Lost amid the money propping up Tuesday’s unveiling were the nitty-gritty details of spurring investment by educating the private sector – a logistical shift to help scale up a sector of the US economy big on ideas but short on funding

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced that foundations and other investors had committed $4bn to clean-energy investments.

Most news reports focused on the money, and so did the White House. But arguably more important than the $4bn raised was the fine print: a new federal information source and new financing options for would-be investors.

It’s not flashy breakthrough technology, but rather the nitty-gritty details of building an investment market and, eventually, a fully mature industry. Clean energy is no longer in its infancy; it’s ready to go big. It just needs the money.

“There’s a whole set of funding sources we’re going to need if we’re going to deploy clean energy at scale,” said Dan Reicher, executive director of Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance. “It’s less about the specific amount of money that was committed today, and more about the structures that are being put together.”

A useful backdrop to the new initiative is an International Energy Agency estimate of the investment it will take to scale clean technologies so Earth’s temperature doesn’t warm by more than 2C (3.6F) by 2100. That will require, calculates the IEA, annual investments of $500bn by 2020 and $1tn by 2030.

There’s presently nowhere near that amount of clean-energy investment. Instead there’s roughly $250bn, reported Steyer-Taylor researchers in a 2014 white paper (pdf) that became a foundational document for the new initiative. Among “impact investors” – those seeking not only financial returns but also social and environmental good – this accounts for just $46bn – roughly the size of the US divorce industry.

The money is out there: foundations, venture firms, family funds, pension funds and other institutional investors represent many trillions of dollars. But even the well-meaning have largely withheld their money.

Steyer-Taylor researchers said the industry suffers from a perception problem. Though clean energy boomed in recent years, the field is stigmatized – albeit unfairly – by high-profile busts like Solyndra and an outdated stereotype of wonky solar panels and finicky wind turbines.

Moreover, investment itself isn’t easy. Institutional investors often grapple with the arcana of clean technologies, while for potential do-gooders, impact investment structures – the intricacies of repayment rates and debt financing and equity bargains – often differ from traditional investments.

“You’re looking at trillions of dollars in capital,” said Reicher, “but getting folks who run those funds up the learning curve, getting them comfortable with those types of investments, is the challenge.”

Clean-energy markets needed some logistical help, and the investment community called on world leaders to make it happen. With the White House’s promise to help investors navigate the field, that has started in earnest.

The assistance includes a new Clean Energy Impact Investment Center, run out of the US department of energy and charged with making clean-tech information accessible to investors. There’s also a nonprofit investment intermediary that “identifies, screens, and assesses high-potential companies and projects for commercial investment”. The treasury department will help impact investors, and the US small business administration will make it easier for investors to borrow money.

In short, clean energy newcomers will get expertise and clean-tech companies could get the capital so desperately needed to scale up.

“Energy is an incredibly capital-intensive sector of the economy,” said Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Charitable Trust’s clean energy initiative. “Two guys can’t just create something in their garage. It has to be manufactured and deployed.”

There’s still more to be done, said Cuttino. Tax code oversights and financial loopholes should be fixed, creating incentives – or removing disincentives – for investing in clean energy. Carbon taxes would make real such costs that are presently invisible.

Granted, the Obama administration’s approach won’t make everyone happy. Eli Lehrer, founder of libertarian thinktank R Street, would prefer to see the government eliminate all energy subsidies, put a tax on carbon, then step back and let the market work unaided. But even Lehrer called it “better than the heavy-handed big-government approach”.

“The way the Obama administration is trying to scale these technologies up is to get them more private-sector money,” said Cuttino. “And I think that’s great.”