On December 10th, the BlueGreen Alliance, the Institute for America’s Future, and the Center for American Progress released The Green Industrial Revolution and the United States: In the Clean Energy Race, Is the United States a Leader or a Luddite? The report acknowledges and summarizes the strong U.S. position in clean energy development, and proposes to exert a competitive advantage over its closest rivals, China and Germany, by innovating from the state and local levels “up”, combining regional  policies that work into a national energy strategy that is based on “an integrated set of regional energy strategies. “Citing the examples of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and the currently uncertain Production Tax Credit program for wind energy projects, the report charges that “U.S. clean energy policies have been time limited, underfunded, and politically charged.” The strategy argues that the relatively small U.S. Department of Commerce should take the lead: “With solid leadership and increased capacity, Commerce could be the central department ensuring that energy programs out of the Department of Energy, environmental programs out of the Environmental Protection Agency, and workforce training and standards programs out of the Department of Labor, all work together to support regionally specific economic development plans that will help America consolidate global leadership in the green industrial revolution.” BlueGreen earlier released a Policy Statement calling for a state-level Clean Energy Transition Fund, to first and foremost, “ensure that displaced workers from closing power plants and affected fossil fuel extraction sites receive transition support, including wages, benefits, and retraining.”