2024 EERE Investment Snapshot Report Overview:  Clean Energy Developments Yield Major Benefits

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing about the recently released Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) 2024 Investment Snapshot report. 

EERE has made targeted investments to spur clean energy innovation, create good-paying American jobs, improve the health of communities, and support a reliable and resilient energy grid. The 2024 EERE Investment Snapshot summarizes the benefits of investments in clean, efficient, and reliable energy technologies over the last decade.

While each field in EERE’s portfolio has seen remarkable progress, the report focuses on EERE’s impact and outcomes as a whole and shows how continued investment in EERE can continue to yield measurable and demonstrable benefits for the American people.

The 2024 EERE Investment Snapshot, published by the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy is available to download for free here.

Highlights

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The 2024 Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Investment Snapshot report provides a high-level summary of the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) progress in advancing energy innovation and the benefits this delivers to communities across the United States.  Clean energy is now a $2 trillion market, and represents about 6% of U.S. GDP.  EERE is dedicated to developing clean energy technology, identifying barriers to its deployment, and then working in partnership—especially with the private sector—to overcome these barriers. EERE sets goals based on reducing costs for households and business.

 

Alejandro Moreno, Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy

• The 2024 Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Investment Snapshot report was released in December 2024. It resulted from a Congressional request for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to provide clear data and evidence behind the work it does.
• EERE is the government’s clean energy innovation hub responsible for research and development (R&D) to ensure the United States is on the cutting edge of technologies ranging from wind and solar to electric vehicles, bioenergy, and hydrogen.
• EERE is heavily involved with the national labs, stewarding the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and coordinating closely with the applied directorates at Pacific Northwest, Oak Ridge, Sandia, Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, and Idaho National Labs.
• EERE funding also goes to awards to the private sector, with about 2,000 active awards as of December 2024.
• In 2023, clean energy jobs grew at more than double the rate of job growth in the rest of the economy (4.9% versus 2%). Seventy-nine percent of jobs in the power sector are in clean energy technologies—this is mostly because the majority of new power generation coming online consists of renewable energy, and a lot of energy storage is also coming online.
• Job quality is important. Clean energy jobs tend to pay more than the average job and have higher rates of unionization. They are major drivers of apprenticeship programs in the trades.
• Clean energy is now a $2 trillion market. Clean energy represents about 6% of U.S. GDP, and this is roughly evenly split between manufacturing, power capacity, and direct to consumer sales. EERE is catalytic in this space. For example, EERE has awarded 8,000 patents, and they are cited almost twice as much as you would expect based on standard metrics.
• From 2010 to 2015, EERE commercialized 160 different technologies through the national labs.
• There is global competition. In 2020, China surpassed the United States in clean energy R&D investments. Thirteen countries invest more in energy per capita than the United States. EERE is employing strategies to close this R&D investment gap.
• Wind and solar power are the cheapest sources of electricity on the grid. More and more, solar with storage is cost competitive with fossil fuel generation.
• Through EERE’s Better Buildings program, using mostly EERE-developed energy efficiency technologies, companies have saved $20 billion, 20 billion gallons of water, and about 200 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
• EERE sets goals based on reducing costs for households and business.
• Reducing the use of fossil fuels, or replacing them entirely with clean energy, will improve health outcomes and save Americans up to $77 billion per year in total health impacts.
• The power system of the future that EERE is developing is one that will be much faster and more automated, less likely to lose power, less likely to have large outages, and much more likely to come back faster when an outage does occur.
• A modernized and automated power system can respond faster to impacts and can isolate parts of the system so that the spread of threats or outages can be minimized.
• The technologies that EERE works on will be the backbone of the energy system in 20-30 years. EERE wants U.S. technologies to be at the forefront of this transition.

 

Lisa Jacobson, President, Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)

• The Business Council for Sustainable Energy’s (BCSE’s) core areas of work are in energy efficiency, natural gas, and renewable energy, but it is working in new technologies every day. BCSE is focused on U.S. innovation, competitive opportunities, and ways to make lives and businesses better for Americans.
• Partnerships are key to the progress outlined in the Investment Snapshot report. EERE’s offices are dedicated to developing clean energy technology, identifying barriers to its deployment, and then working in partnership—especially with the private sector—to overcome these barriers.
• Many of the projects that BCSE members have underway—from geothermal in Texas to offshore wind in New Jersey and New York—were developed in partnership with EERE technology offices.
• Energy demand is likely to rise with more manufacturing happening in the United States and increased use of artificial intelligence (AI), so it is a critical time to be boosting clean energy.

