The 60 Minutes segment on the “Clean Energy Crash” ignores serious clean tech policy debates that are worth taking a deeper dive into. For starters, the United States is truly in the middle of a clean tech crash, just not the kind CBS is trying to advance. The U.S. clean energy innovation budget — the public investments in RD&D and smart deployment — has fallen 28 percent since the 2009-10 Stimulus Act. Federal clean energy research has dropped from $7.9 billion in 2010 to $5.6 billion today. Investments pegged for demonstration projects have dropped by an incredible 97 percent since the Stimulus. And many in Congress want to continue this trend with even deeper cuts.
