When U.S. Assistant Energy Secretary Alexander "Andy" Karsner addressed the Cleantech Forum on what he called the "Creative Coast" last week (See Cleantech.com’s Postcards from the San Francisco Cleantech Forum), he knew he was preaching to the choir.

So he chose to talk about what the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division has done under his guidance, and what he hopes it will be doing over the next 24 months, even after a new president takes office.

With policy continuity as his theme just “327 days pre-pumpkin,” Karsner spoke about the programs in place to accelerate the commercialization of cleantech development and evade what he called the “commercialization valley of death.”

One of the problems, he said, was that the bureaucracy had been built for the Cold War and didn’t know how to handle the risks associated with cleantech.

A solution he introduced at last week's Cleantech Forum was a new DOE Entrepreneur in Residence pilot program, launched at a press conference immediately following his keynote (See Cleantech.com’s New US energy department program links VCs and researchers).

The program is now underway at Sandia National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

After the press conference, Karsner stayed for a short Q&A session that ultimately explored difficult topics, including the amount of money the U.S. is currently earmarking for accelerating clean technologies.

There were stories saying times were pretty grim at NREL a few months ago.

McCain will tell you: don’t believe the New York Times.

What turned this around, and is there any money?

These are well-funded places with increasing and growing budgets. We invite all of you out for VIP tours when you’re ready. I don’t want to be overenthusiastic, but you set up a softball for me.

The DOE release mentions each entrepreneur in the Entrepreneur in Residence program would receive $100,000. Is that per site per year?

That is $100,000 per site per year and that also begs a minimum match from the applicants. All that is is general administrative and overhead.

We’re basically saying we’re creating a parking place for the yeast. The big story is the return on investment getting the technologies out of the lab. The money in this is actually nominal compared to the qualitative gain.

Is there a timeframe?

Twelve months, but it’s not a 12-month pilot. It’s 12 months for this program.

We actually met with all of these winners earlier today and said, “You’re not little astronauts with jetpacks and on your own—you’ve got a tether cord. We expect this to be a two-way street so that we collect info early and often about any obstacles you are running into, any difficulties you are having, etc.”

It happens that the three labs that are starting are some of the easiest places because they are already very well acculturated to the idea of tech transfer and wanted it. They said, “We want this, we welcome this.”

Lots of folks like Steve Chu [Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] and Lawrence Livermore are coming to our door now to ask how they can get involved. We expect this to spread.

A dynamic, passionate address to 900+ cleantech influencers.

In your speech today, you suggested cleantech companies take advantage of $38.5 billion in DOE appropriations that is currently "gathering dust unless the federal government can figure out how to deliver it." Where did that money come from and what is it for?

It's $38 billion under Title 17 of the [2005] Energy Policy Act. The money has been appropriated for loan guarantees that avoid, sequester or reduce greenhouse gases.

It’s not sequestration alone. It’s greenhouse gases avoided, greenhouse gases reduced, or greenhouse gases sequestered. It’s 2 years old. The appropriation is new. The $38 billion is new. The statute itself is 2 years old. The funding is relatively recent.

You talked a lot about the importance of policy continuance and passing the baton smoothly. What policies will stay after this coming election?

I like to think everything. The person who succeeds me is going to be in a difficult position to say I think I’d like to unwind some of this stuff.

Some people think I tried to unwind hydrogen; I didn’t, I just diversified our portfolio and our emphasis. We still back hydrogen quite a bit, but people view that as an unwinding because government typically has found the flavor of the month in technology and ours was to find the attributes and the national vision.

I think anybody who follows—Republican or Democrat—is going to have to follow that strategy. There are simply too many technologies out there that the market’s cultivating for the government to choose a winner. So it’s going to have to be quite exhaustive.

I’ll give you one example: we’re presently negotiating the post-2012 global framework. That has to be submitted by April 2009 to the UN for agreement in Copenhagen in 2009.