QOTD: AEIC on energy innovation

This from the a new report by the American Energy Innovation Council, comprised of Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, John Doerr, Norm Augustine, Ursula Burns, Charles O. Holliday, and Tim Solso:

If the U.S. fails to invent new technologies and create new markets and new jobs that will drive the transformation and revitalization of the $5 trillion global energy industry, we will have lost an opportunity to lead in what is arguably the largest and most pervasive technology sector in the world. However, if the U.S. successfully innovates in clean energy, the country stands to reap enormous benefits. 

Download the report, "Catalyzing American Ingenuity: The Role of Government in Energy Innovation" (PDF).

UPDATE [2:30pm 9/14/2011]: This from an interview with John Doerr, one of the members of the American Energy Innovation Council (via VentureBeat):

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the lone entrepreneur in the garage creating an industry,” he said. “We have this myth that the IT industry got started on its own — no, there was federal funding, just like what we need for clean technology.”

Worth remembering that John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the leading venture capital firms in the nation. Also relevant is an article by Mark Muro and Jonathan Rockwell of the Brookings Institution, published yesterday in the New Republic, that compared clean tech to the IT industry.

QOTD: Biden on Federal Tech Investment

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at yesterday's National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas (via National Journal):

Biden equated investing in clean energy as the economy struggles to investing in technology and crucial infrastructure during a war.

“Had we listened to those voices in 1774, private enterprise and the government would not have collaborated to build the rifles with interchangeable parts that we needed to win the Revolutionary War,” Biden said. “If President Lincoln had listened to those voices during the Civil War, he wouldn’t have paid private railroad companies $16,000 for every 40 miles of track on the Transcontinental Railroad they laid down. And if President Eisenhower listened to those voices in ’57, he would never have invested $25 million in a program called ARPA ... which eventually created the Internet.... President Obama and I are not going to listen to those voices, and I hope to God you aren’t, either.”

It's as if he pulled directly from the pages of "Where Good Technologies Come From," a report by my colleagues at the Breakthrough Institute.