ENTREPRENEURS WANT NEW ENERGY RESEARCH

Don’t get mean on green energy innovation, Bill Gates warns Congress
Ben Geman, September 13, 2011 (The Hill)

"Microsoft founder Bill Gates is urging senior lawmakers to buck the current zeal for budget cutting and boost federal investment in clean-energy research and development.
Gates — joined by a number of private-sector titans — took to Capitol Hill…to argue that a far more muscular role is needed to expand innovation…[T]he American Energy Innovation Council…wants to boost what it argues have been anemic federal investments in a sector vital to U.S. economic competitiveness, security and other goals…"

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"Gates is the latest high-profile businessman to push Congress…He follows famed investor Warren Buffett, who has called for higher taxes on the wealthy. Like Buffett, Gates and the other members of the energy innovation group face a tough battle…They’re pushing for wider investment at a time when Republicans are pushing to cut spending as far as they can…The energy group has identified a range of revenue streams to pay for federal energy investment it would eventually like to see reach $16 billion annually…[including] tapping some of the billions of dollars in annual federal oil-and-gas revenues, cutting or ending subsidies to ‘mature’ industries such as oil-and-gas, enacting a new federal fee on electricity delivered to consumers, adding a few cents to the federal gasoline tax…and even levying a fee on carbon emissions…"