president said he should have been wearing one too. He pulled out a business card and gave it to Sklar, telling him that if he had any other things like that, he should make a point to drop by the White House.21
THE STATES AS LABORATORIES
One of the most important reasons for the rebirth of renewables took place at the state level, bearing out the famous adage of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that states can serve as the laboratories of democracy. Without a particular innovation introduced by individual states—what are called renewable portfolio standards—it is doubtful that renewable energy in the United States would have seen the growth it has experienced since the new century began.
These standards—nicknamed RPS—require that utilities’ generation portfolios include a certain amount of renewables by a specified date. The first small steps were in Iowa and Minnesota. But it was not until the late 1990s and early years of this century that a number of states imposed renewable standards. In many of the states, these portfolios were largely driven by the growing concern about climate change.
That was not the case in Texas. In fact, climate change was deliberately not part of the discussion there at all. The main reasons were anxieties about the adequacy of electric power, a desire for diversity, and mounting worries about poor air quality in a number of cities. The RPS was signed into law by Texas Governor George W. Bush in 1999. The RPS provision turned out to be wildly successful in stimulating wind development, more so than anyone had imagined, setting off what became known as the Texas Wind Rush. The state had excellent wind resources, the requirements encouraged scale, and federal tax credits helped make wind economically competitive. (Indeed, so much wind was developed that, later, the costs of new transmission capacity would become a major issue.)
By 2011 29 states and Washington, D.C., had renewable portfolio standards in place, and most of the new capacity came on line in the RPS states. The results have been disproportionately weighted to wind. Some of the states have very significant targets: New York at 29 percent by 2015. Illinois, Oregon, and Minnesota all are aiming at 25 percent by 2025. In 2011 Jerry Brown, back as governor of California, signed an ambitious bill lifting the state’s requirement from 20 percent, by 2020, to 33 percent. “You can’t be afraid to be called a moonbeam, weird, deviant, interesting, unexpected,” Governor Brown said as he signed the bill. As he put it, “I didn’t get my name ‘Governor Moonbeam’ for nothing.”
These standards will continue to be a major driver for renewable power in the United States. They also provide the mechanism for folding higher-cost renewable energy into the overall power portfolio, although some foresee a reaction to rate shock on the part of consumers owing to the higher costs of renewables.22
CLEANTECH
The rising prices for energy, beginning around 2003 and 2004, helped propel accelerated growth of, and support for, renewables in the United States. It also, at least for a time, narrowed the cost gap between renewable and conventional energy. Climate change became a much more explicit part of energy policy. As a result of all these factors, investment in renewables increased dramatically. As venture capital began investing in the sector, renewables gained yet another new name—“cleantech.” And providing confirmation that renewables were moving into the mainstream, investment banks established “clean energy” teams and began to distribute cleantech research.23
But as the Great Recession of 2008 broke, it hit renewables hard. Financing became increasingly difficult to arrange. Moreover, even with the subsequent rebound in prices from the lows of late 2008, renewables were still at a competitive disadvantage.
This time, however, unlike the 1980s, there was no Valley of Death for the renewable industry. Renewables were now a much bigger industry with a strong constituency, it was international, and it had continuing policy support, including in the United States, energy legislation in 2005 and 2007. By now, renewables really were a global business.24
THE “THREE DENCHI BROTHERS”
Japan continued to be preoccupied with its high dependence on energy imports, and more than any other country. MITI—now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, or METI—continues to play an important role in steering Japan’s industrial policy. It has promoted a very distinctive agenda for renewables. It is the “three Denchi brothers”—or San Denchi Kyodai, as Takayuki Ueda, a vice minister at METI, called them.
In Japan, fuel cells, solar cells, and batteries are all referred to as “batteries.” METI sees these