In 2009, with the nation’s economy in a tailspin, President Obama signed into law a stimulus package that aimed to give a herculean lift to the cause of clean energy, with $90 billion in investments.

Ten years later, the stimulus is being cited as a touchstone for the chief policy planners of the “Green New Deal,” who are exploring ways to ramp up the renewable capacity-building of Obama’s law and fuse it with a far-reaching greenifying of American life.

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“Back then, mainstream solar needed a push to get to large-scale projects,” said Dan Reicher, a Stanford University lecturer and former member of Obama’s transition team who helped craft the stimulus’s energy sections.

Several 100-megawatt solar farms — a size that had previously made private investors nervous — went online with the help of stimulus money, he noted.

“Now it will take you many, many hands to count the number of projects bigger than 100 MW,” said Reicher.

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“It’s had an investment track record that I’d put up against any private-sector investment fund,” said Reicher.

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“We have a major commitment from the private sector,” said Reicher, meaning that if new clean energy programs were to be created, the federal government could attract larger amounts of private capital using fewer public funds.

“Who knows where that specific approach will go?” he said in reference to the “Green New Deal,” adding that he believed legislation with clean energy investments could pass with bipartisan support. “I do know that I feel strongly that clean energy and climate is on the table.”

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