President Barack Obama made clear this week how much he will champion the next phase in the American energy revolution — the drive toward local energy, a decentralized grid and consumer control.

For Obama to push green energy is not new. But at the National Clean Energy Summit in Nevada Monday he spun the vision of the next stage, one that is about more than just energy efficiency and renewables.

There is “a big shift underway that goes beyond simply putting solar panels on your home,” he said in the keynote address.

“Yes, the number of homes with rooftop solar panels has grown… But the revolution going on here is that people are beginning to realize they can take more control over the own energy, what they use, how much, when,” he said.

To help drive the decentralization, the Department of Energy “is announcing a new push to deploy innovative distributed energy resources like microgrids [and] rooftop solar with battery storage, and will offer loan guarantees for projects like these,” Obama said.

Obama also described plans to accelerate energy efficiency and solar by revising rules for financing so that more consumers can improve their homes with no money down.

“A lot of Americans want solar and to become more energy efficient, not because they are tree huggers…but because they are cost cutters. They like saving money,” he said.

Read the rest at EnergyEfficientMarkets.com