Vice President Joe Biden yesterday helped release a report (PDF) describing how the Recovery Act has bolstered the economy — and specifically highlighting its effect on innovation in key sectors like transportation, healthcare, and, yes, renewable energy. The report boasts 50 pages of data and analysis, but it lacks the kind of compelling headlines that might really restore public confidence in the Recovery Act’s impact.

Thankfully, USA Today summarizes the report’s key points. According to Biden, the Recovery Act puts the United States “on track” to reach four innovation milestones:

(1) Halving the cost of solar power by 2015

(2) Dropping the cost of electric vehicle batteries to 30 percent of today’s costs

(3) Doubling American renewable energy manufacturing and generation capacity

(4) Lowering the cost of a personal human genome map to $1,000

These are all impressive milestones that suggest we’re successfully chipping away at massive global problems. For solar, at least, halving costs by 2015 would cause the current market to explode in a flurry of commercial and residential installations.

This could be the 21st century equivalent of Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade” pronouncement. People need something to get excited about and, dare we say it, hope for. “Halving the cost of solar power by 2015″ is tangible, relevant, and (hopefully) feasible enough to capture people’s attention.

So C’mon Vice President Biden. After you defend the Recovery Act, use this to get us excited about solar.