Evaluation of U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) public spending to promote the U.S. clean energy technology innovation system (ETIS) has mainly focused on financial metrics. Innovation research has demonstrated, however, that there are other important criteria for success including elimination of barriers that block the expansion of the ETIS. Jaffe and co-authors offer a unique data set on gender performance and geographic distribution for funding via DOE’s flagship loan guarantee program and conduct a review of research on published data from its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, in both cases from 2009 to 2022. They find that these two programs lacked significant geographic diversity over this time period. They provide observational data on the low numbers of women-led firms receiving awards in both programs and offer recommendations for how to improve the programs.