How America Can Lead: Unlocking Clean Tech Investments

As the US gears up to lead in the global marketplace for clean technologies, new policies are providing $500 billion in clean energy incentives, unleashing $1 trillion in private sector investment, and putting American businesses and workers in a much stronger position to compete.

Recent analysis by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), commissioned by Third Way and Breakthrough Energy, demonstrated that the United States has an opportunity to build a lasting competitive advantage across 10 clean energy technologies and seize a significant share of a global market estimated at $130 trillion through 2050.

Now, a set of new assessments from Boston Consulting Group shows how groundbreaking legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS and Science Act will drive down costs and accelerate deployment. By investing in R&D, technology demonstrations, and incentives to drive market demand, these new laws are harnessing hundreds of billions in private investment to strengthen America’s global competitiveness across the value chains that make up these technologies.

For example, the new assessments find that manufacturing incentives in the IRA will help encourage cost reductions and greater domestic advantage in key “original equipment manufacturing” segments for technologies like electric vehicles, direct air capture, geothermal, and solar. And production incentives in IRA combined with infrastructure investments from the BIL hubs program will make US-produced hydrogen the most cost-competitive clean H2 in lucrative export markets like Northern Asia.

The BCG assessments outline challenges that still must be tackled to boost US competitiveness as we accelerate the deployment of more affordable, reliable, secure, and clean energy. Solutions that reduce permitting bottlenecks, secure vital supply chains, and expand workforce preparation efforts, for instance, can allow the US to make fuller use of recently-passed legislation while strengthening America’s global advantage across the value chains that make up these clean technologies. That said, it is important to understand just how helpful a head start these new laws are giving the US as it seeks to expand its leadership in clean energy.

You can find these valuable resources–comprising a total of 11 slide decks, each focusing on a specific clean energy technology, as well as an overarching summary deck– linked here.

For more information on US competitiveness and how to use these documents, please contact Third Way’s Senior Resident Fellow, Ellen Hughes-Cromwick.