Jump to Navigation

David Victor Co-Authors Foreign Affairs Essay On Clean Energy

The Crisis in Clean Energy

06/21/2011
David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek, Foreign Affairs

Summary:  Clean energy was supposed to create jobs while reducing energy insecurity, global warming, and the U.S. trade deficit. But Washington's policies have encouraged quick and easy projects that cannot compete with conventional carbon-based sources.

After years of staggering growth, the clean-energy industry is headed for a crisis. In most of the Western countries leading the industry, the public subsidies that have propelled it to 25 percent annual growth rates in recent years have now become politically unsustainable. Temporary government stimulus programs -- which in 2010 supplied one-fifth of the record investment in clean energy worldwide -- have merely delayed the bad news. Last year, after 20 years of growth, the number of new wind turbine installations dropped for the first time; in the United States, the figure fell by as much as half. The market value of leading clean-energy equipment manufacturing companies has plummeted and is poised to decline further as government support for the industry erodes.

Click here to read the full article.

Related Links

David Victor is Director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR). Looking across a wide array of issues from environment and energy to human rights, trade and security, the Laboratory explores when (and why) international laws actually work.

Related Stories

Back to Top