A 10 Year Clean Energy Strategy to Wean America from foreign oil and to begin solving climate change.
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| President-elect Barack Obama |
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On August 4, 2008, Barack Obama formally unveiled a clean energy strategy to wean America from foreign oil and to begin solving climate change. His New Energy For America plan is a ten-year, $150 billion initiative that calls for scaling up the tools and practices of a clean energy economy, and charting a new development strategy for the United States.
Obama owned the clean energy message during the campaign. His victory is a powerful demonstration of the economic transformation most Americans expect and want his administration to lead.
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We all know how hard the transition will be. But the new president's work on clean energy will be helped by two new and powerful market forces that the Obama campaign helped to crystallize.
The first is the influence of fossil fuel. Until very recently, one of the underlying principles of the American economy was that the more fossil fuel we used, the wealthier we became. That is no longer the case, nor is it likely to be ever again. The more fossil fuel we use the more impoverished and endangered we are.
The second is a profound change in the relationship between environmental and economic principles. Since the early 1960s environmentalists have helped the nation understand how economic principles affect the environment. Economic development produces wealth. It also produces pollution and toxins and ill-advised construction that threatens species, babies, wild lands, and communities.
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Look at the potential, the Obama campaign essentially argued, when environmental principles are applied to the economy. Energy efficiency, conservation, rapid transit, clean vehicles, biofuels, wind, and solar represent the most important new growth sectors in the nation, capable not only of fixing the economy and healing the environment, but also of producing millions of family-supporting jobs.
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| Solar Jobs |
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"We simply cannot pretend that we can drill our way out of this problem," Pres-elect Barack Obama said in August. "We need a much bolder and much bigger set of solutions. We have to make a serious, nationwide commitment to developing new sources of energy and we have to do it right away."
The question, in the face of soaring budget deficits and financial crisis, is can he deliver? The answer is that America's clean energy economy is already starting to unfold. Twenty-nine states have enacted renewable energy standards to compel development of wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources in the utility industry. Clean energy production and development is a $25 billion-a-year industry, and the fastest growing industrial sector in the country. Clean energy is responsible for an estimated 500,000 new jobs since 2004, according to figures from states, investment analysts, and the wind, solar, geothermal, and other clean energy trade associations.
What's needed from the federal government, say executives and elected leaders is a large, focused investment program to quickly scale up the clean energy tools and technology that already exists.
Millions of family-supporting jobs are possible. Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers of America, is fond of telling audiences that it takes 26 tons of sheet steel and 19,000 parts to make and install a wind turbine generator.
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| It takes 26 tons of sheet steel and 19,000 parts to make and install a wind turbine generator. |
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More than 70 percent of the transit measures on ballots across the country were approved, including the $10 billion bond for a regional high speed rail network in California.
Watch as the new administration and a new Congress start to put in place the clean energy, good jobs investments and policies that Americans overwhelmingly said they will support. 10 Year NEW Energy Plan - Read the New Energy for America plan [152.39 KB.pdf file]
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When GE met Google
The industrial giant and Internet powerhouse team up to promote clean energy. "We're fully expecting that the Toyotas (TM) and General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) of the world will put plug-ins on the road in 2009 and 2010. The challenge is, how do they get integrated into the electric grid?"
New Energy News
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| Power Lines |
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