The paper, titled Reinventing Renewable Energy: Toward a Technology Strategy for Improving Security, Creating Jobs & Reducing Emissions, identifies the challenges facing wider use of renewable energy in the USA. It encompassed wind power, solar energy, bioenergy, geothermal energy, hydropower, tidal, wave and other ocean power, and waste-energy resources across all application sectors including electricity generation, transportation fuels, and heating and cooling applications.

"This paper represents an interim milestone in our continuing programmes to bring industry, government, and institutions together to identify the requirements – in this case research and development to advance the technologies – in order to make renewable energy fully cost-competitive compared to legacy generating technologies," says Michael Eckhart, President of ACORE.

There remains a massive gap, however, between available resources and ones that currently can be harnessed in economically, environmentally, and socially acceptable ways. Technical progress is critical to fill this gap, ACORE says.