In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to act on climate change and clean energy with comprehensive legislation. The president backed up that call with a warning that if Congress failed to act, he would.  One year later, Congress remains in gridlock, and the President remains determined.  At stake is the opportunity for America to compete in the global clean energy economy and the necessity for America to address climate change while there is still time.

States have recognized this opportunity and responsibility for well over a decade. Today, more than 220 million Americans live in a state with a renewable energy standard and 240 million Americans live in states with plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps even more telling than the fact that 30 states have enacted these policies, is how aggressively states defend them. In 2013 alone, there were 26 individual bills introduced in state legislatures throughout the country that would have weakened or repealed existing renewable energy standards.  None of these bills, even in the reddest of red states, passed muster.

The President is not alone in calling on Congress to act.  State and local energy leaders from across America have echoed the President in asking Congress to pass comprehensive clean energy legislation that charts a national energy strategy for the next several crucial decades.  Earlier this month, I testified in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the topic of the President’s Climate Action Plan. I testified to the leadership role states have taken in clean energy and climate policy and the important role the President’s Climate Action Plan will have in continuing to empower state leadership. Perhaps not surprisingly, too much of this hearing involved the tired debate about whether climate change is even real. The focus was less about legislative action than about Senators arguing over climate models and what authority the EPA has to address the impacts of CO2 emissions. Like Nero, Congress fiddles while Rome burns.

The tenor and substance of the Senate hearing came in stark contrast to a briefing that my staff and I from the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) gave just three days prior at the White House. In attendance were the Secretaries of Energy and Interior, the Deputy Administrator of EPA, the head of the General Services Administration, the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, the President’s chief science advisor and his top climate advisor.  The purpose of the briefing was to report the findings of a project released by CNEE entitled Powering Forward: Presidential and Executive Agency Actions to Drive Clean Energy in America.

Powering Forward was initially conceived in March, 2013, following a meeting President Obama convened with 14 energy industry and thought leaders, including myself, to discuss what can be done to advance clean energy without action from Congress. Following the meeting, I was asked to take the lead in bringing together many of the nation’s energy experts to develop a comprehensive collection of executive policy options. Over the next several months, CNEE organized roundtable discussions, drafted white papers and peer-reviewed ideas in five areas of energy policy: energy efficiency, renewable energy financing, responsible natural gas production, 21st century utility business models, and alternative fuels and vehicles.

Contained in Powering Forward are more than 200 new ideas for how the Administration can reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next three years while improving the economy and our energy security. The President and his staff are inundated with ideas from policy advocates and interest groups on all manner of topics, including his energy policies. What makes this report unusual is the breadth and depth of the recommendations, the fact that it was inspired by a meeting convened by the President, and the involvement of industry C-level executives, non-government organizations, and state officials from across the country.

Here are a few of the recommendations for presidential and agency action in the Powering Forward report:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that on our present path, renewable energy technologies will provide only 16% of the nation’s electricity in 2040. Meanwhile, experts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have concluded that by mid-century, with the right policies, we could supply 80% of our electricity demand from renewable energy technologies that are available today.

The good news is that President Obama is using his powers to move the nation along the path toward a clean energy economy. In fact, whether it has been inspired by Powering Forward or acting on its own initiative, the Obama Administration is already executing some of the ideas we proposed.

Powering Forward recommends that President Obama embrace the precedent of some past presidents who decided that when the nation’s welfare is at stake and when Congress does not act, the president can and should do whatever is necessary unless it is specifically prohibited by law. The report is about empowering states to continue their leadership and about leveraging the authorities of the President and his agencies to drive the transition.

Bill Ritter, Jr. is the 41st Governor of Colorado and the founder and director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.