Energy Dept. official: Deployment, not R&D, biggest challenge for clean-tech

BOULDER — “The vast majority of the technologies we need to decarbonize our economy … are already invented,” U.S. Department of Energy Loan Program executive director Jigar Shah said Friday during a webinar on clean-energy technology hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder. 

The major challenge in rolling this technology out in such a way that it makes a significant impact on climate change lies not in research and development, but in deployment at scale, he said. 

Clean-tech players are often hesitant to go to market with new technology until it becomes less expensive to deploy, but that “cost reduction comes simply…