The President has challenged the nation to reach 80% electric power generation from clean energy by 2035. The Department of Energy (DOE) has a major role in helping the U.S. achieve this goal by advancing contributions from renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar and water power. In January 2011, DOE entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to focus interagency collaboration on resource characterization needs for weather-dependent and oceanic renewable energy technologies. For wind energy, DOE's resource characterization priorities are to better assess the wind resource, accurately represent the complex flows into and within wind plant arrays, and improve prediction of winds over timescales ranging from minutes to decades. These improvements will support reduced costs of wind energy through increased turbine and wind plant performance, enhanced reliability, reduced grid integration costs, and better planning for future wind plant and grid infrastructure development. For solar energy, the collaborative priorities are to better access and model the solar resource, through satellite, numerical-weather prediction and ground-source observations and measurements to improve prediction of irradiance over timescales ranging from minutes to decades. These improvements support reduced costs of solar energy integration through improved management of plant siting and operations. To date, several collaborative activities are progressing to answer some of these challenges. This presentation will include the DOE Headquarters' perspective on, the DOE-NOAA Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP) and additional forecast improvement efforts underway. Some of the efforts include: complex flow characterization projects, the summer 2011 Public Meeting on Information Needs for Offshore Energy Resource Assessment and Design Conditions, collaborative work examining the prospect of using existing offshore platforms as reference stations and testbeds for atmospheric and oceanographic observations to support offshore wind and marine hydrokinetic energy development through validation and R&D activities. Similar collaborative activities involving the DOE water and solar energy technology programs will also be discussed.