The Energy Innovation Tracker (EIT) is a non-profit project whose goal is to provide accurate data on US energy innovation spending. The initial target of the project is spending by the federal government, and the project may expand to include other sources of innovation funding. A good summary of the work to date can be found here and on our blog.
EIT is funded through a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and is operated and managed as an independent project within the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). It was founded by David Douglas and originally developed in collaboration with the ITIF and The Breakthrough Institute.
The idea for the EIT came in the winter of 2009/10, when calls for increased US energy R&D spending were becoming more frequent, while at the same time there were regular disagreements over the size and type of investments that were already being made. During this time it became clear that any rational discussion of future US investment in energy innovation had to be grounded in a shared view of what was currently being spent.
It is within this context that EIT set out to create a database of federal spending in this space, and present it in the form of an open tool available to anyone with an interest energy innovation policy. In this role EIT is not meant to present a case for any particular policy, but is intended to provide a solid, fact-based foundation for a broad debate about this important policy space.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank at the cutting edge of designing innovation policies and exploring how advances in information technology will create new economic opportunities to improve the quality of life. Non-profit, and non-partisan, we offer pragmatic ideas that break free of economic philosophies born in eras long before the first punch card computer and well before the rise of modern China. ITIF, founded in 2006, is dedicated to conceiving and promoting the new ways of thinking about technology-driven productivity, competitiveness, and globalization that the 21st century demands.