While Bush talks about hydrogen and gives tax cuts to Big Oil, the U.S. has ceded its one-time technological lead in renewable energy to Europe and Japan. That's in part because the market for renewable energy technologies is simply bigger in other parts of the world, spurred by aggressive government subsidies: "Japan and Germany are the dominant market segments, and then North America is a distant third," says Werner.

If Kerry's goal of 20 percent by 2020 was achieved, the Union of Concerned Scientists calculates it would create 355,000 new jobs in manufacturing, construction, operation, maintenance and other industries. That's why labor groups like the AFL-CIO and the Boilermakers Union have joined environmentalists in a coalition called the Apollo Alliance to lobby for investment in clean energy.

Take solar, where Peter Aschenbreneer, vice president of sales and marketing for SunPower, says the market has basically two segments. Demand for solar has been growing at about 20 percent a year for 25 years from remote homes and businesses, which are "off the grid." But the newer market, which has been growing at about 50 percent a year for seven years, is made up of residential rooftop systems for homes, demand for which is driven by government subsidies. "People can't build the factories fast enough. The problem is the place they're building the factory is where the demand is: in Europe and Japan. The market in the U.S. has not been growing as fast, and so the importance of the U.S. market has dwindled over time. About 10 percent of the solar manufacturing is in the U.S. A decade ago that was 50 percent."

But where those markets are is likely to influence who supplies them. "It was just two or three years ago that Germany passed the U.S. in installed wind. This has not gotten a lot of attention in the U.S., but it's really a great tragedy," says Romm. "It's exceedingly rare for a country to be a world leader in a product line where its citizens aren't major purchasers of that product. And the nation that leads the way on developing technologies that reduce greenhouse gases is not only going to benefit its environment, it's going to create jobs. We are not the world-leader in photovoltaics. That's Japan and Europe. And we are not the leader in wind. That is really Europe."

The issue is not solely about jobs; it also affects the balance of trade. "If you look at the nation's balance of trade, the importation of fuel is an enormous contribution. If the United States becomes the leader in renewable energy, it could be a huge net export gain for America," says Howard Berke, CEO of Konarka Technologies, a solar company based in Lowell, Mass., whose investors include ChevronTexaco. "But lacking the federal policy, other nations like Japan and Germany can become net exporters and become the world leader in certain renewable technology."

As the renewables market has grown in Germany, so has the power of the solar industry and its lobby. "The industry in North America is less predictable," says SunPower's Werner. "And talent goes to where the money is. And we're draining renewables in general of talent, because that's not where the money is going. There is no question that there could be more jobs created by a more consistent policy, and what would follow would be a bigger industry."

Whether it would be politically feasible for the U.S. to subsidize renewables as aggressively as Germany and Japan is highly questionable, according to Reicher. "They have used direct government dollars to essentially fund the cost of solar," he explains. "I don't know that we're going to get to that point in this country." But that doesn't mean that the U.S. can't do a lot, beyond funding renewable research and deployment at the federal level, instead of diverting all the money to hydrogen. It could also provide tax incentives: "We do have a tax code that definitely lends itself to encouragement," says Reicher. "And we saw the wind tax credit expire for quite a long period of time, which put the wind industry on its back."

When executives at renewable companies say that they need "consistency" and "predictability" from the federal government, that's what they're really talking about: how can you plan to make a business decision when the financial picture of available tax incentives changes annually? "The wind and renewable tax credit comes up almost every year," says Konarka's Berke.

"For a company like ours, there may be a program in place this year, it might be very attractive, but there is no certainty that next year that program will be in place," explains Aschenbreneer of SunPower. "Almost anything you do in business takes more than a year."

And abdicating the responsibility to do anything means not only loss of jobs, but reliable energy in the future: "You would think on the heels of a 50 million-user blackout, and hurricanes throughout Florida and the southeast, with all of these challenges to our electricity grid, and the dramatic rise in fossil fuel costs -- petroleum, crude oil and natural gas -- that Congress could pass an energy bill," says Berke. "Whoever the next president is, one Yalie or another, I hope to see a unified energy policy that is very focused on renewable energy with a Cabinet-level energy secretary, who is a strong and very vocal member of the Cabinet."

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