Today at the RETECH 2009 conference in Las Vegas, leading industry figures spoke about America’s imperative to join and ultimately lead the clean energy revolution. Using metaphors like “creating a new Apollo program”, the United States appears to have fully endorsed the value of incentivizing and driving forward renewable energyRenewable energy is power generated from infinite sources, such as wind or solar power. Conventional energy is generated from finite sources, such as natural gas or fossil oil. and energy efficiencyUsing less energy/electricity to perform the same function. Programs designed to use electricity more efficiently - doing the same with less..

The night before the conference opening, President Obama spoke on television about the current state of the financial crisis, stating that America’s way out of the crisis would be achieved through investments of $20 billion annually in clean energyThe ability to perform work, mainly kinetic, potential, thermal energy, but also in forms of gravitational, sound, elastic and electromagnetic energy..

Watching television, one quickly sees the rapidity in which America is begining to change its attitude towards renewable energy. An advertising campaign called RePower America talks about how jobs will be created from investing in clean energy. On the local morning news programme, a state government official was interviewed about her proposed legislation regarding solar thermalAims at transferring the radiation from the sun to thermal energy. Usually to warm up water..

One of the biggest issues stated as a barrier to America’s implementation of renewable energy was the low amount of Federal investment into energy R&D. Apparently in 1980, 10% of the Federal government’s R&D budget was spent on energy by 2005 that number had fallen to 1% of the total R&D budget.

As Nancy Floyd of the venture capital firm Nth-PowerUseful energy can be mechanical energy, for example powering a fan. stated, without R&D the U.S. venture capital industry can not invest into new technologies and bring them to commercialization.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released new report called “Growing Renewable Energy” as a draft document for providing R&D recommendations to the current Obama Administration.

The mood at the RETECH event is extremely positive and America is actively moving forward on their path towards integrating renewable energy into the energy mix.