Infrastructure Bill Shows U.S. Getting Serious About Clean Energy and Climate Innovation, Says ITIF

WASHINGTON—With the U.S. Senate finalizing a bipartisan infrastructure package that includes significant investments in clean energy innovation, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, released the following statement from David Hart, ITIF’s director of clean energy innovation policy:

This infrastructure package has a lot more going for it than just roads and bridges. It’s a sign that the United States is finally starting to get serious about accelerating clean energy and climate innovation.

Keep an eye on the pilot and demonstration projects the bill establishes, because they have the potential to bridge the biggest gap in the U.S. climate-tech effort to date. These projects will help to ensure that a clean power system is also a reliable one, that innovations to eliminate industrial emissions will be available when they are needed, and that large-scale, long-term opportunities like green hydrogen and direct air capture are pursued vigorously.

The Senate’s bipartisan backing for this agenda is particularly important. The United States needs a durable clean energy and climate innovation policy that will draw in the nation’s top talent and massive flows of private investment for decades to come.

This bill is far from the last word, though—there is still much more to be done to create a robust national climate and clean energy innovation policy. ITIF is committed to developing the arguments and evidence to educate policymakers about the critical role that innovation policy must play to get the world to net-zero emissions.

For more on this issue, please see:

• David M. Hart, “Building Back Cleaner With Industrial Demonstration Projects” (ITIF, March 2021).
• Robert Rozansky and David M. Hart, “More and Better: Building and Managing a Federal Energy Demonstration Project Portfolio” (ITIF, May 2020).
• Varun Sivaram, et al., Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission (ITIF and Columbia University Center for Global Energy Policy, September 2020).