WASHINGTON, October 1 (RIA Novosti) - An outdated financing system is holding back innovation and job growth in the clean energy sector, former US President Bill Clinton said Wednesday at the World Energy Engineering Congress summit in Washington, DC.
"A lot of the things you all have been working for —solar, wind, building efficiency, geothermal...— we're on the verge of being able to achieve, but we still have a hundred year old finance system holding back 21st century energy growth," Clinton said to a group of energy and engineering experts.
"It's all in the financing. The reason we have not done more of this, is not enough companies are willing or able to self-finance, and the financial system looks at this as not a good deal," he added.
Former President Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative, has focused on clean energy initiatives in developing countries to improve economic performance while preserving the environment. The United States has fallen behind other countries in clean energy investments, with a 2012 total investment of $35 billion, according to the Pew Research Center.
Government reports show that the US relies on renewable energy for six percent of its energy consumption, compared to 39 percent for coal, 27 percent for natural gas, and 19 percent for nuclear.
Clinton argued that clean energy and increasing the efficiency of energy use can create job growth and wealth in the United States and other developed economies. Clean energy technologies can be developed without providing subsidies, but by creating a more equal lending system that provides clean energy companies with adequate time to pay back loans, according to Clinton.
Calling clean energy projects "low hanging fruit" Clinton said, "there are none of these projects that take more than six and a half years to pay off." He compared that to the decade required to pay off an investment in a coal plant and thirty years to pay off a nuclear power plant.
Clinton argued that the issue of financing was holding back implementation of energy and cost saving technologies.
"We don't have a system that will finance it. We could double, triple, quadruple what we're doing in America if we could solve the financing issues. It's not complicated; it's just that there are people who don't want to change."
