In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama declared the need for "serious investments in clean energy" because "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy". In a new paper funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States under the Transatlantic Climate Bridge initiative, authors from the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC and Berlin identify investment needs and policy incentives required to achieve this transition to a clean energy economy.