Report Says Intermountain West Could Be Energy Leader

09.01.2010 by Jeff Robinson

(KCPW News) A new report from the Brookings Institution says the research universities and renewable energy resources in the Intermountain West make it an ideal place to lead the change to renewable energy, if the federal government will invest in it more heavily.

“We think the Intermountain West has long shown and demonstrated taking some leadership.  We feel it’s time for the federal government to step up,” said senior policy analyst Sarah Rahman.  “We think there’s a role for targeted federal support to leverage the assets a little bit better to drive collaboration among the many different institutions.”

The report calls on the federal government to build a network of four to six sustainable energy research centers.

“We think an investment maybe around $1 to $2 billion a year, federal dollars, could support that sort of distributed network,” Rahman says.

One of the institutions highlighted in the report is the University of Utah, which the study says receives the most funding in the nation from the Department of Energy for geothermal projects.  The report also praises the state’s USTAR initiative for investing in energy technology.