It is clear that the development and deployment of newer, more efficient and cleaner technologies will be needed to secure our energy future. U.S. private industry and our national laboratories and academic institutions have the brainpower to be global leaders in energy technology. However, the capital-intensive nature of energy technology development, its high financial and technological risks, and a lack of access to capital has created a wide chasm between technology development and commercialization.

That is why today I testified before the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources in favor of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA), a quasi-governmental agency dedicated to the financing and deployment of new and clean energy projects. An entity like CEDA can provide the flexible financial risk-management tools currently employed elsewhere in the government to advance other capital-intensive clean energy goals.

CEDA would function as an energy bank, modeled after the successful Export-Import Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It would provide a full suite of financial services such as loans, loan guarantees, insurance, and other financing options to help inject capital into emerging clean energy projects. While several different versions of a CEDA have been proposed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for 21^st Century Energy supports the approach taken by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), in which CEDA:

• Would be revenue-neutral and could be required to repay initial capital infusions from the Treasury through successful operation.
• Would be tailored to address the primary problem of commercializing new technologies.
• Would take a technology-neutral approach, applied to all new technologies and processes that reduce environmental impact, including clean coal, advanced biofuels, natural gas vehicles, advanced nuclear or energy storage. 

The Energy Institute first recommended a CEDA in our Blueprint for Securing America’s Energy Future, released in 2008. Four years later, we’re still having the same discussion on Capitol Hill. It’s time for Congress to demonstrate a little “energy” in moving the nation closer toward the nation’s clean energy goals.