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The aggressive entry of Britain into the field over the last few years shows the power of government inducements to redesign a nation’s energy economy away from traditional fuel. The country’s Green Deal, as it is called, is currently being spearheaded by the Conservative-led coalition government. In Britain, reducing carbon dioxide emissions was one of the few policies supported by political parties of both the right and left, which both accepted that climate change was a serious problem and saw clean technology investment as a growth opportunity rather than an onerous obligation.

Dr. Arun Majumdar, senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said that the department’s $5 billion budget for research should be tripled as it currently financed less than 5 percent of proposed projects. He said the country needed better low-cost financing methods to bring companies into the market, as well as stricter energy-efficiency standards to stimulate customer demand.

Oslo, Norway, they have reduced energy consumption by 70 percent simply by using an innovative and energy-efficient form of streetlights without an international agreement. The African region of Okavango planted 300,000 acres of trees, which will sequester 30 million tons of carbon dioxide. The state of South Australia is on track to generate 33 percent of its power from renewable sources by the year 2020. Across its various regions, China is investing billions of dollars in electric and hybrid vehicles. South Africa is developing a solar project that, when complete, will provide one-eighth of all of the energy of the entire country. Twenty-nine of New York City's universities and hospitals have accepted Mayor Bloomberg's challenge to reduce their emissions by 30 percent within the next few years.

in California

orld's largest solar plant and the world's largest wind farm, providing enough energy to power 740,000 homes. We have already approved solar plants that will provide 4,000 megawatts of energy.

goal of generating 33 percent of our energy from renewables by the year 2020.

California is now 40 percent more energy efficient per capita than the rest of the United States. More than one-third of the world's clean-tech venture capital flows right here out of our state. We lead the nation in clean energy patents and clean energy businesses.

Solazyme

The Atlantic Wind Connection project is still at an early stage, and no one knows if Google and its co-investors can pull it off

While grid difficulties are not unique to renewable energy, the sector has the most to gain from improvements because wind and solar depend on the weather and thus need to be able to send their extra energy across large distances as flexibly as possible to balance out supply fluctuations, experts say.

Tres Amigas is trying to connect the western, eastern and Texas power grids -- an idea the federal government proposed but failed to execute in the 1950s -- with a $1 billion plus project that could ultimately send 30 gigawatts zooming across the country. Because the three grids don't quite operate on the same frequency, Tres Amigas would use novel technology to synchronize the electricity: superconducting high-voltage direct current cables and new computer programs. Power would first need to be converted from AC to DC, then whipped around the superstation on the superconducting cables and finally be converted back to AC to be shipped off to another grid