 

Paula Glover, President, Alliance to Save Energy

• Energy efficiency is the foundation for economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability. It is an equitable solution to reduce energy waste, reduce energy costs, create jobs, and ensure an affordable energy future.
• The Investment Snapshot report highlights the real-world benefits of investments in energy efficiency.
• The report highlights that, since 1980, energy efficiency technologies and improvements have saved Americans around $800 billion in energy costs. This has freed up dollars for families and businesses to invest in other things that they need.
• Energy efficiency supports more than two million jobs in the United States in construction, manufacturing, and energy services. These jobs cannot be outsourced and add to local economies.
• Active efficiency is the approach of using traditional efficiency with digital tools and smart systems to create demand flexibility and to make systems smarter, faster, and more dynamic. This helps to maximize the productivity of every unit of energy.
• Tools like advanced sensors, AI, and connected buildings are being used now and will be critical in the future.
• Energy efficiency is essential to national security by reducing reliance on imported energy and making the grid more resilient to cyberattacks.
• Federal funding helps to unlock private investment. Every federal dollar leads to $2-4 in private funding.

 

Grant Gunnison, Founder and CEO, Zero Homes

• Zero Homes is a technology and marketplace business that builds digital technology to make home electrification improvements accessible to people around the United States.
• The technology is smartphone based, so an individual can scan their home by taking pictures and then get quotes on energy projects for their homes. This can be particularly useful for people in rural and remote areas of the country. Zero Homes then works with local trade partners who carry out the projects.
• Zero Homes has a partnership with Chicago to help low-income families and individuals access home improvements that will lead to energy savings and health improvements.
• The Investment Snapshot report covered cold weather innovations in heat pumps and Zero Homes sees the real-world impact of those investments on a daily basis.

 

Q&A

 

Q: The Investment Snapshot report focuses on the past and present. Looking ahead, how will the private sector continue to build on these investments?

 Jacobson

• Right now, there is increased energy demand throughout the economy, global energy markets are expanding in the areas that EERE and BCSE focus on, and there are a lot of needs at the community level, from keeping energy costs down to ensuring the supply chain and workforce are in place for a reliable and safe energy system.
• EERE and BCSE members can continue to partner on evaluating the current landscape and then generating new technology applications and solutions to meet needs.
• Further down the commercialization pathway, EERE is critical in derisking new technologies, using an existing technology in a new way, or financing a technology at a larger scale.
• The annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook is one way BCSE assesses the current energy landscape, and the 2025 edition will be released in February.

 Glover

• The Alliance to Save Energy embraces the idea of universal access to energy efficiency. Alliance members are working across the country to ensure that all kinds of customers in all types of locations, from rural to urban ones, are getting access to money, technology, services, and opportunities.
• Different technologies work differently across geographies and there are also different preferences in different places. It is important to acknowledge and work with localized decision-making.

 Gunnison

• It is all about accessibility. Homeowners today can mostly access energy efficiency support Mondays through Fridays during business hours, but this does not work for a lot of people.
• Making these resources instantly available 24/7 can make a real difference for broad adoption.
• There has been significant work at the component level to make great technologies that can improve the efficiency of homes, but tens of millions of homeowners do not currently have an easy way to access these technologies.

 

Q: Are there topic areas or data not covered by this report that you would like to see EERE provide public information about in the future?

 Moreno

• EERE has been collecting data for years, but the request from Congress to write this report on the case for energy efficiency and renewable energy investments helped to identify more specific data and information needs.
• Some information, like the patent numbers, are outdated and should be updated.
• If there are areas where the audience sees a need for more information, contact EERE to let us know.

 Gunnison

• EERE is really good at investments and data at the component level, but there are other services that can be invested in, specifically around residential buildings and getting solutions into homes. More data around how federal dollars are being spent via utility and other programs at the install level would be very useful.

 Glover

• Geographically, where do certain technologies work best? Data on where certain technologies are most advantageous would help inform a lot of on-the-ground decision-making.
• More information on what national labs provide to communities would be very beneficial. NREL and other national labs put out tools that are designed for people to use, and they just do not know about them.

 Jacobson

• BCSE has a small- and medium-sized business division, the Clean Energy Business Network, and it partners with DOE to make sure small businesses know about the resources and opportunities to partner with the federal government in the clean energy space. Explaining how EERE helps these small businesses would be a really good opportunity for future reports.
• The U.S. Energy and Employment Report is an extremely impactful resource from DOE with year-over-year information about jobs across the energy sector. The EERE Investment Snapshot report delivers a similar value showing where U.S. innovation is leading around the world.

 

Compiled by Anna McGinn and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.