delivers energy is to put a price on carbon.” (This presumably refers to investment from private capital markets and not government-sponsored programs or federal investment.)

A couple other relevant notes:

1) Tree Hugger asks: Could Scott Brown’s Victory Be Good for Clean Energy Reform?

2) As we saw at COP15, international action on climate often seems to hinge on U.S. domestic politics.

As Reuters AlertNet reports, “It’s hard to imagine an upset in one U.S. Senate race could derail plans for a new international climate change treaty.” But “the U.S. Democratic party’s loss of a long-held Senate seat in Massachusetts this week, to Republican Scott Brown, means getting key climate change legislation passed in the United States just got a lot harder. And without willingness by the U.S. — the world’s historically largest carbon emitter — to commit to ambitious cuts in emissions, few other nations will feel pressure to be ambitious in their own plans.”

Canada, for example, is concerned about the legislative stall in its southern neighbor and what it will mean for their own energy system.

There are real worries that a minority in the Senate – 41 people — can simply hold the entire world’s efforts hostage, either by preventing action at home by the world’s second-largest emitter (reduces incentives for others to act, makes agreement harder to reach by not living up to “common but differentiated responsibilities”) or simply refusing to allow the U.S. to take part in an international regime.

It should be noted that those 41 senators would not all be from the same political party, as support for climate action is coming from both sides of the aisle. John Kerry (D), Lindsey Graham (R), and Joe Lieberman (I) recently visited the White House to discuss a bipartisan climate bill, and a coalition may be in the works that will be able to pass it. (Boston Globe)