U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman visits Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance

Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business recently announced the establishment of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, an interdisciplinary center to study and advance the development and deployment of clean energy technologies through innovative policy and finance. … Dan Reicher, the center’s new director, and other members of the Stanford Law School faculty had the opportunity [this week] to meet with U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a leading energy policymaker in the Senate [as well as energy and finance experts]. The meeting focused on the critical step that follows government and venture capital investment in promising energy technologies, namely successfully deploying these technologies at commercial scale in clean energy projects. In the meeting, participants explored the problems faced in developing and financing U.S. clean energy projects, providing specific information and examples. The attendees discussed policy, financial and management solutions to these problems. And attendees heard from Senator Bingaman and Committee staff regarding help they could use in analyzing, developing, and advancing various policy options. Meeting participants discussed several federal legislative proposals that could accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies. One, championed by Senator Bingaman, would create the Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA), a quasi-public/private entity which would provide a variety of financing mechanisms, including loans, loan guarantees and other tools to help advance investment in clean energy projects, especially those that have yet to be deployed at full commercial scale.  CEDA, as proposed in the Senate, could take a “profits interest” in projects it finances thereby helping to create a self-sustaining financing entity. To read more about this meeting, go to http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/newsfeed/2011/01/11/u-s-senator-jeff-bingaman-visits-steyer-taylor-center-for-energy-policy-and-finance/